Big Dumb Building

Taiwan's Taipei 101, the world's largest building, was supposed to be the model of the city of the future. CC showed me this documentary about plans for a mega-version of Taipei 101 that is supposed to fix Tokyo's housing problems in the future. The plans for this thing made it look like a giant death-trap to me, but the documentary actually somehow sold me on the idea and by the end of it, it didn't sound as crazy.

Well, it kinda sounds crazy again. Experts are becoming suspicious that the 1,6667 foot-high structure in Taiwan has not only triggered earthquakes in Taiwan, but has actually re-opened an ancient earthquake fault, says geologist Cheng Horng Lin from the National Taiwan Normal University.

"Many engineers and scientists are more perturbed about the impact of other types of construction.... One of the most convincing examples is the Koyna Dam earthquake, which occurred in 1967. More than 120 people died and many more were injured when a magnitude 6.5 earthquake shook the ground around the recently constructed dam in Maharashtra state, India. It is thought that the huge weight of water changed the stresses in the ground." Link

Point being: dont' worry about where you'll live in the future... it won't be long before we're back to swinging from trees and picking fleas off one another at this rate.