That's sad, but it's a good example of environmental foreclosure in progress, shutting out more vulnerable people first and sturdier ones later.
Not far from here, there's a small but fast-growing city. Remember, we live on reclaimed swampland that nature regularly disputes possession of. So that city's always had a problem with flooding, and it's been around a long time. All the underpasses have depth measures on them so people know when the water's too deep to drive through. They are, at present, building small skyscrapers that add massive water/sewage burdens to old pipelines that need repair and were never designed for so much volume. Sure, when they tear up a street, sometimes they update the infrastructure underneath it. But that doesn't help because it's a localized patch job; the rest of the system is still too old and too small to sustain the added weight. So the flooding gradually gets worse.
Now at the same time, climate change is making storms more aggressive. So we have these buildings taller than everything else around them, facing storms that often produce ferocious windwalls, and are increasingly prone to dumping lots of water in a sudden deluge. Sooner or later they're going to get hit with a bad storm and have a major disaster on their hands. This does not seem to me like an advisable situation. If I really wanted a city on a reclaimed marsh, I'd pick one of its several areas of sprawl where the building is vigorous, and I'd put the skyscrapers there to create a new activity hub where I could install new infrastructure to support it.
A lot of people's problems are foreseeable and preventable, but people either don't think ahead, or can't maneuver around them because the incentives drive them toward stupid actions.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
Yes ...
Date: 2021-06-04 06:39 pm (UTC)Not far from here, there's a small but fast-growing city. Remember, we live on reclaimed swampland that nature regularly disputes possession of. So that city's always had a problem with flooding, and it's been around a long time. All the underpasses have depth measures on them so people know when the water's too deep to drive through. They are, at present, building small skyscrapers that add massive water/sewage burdens to old pipelines that need repair and were never designed for so much volume. Sure, when they tear up a street, sometimes they update the infrastructure underneath it. But that doesn't help because it's a localized patch job; the rest of the system is still too old and too small to sustain the added weight. So the flooding gradually gets worse.
Now at the same time, climate change is making storms more aggressive. So we have these buildings taller than everything else around them, facing storms that often produce ferocious windwalls, and are increasingly prone to dumping lots of water in a sudden deluge. Sooner or later they're going to get hit with a bad storm and have a major disaster on their hands. This does not seem to me like an advisable situation. If I really wanted a city on a reclaimed marsh, I'd pick one of its several areas of sprawl where the building is vigorous, and I'd put the skyscrapers there to create a new activity hub where I could install new infrastructure to support it.
A lot of people's problems are foreseeable and preventable, but people either don't think ahead, or can't maneuver around them because the incentives drive them toward stupid actions.