South Korea Building Self-Sufficient Super-City At What Cost?

@OoBaSNoRk: I was just about to say that.

You know what they say
"To make an omelet you have to break a few eggs"

OoBaSNoRk

@aek8: yep this is similar to Walts vision for Epcot. Too bad they turned the whole thing into a theme park after he died.

dna

The pollution created is probably nothing compared to what we in the US and China cause every single day... Which I'm sure they are probably thinking themselves.

Merikov

@Pope John Peeps II: Debbie downer. Its sad that with your generally racist, spiteful, and ignorant comments you probably live in the same place I do.

@Raidah: That's what I was thinking, even if it's a little more pollution than normal to construct you have to look at the long term savings when you're dealing with a system as large and complex as a city.

It's like those people who won't buy energy efficient bulbs because they cost and extra $2 dollars now, even though they save $30 over the life of the bulb.

@Pope John Peeps II:
You are absolutely right... I don't see why to highlight that building the city may have some environmental impact, this is an obvious consequence of all human intervention on earth. He may be referencing the famous prius vs hommer comparison anyway. A little yellow journalism doesn't affect anyone doesn't it?

HelloYouAll

While this is all good and well for a newly planned city, it won't work for our old fart cities. For those cities I recommend developing autonomous nanobot swarms that can efficiently replace old construction and infrastructure with new shiny versions. They could use our dead skin as fuel.

This posting was like listening to some hard-line show on Fox, but worse. The argument made (How much pollution will construction cause) is as retarded as they come.

A process could never be perfected if it was never started or attempted. One doesn't go from the crib to, say, being a wrestling champion without a few bruises.

Even if their project is not 100% pollution-free it doesn't mean its not better than existing methods. Especially on the long run

It may not even work, or its cost may make it impractical, but things don't improve by doing nothing out of fear of failure

Raidah

@Pope John Peeps II: like i said...its a while away. what we're doing is the initial research for alot of upcoming military tech.

Other countries will, one way or another, get their hands on all our R&D, and will because of that be able to catchup really quickly. And after that, as mentioned above, they'll figure out how to make X thing, easier, quicker, and better than the original version.

ps: thanks for promoting my comment! :-)

@pɹɐoqʎǝʞuǝʞoɹq: Only in the area of pharmaceuticals, to be frank. Maybe in the area of pricey genetic therapies too. Basically any area where money is.

But the rest of the world is rapidly moving past the US in terms of generally useful medical research.

@pɹɐoqʎǝʞuǝʞoɹq: R&D yeah, not actually caring for people.

Pixlmonkey

@pɹɐoqʎǝʞuǝʞoɹq: My high school Econ teacher once said [paraphrasing], there are two things the US does better than anyone else: kill ya and heal ya.

You can 'sustainable' all you want, but if its not an enjoyable and exciting place to live and work it will lose. S.Korea isn't China, you know. People have choices.

designguybrown

I live in Korea and have been by/through Songdo (that's the actual name of the city) many times. That entire area has been deforested to an absolutely depressing degree. It looks awful. It used to be beautiful hills and mountains covered with lush forest, and it's all been stripped away. Songdo is a gimmick, and it's already proving to be a real estate bust. No businesses want to be centered there, and foreign investment is not happening as was hoped.

If Korea's purported plan for Songdo really does see the light of day, then it might be something special. But a far greener course of action would have been to protect all of that beautiful land and convert an existing section of dirty, industrial Incheon into a mecca for green technology, which would have been a whole lot cheaper as well.

Songdo is basically a marketing gimmick.

AmeryWebster

"Stay tuned over the next 10 to 15 years and we'll find out"

I hope gizmodo is still around that long. I also am curious about this project.. just for the sake of curiosity, nothing more nothing less.

--Core--

I hope it's not a failure, like Dongtan.

jjigen

@Pope John Peeps II: Maybe ironically, the US is at the forefront of medical R&D too.

i say yes.

yes and more now

t3chn0v1k1ng

"in order to be the greener city on the other side."

Every time I've been to Incheon, the sky was overcast and gray... probably just my bad luck. It seems like an area that doesn't get as much sun would be an odd choice for a self-sustaining city.

@jrghoull: Warfare is the one area in which the US will remain at the forefront. While all other technologies and sciences languish behind the rest of the world, the US has always maintained its steadfast domination of research into splodey go boomey.

Ugh. America.

No word on how much pollution the construction will cause.

One assumes it'll be about as much pollution as constructing a regular city would create, but that it will save pollution in the long run.

@jayhawk11: Oh, good ol Crazy K.i.m.! i had nearly almost forgot him!

I can't help but think that this comes off as a 21st Century version of the Plan Voisin. It seems a little too planned in its nature and undoubtedly many half-assed attempts to copy this idea of a self-sufficient city will arise.

Wow. Someone watched the science channel the other night.

commentotron

my understanding of tech is that everyone sits back, watches the early adapters, sees everything that they do right/wrong, and later on the ones watching do it better and for less money.

this is part of the reasoning as to why the USA will in the next 2 to 3 decades fall way behind in warfare technology. We're pretty much at the front right now, but we're also the early adapters. Everything costs more, is harder to produce, and isn't as good as the stuff that will be coming (in the above mentioned) in 2 to 3 decades from other countries.

So. One step closer to a true arcology. Sweet.

@jayhawk11: ah, but then we can make NK a self lit parking lot for this place after it's rebuilt! ;)

I will have to stay tuned! Sounds very interesting. While having more eco-friendly construction processes are great, especially with such a large and long-term project, I'm more concerned with sustainability over time for the individual project involved. Just like with cars, the actual building materials and energy involved in making it is nowhere near the energy it uses over its lifetime.

I would also assume that many businesses and people who will move into the city would have done so in another city anyways, perhaps using more inefficient uses of energy? Not sure, just a random thought, lol. Thanks for the promotion, Rosa =)

@aek8: LOL

AXSLV2

And when Uncle Kim to the North gets angry, all that self-sustainability goes away with one artillery barrage.

sounds like epcot to me.

aek8