SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"We are coming to a point in our history in which we need to start looking for more space," Han Admiraal, a civil engineer with over two decades of experience in underground space, told AFP on the sidelines of this year's World Tunnel Congress.
...
"Underground spaces could easily be used for growing crops," he said, as he toured the cavernous Bourbon Tunnel, dug deep under the Italian city of Naples as a potential escape route for King Ferdinand II of Bourbon after the 1848 riots.Scientific developments in areas like aquaponics—where vegetables and fish are farmed together—could help relieve the pressure on the food supply chain, and dramatically cut transport costs if such new farms were situated under cities.
Isn't excavation expensive?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday May 10 2019, @09:24AM (1 child)
Not quite true. One of the conditions that allowed the plague to spread so quickly and virulently, and the great fire of London to be so devastating, was the over-crowding in major cities in the UK. However, the majority of people lived in smaller towns, villages and hamlets but still in comparatively small homes that were overcrowded, often being the home of several generations of a family at the same time.
It is true that the industrial revolution exacerbated the situation, certainly in the UK, by encouraging people to move to towns and cities to support the various new industries that were evolving. Even today it is possible in NW England to plot the route of major rivers by looking at the towns that grew along the rivers in order to support the cotton mills that needed both the water and the power it could generate. Similar phenomena are seen for the steel industry et al.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:11PM
I'd say that your definition of overcrowding facilitates population decline, so I dunno whether you have a point or you lose one.
Account abandoned.