June 24, 2006

Asia has half of the world’s one million cities, with one million or more inhabitants, while more than half of the continent comprises mega-cities with 10 million or more inhabitants. With rapid economic growth, the increase in the proportion of population living in urban areas has become greater.

Pakistan sustained a significant population growth in the past century. According to the first census in 1951, the Pakistani population was 34 million. By the 1998 census, the population had quadrupled to 132 million inhabitants, making Pakistan the seventh most populous country in the world, and, according to the UN projections, Pakistan will become the fourth most populous country by the year 2050. The population density of Pakistan in 1998 was 166 persons per square kilometre, which is 10 times more than the population density of 16 per km2 in North America. The average household size is 6.8 persons.

A huge increase in urban population in the near future represents a massive housing issue for governments. An acute lack of appropriate government policies and planning has led to the deterioration of urban environments and lack of provision of necessary community facilities.

Most of the world’s large cities are encountering similar problems due to economic growth, and associated staggering population rise resulting from a migration of people from rural areas to industrial and port cities. In this background, it would be pertinent to take a cursory view of how the large cities of the world are tackling these problems at their end.

Chicago has a population of 9.5 million. Built in 1885, it brought a new form of engineering to the forefront, which changed the concept of living in cities. It is the birthplace of the modern skyscrapers and has 19 buildings over 200 meters tall, three of which are among the top 20 tallest buildings in the world. Hong Kong, with a population of 6.9 millions has 43 buildings over 200 meters tall. Thirty of these were built in 2000 or later, including four of the 15 tallest buildings.

Similarly, Shanghai is China’s biggest and most advanced city with an urban population is 13.1 million. It has 25 buildings over 200 meters tall, one of them being 468 meters high, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. Tokyo has the largest population in the world at 32 million. It has five structures over 200 meters high and the world’s largest fleet of helicopters to get around town if traffic gets too hectic.

But these are just a few examples. At the current rate of population expansion in all directions, by the beginning of the next century, the surface of the planet will be nearly totally covered with residential and commercial buildings. Side by side, with the passage of time, transportation is growing beyond the cities’ carrying capacity and people are obliged to spend more and more time commuting. The spreading out of urban neighborhoods in and around cities is consuming the green beauty of nature, that is so craved by the human beings.

In the face of such problems, it can be seen that the urban planners of most large cities, after much consideration, had to compromise on the idea of multi-story buildings, having little horizontal room left to expand upon in a sustainable manner. The successful construction of the 452 meters high Petrona Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, comprising 88 stories, is proof that the concept of super-high structures can be well realised.

The cities of the world are transforming rapidly with technological and economic developments influencing the ways of living. The advanced industrialisation and economy in Japan has significantly affected the country’s architecture and cityscape. New developments in Japanese urbanism have obliged the country’s designers and architects to design structures with futuristic qualities, using bleeding edge craftsmanship.

Tokyo spreads over 2,820 sq km, and is about the size of Los Angeles, but with nearly three times the population. The actual population of the Metropolitan Tokyo area is 28,447,000 people, with a predicted 35 million people living here by 2015. Being the hub of commercial and industrial activities, like similar cities of the world, the population of Tokyo is growing day by day, land is scarce and land prices are skyrocketing.

In order to solve the problems related to housing millions of people, urban congestion, transportation and lack of green space, Takenaka and Shizuo Harada of ESCO Co. Ltd. announced the plan to build Sky City 1000 in Tokyo in 1989. The emerging diversified lifestyle values — demanding resolving individual issues while maintaining harmony with the whole — made Takenaka develop his idea of Sky City 1000 based on Holon, which means harmonising individual parts with the whole, fulfilling the requirements of individuals of the system, and thus, simultaneously keeping harmony with the whole.

Human nature demands economic and cultural affluence as well as contact with nature on daily basis. The idea of Takenaka’s sky city is an urban space maintains a good balance between these two environments. Since then, the idea has attracted attention throughout the world, and there are increasing expectations for its realisation in near future.

The Sky City 1000 of Takenaka would be the most massive super building on the earth. The idea encompasses a city growing upwards. It is proposed to be a huge multilevel city with a height of 1000 meters with 400 meters width at the base with a total floor area of 800 hectares. It will have three towers, each 1,000 meter high, connected by a central control area. Each tower will have 14 concave, dish-shaped aerial bases called Space Plateaus. The plateaus will be made of glass, steel and concrete, each of which will be 40-story high and stacked on top of each other.

Thus, the sky city will rise a full mile into space more than twice the height of any existing building and more than three times the height of the Eiffel Tower. Each plateau would have a park with trees, grass and a pond for reducing pollution and overall temperatures. To get to the Sky City, helicopters and airplanes will be used, which will land on the central core connecting the towers. For up and down movements, high-speed triple-decker elevators accomodating 70 people will be used; and for moving around each plateau, monorails will be the means of transportation.

The plan further elaborates that steel megacolumns will be used to support the tremendous weight of the units. Special structures are to be designed to help the Sky City withstand strong winds and typhoons. These include rounded shape, open cylindrical plateaus, counterweights and dampers. Specialised concrete, steel would be used in the construction of structure.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the plan is that materials will be created at on-site factories for the enormous supports and building. Supertrusses, or canopies, will be used to allow the columns to be built from the ground up. Massive dampers will help diminish the sway of the city. Although the conceived plan will take some time before it is completed, people will be able to live there while construction continues. The supertrusses will allow people to live on lower levels while construction takes place above them.

The vertical city will house some 35,000 residents and host 100,000 workers, students and visitors daily. It will provide for every aspect of modern life, with parks, schools, homes, offices, and shops all within the four walls. One can imagine sleeping, waking up, going to office, picking children from school, shopping and entertaining all without stepping out of the four walls of the building.

The designers and the architects are being very discrete about initiating practical work on such an enormous design as there has been concern about tectonic changes that such a giant structure may bring about.

Tokyo sits in a region of complex geology where three of the world’s great tectonic plates meet. This makes the area particularly prone to earthquakes. The soil of Tokyo is a conglomerate of diversified components. It comprises unconsolidated alternating layers of silt, sand, loam and gravel with sufficient groundwater reservoirs and volcanic ejecta originating from the volcanoes of Fuji and Hakone. A series of continuous groundwater tables intersperse the land. Almost all the lowland is below sea level, requiring protection by extensive dikes and drainage systems for preventing high tide and flooding.

Some geologists fear that the world’s tallest building — the 508 meters tall and 700,000 tonnes heavy Taipei 101 in Taiwan — may have triggered two recent earthquakes because of the stress that it exerts on the ground beneath, reopening an ancient earthquake fault. Before the construction of Taipei 101, the Taipei basin was a very stable area with micro-earthquakes (less than magnitude 2) happening about once a year. However, once Taipei 101 started to rise from the ground, the number of earthquakes increased to around two micro-earthquakes per year during the construction period (1997 to 2003). Since the conclusion of construction, there have been two larger earthquakes (magnitude 3.8 and 3.2) directly beneath Taipei 101, which were big enough to be felt.

It has been calculated that the pressure exerted by 700,000 tonnes of heavy Taipei 101 spread over an area of 15,081 square meters comes to 4.7 bars on the soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin.

Such unexpected concerns could have far-reaching implications for the construction of other buildings such as the Tokyo Sky City. However, experts are optimistic, saying that the stress of any building will not reach below 10km, the level where the earthquakes occurred. Furthermore, just 10 years of earthquake data is not sufficient to link the earthquakes to the high-risers.

Thus, leading engineers from Taiwan, Japan and Canada have joined hands to tackle immense mechanical strategy and logistical issues behind such an enormous project. Architects have drawn plans for protection from earthquakes, typhoons and the worst disasters that can strike a tall building, such as a raging inferno; all possibilities are being taken into consideration. Fire simulations are being examined to estimate the threat to the 35,000 residents. Since every aspect of human living and its associated dangers are being practically examined, there are increasing expectations for its realisation in the near future.

Although the concept of a one- mile high city has not yet taken shape, a competition is already on its way, inviting ideas on building a two-mile high, one-mile wide building namely Ultima Tower Sky City. The reasons behind such an idea is to prevent the uncontrolled destruction of natural landscape by insatiable developers and industrialists.

Large structures such as these preserve natural surroundings and also allow creating a healthier controlled environment. The City’s model can be viewed as a vertical rise of nature with multi-soil levels.

The structure is conceived to have wind and atmospheric energy conversion systems, photovoltaic exterior sheathing, and opening/closing cowl-vent windows that allow natural air into the interior without mechanical intervention. Resource conserving technologies that will be used will include recycled building materials, compost toilets, nature based water cleansing systems for all buildings, plentiful amounts of forests, plant life and water-based ecosystems. Thus Ultima Tower Sky City will be an ecosystems based architectural design.

Another competition goes a step further, inviting ideas under a research theme on constructing a complex which is higher than Mount Fuji, a city rising above the clouds. It focusses on tackling environmental and marine problems and finding research and develepment parameters for the next generation of buildings (technology seeds) through a structure called “XSEED 4000” which is assumed to be 4,000 m in height, 5,000 to 7,000 ha. in effective area and planned to accommodate 500 to 700 thousand residents.

The writer shamimfkhalid@yahoo.com is a retired scientist

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