Space... for ten billion people

Using manhattan (NYC) as a base for a dense, but not too dense city with recreational and utility and office/industry spage: 1.5 million residents, 23 square miles. Using an average of 5.4 stories, I estimate you can stack 88 Manhattans on top of each other to create a cube about 5 mi X 5 mi X 5 mi. That translates to a population of about 633 million people.

Meaning you can get around 5 million people in a cubic mile. Which figures to about 1700 cubes for 10 billion, or a space of 12 miles X 12 miles X 12 miles.

Not including agrigutural space or major industry or power generation.

But it might be too early for math...


ETA - Underground transport and utiltiies should have been included in my height estimate, but I'm not redoing it.

How can you have a city with 10 Billion people living side by side and on top of each other without crime of some sort. Hell we can't get 5 million people to live together in one city without crime.

Seems to me everyone would have to think the same, be of the same religion, have the same financial opportunities, same education, be of the same race, etc, etc, etc.

How would the government and doctors stop the spread of a virus?

As to size, even the size is unmanageable because the infrastructure would collapse on itself and need constant upgrades and repairs.

Somebody did a calculation awhile back that showed that you could put all 7 billion people plus of Earth's population with room to spare in an asteroid the size of Ceres (I believe). That's a big one, about 600 miles in length as I recall. Placing such a volume on a planet and flattening and widening it shouldn't prove too difficult a calculation (so you don't have populations essentially living in near orbit or out of the atmosphere at the top though I can see several advantages to such an arrangement).

(Begin Snark)

If they are all divorce or tort lawyers, put them in a spaceship, fly them to the middle of an open space between planets and open the bay doors?

(End Snark)

Um, seriously, even in a utopia, I think that the system will be strained. "Magic" technology or not, something will go wrong. Its the nature of humanity.

Like the AI in Steel Beach before it fell over? I liked that setting, I was sad when the plot tore it up.

Anyway here's my estimation. I think each person needs 14'x14'x14' of private space plus an equal amount of public space. 14 goes into a mile 377 times. That (377^3/2) would be 26,800,000 per cubic mile, so for 10 billion you'd need about 380 cubic miles, or a cube about 8 miles on a side. And I was figuring a minimum amount of perfectly organized space, so it makes sense my estimate came out a bit smaller than MattW's.

thothguard51 said:

How can you have a city with 10 Billion people living side by side and on top of each other without crime of some sort. Hell we can't 5 million people to live together in one city without crime.

Seems to me everyone would have to think the same, be of the same religion, have the same financial opportunities, same education, be of the same race, etc, etc, etc.

How would the government and doctors stop the spread of a virus?

As to size, even the size is unmanageable because the infrastructure would collapse on itself and need constant upgrades and repairs.

Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. A series of cube cities might make more sense in terms of physics, with interconnecting trains and stuff.

Also, unless it's YA the absolute lack of crime is a bit unrealistic. Maybe there's unseen crime, or the criminals stick to the pipe-works in the basement. The penalties could be absurdly severe- like death for everything. It would cut it down severely but it wouldn't dissuade people. You'd still have people who want more, want control, want independence, and who were just plain wack jobs.

For people, estimate the basic living space required. 10 sq meters is pretty small, but reasonable per person. Add a height of 3m and you get 30 cubic meters. Multiply that by 10,000,000,000 to get 300,000,000,000 cubic meters. It would be about 100 billion square meters just for housing for people. Divide by 1000 assuming the city is 1000m tall to get 300,000,000 sq meters of floor space (so to speak). Lets go with 10,000x30,000m rectangle. So 10kmx30kmx1km. (and remember, this is just basic living space and does not include anything else)

Did I screw up my math? It's very possible, I did this in a hurry. In any case, 10,000,000,000 is a very big number. It's more than double the current population of the planet.

I think the different estimation methods here can be used to start creating upper and lower limits.

It's unlikely to be less than Hallen's 300 cu.km, or Sun and Shadow's 380 cu.mi., as those are both based on living space per person. And it's probably more than my 1700 cu.mi. if you adjust for support spaces.

For the upper limit, it's certainly less than 10billion/6.8billion times a livable volume of the earth's land mass. My best guess as over 20 million cubic km for 10 billion people.

Keep estimating, and you'll start to converge into a workable range.

One more for the mix:

USS Abraham Lincoln
Length: 1092 ft
Beam: 252 ft
Flight deck height + draft ~ 80 ft
Compliment and air wing: 5680 people

Translated to 263 cubic miles for 10 billion people.

I want a room with a window . . .

The infrastructure would be in constant flux as things break down and the higher or deeper you go, the harder it is to maintain and repair.

Magic or no magic, the reality is, I would have a hard time suspending my disbelief's that everything is perfect.

Teinz, I know you got a plot in there somewhere but just ain't saying...

thothguard51 said:

Hell we can't 5 million people to live together in one city without crime.

Click to expand...

You couldn't have a town of 50 people without crime.

thothguard51 said:

Seems to me everyone would have to think the same, be of the same religion, have the same financial opportunities, same education, be of the same race, etc, etc, etc.

Click to expand...

That wouldn't stop crime.

But this is fiction, after all.

TTCleveland said:

You couldn't have a town of 50 people without crime.

Click to expand...

Adam and Eve couldn't manage a family of two children without crime.

caw

Rhubix said:

Also, unless it's YA the absolute lack of crime is a bit unrealistic.

Click to expand...

OI!

Maybe there's unseen crime, or the criminals stick to the pipe-works in the basement. The penalties could be absurdly severe- like death for everything. It would cut it down severely but it wouldn't dissuade people. You'd still have people who want more, want control, want independence, and who were just plain wack jobs.

Click to expand...

Or the "people" living in the city are not people as we recognize today.

Just saying...

Bees do okay, crime-wise... Maybe the humans have been genetically modified to incorporate bee genes into their DNA?

I like the idea, it's unrealistic but it could be an interesting concept with a plot thrown in. A plot is conflict after all and conflict in a society not used to it?

My first thought for the lack of crime would be a city with a military force that observes everyone. And the smallest disregard of the law ends up with a brutal punishment or being rehabilitated into a stepford wife type person. For that level of observation, you'd probably need the military to be run by an AI program. So picture 1984, except Glados runs it.

As for size, the total internal space would have to be nearly equal to Earth's surface. Though a cube city of that size would likely implode from the Earth's gravity. A better idea would be to make it a space station. As a side note, a space station takes away people's ability to come and go as they please, thus helping with my first scenario.

Come on, guys. It's not like he isn't going to throw a wrench in the works.

I don't believe in a human society without religion.

Depending on how advance technology is, you may be looking out some sort of nano or micromachine repair system that constantly maintains the entire station so nothing can wear out quick enough to disable a system more than a few minutes.

Crime can be controlled with some sort of mental conditioning or there are places where people can work off their stress in more productive ways.

Tokyo for example has a rather extreme night life to make up for the rather cramp life style that many are subjected to stress wise and related to working conditions.

Larry Niven's Known Space novels have a paramilitary law enforcement agency known as ARM. The punishment for criminal activity of any kind, even tax evasion, is draconian - you get sent to the organ banks, taken apart, and sold for spare parts.

Don't screw with ARM.

Unless you're a Puppeteer, a Pac, or Louis Chang (I think that's the character's name, it's been awhile).

Come on guys, he said "there's little to no crime". I take that to mean that teanage pranks still happen, somebody will spit on the sidewalk occasionally, and occasionally, somebody will get murdered. From a character's standpoint, a character that just lives a "normal" life in a place like that, well, they may actually see it as "no" crime because they are completely unaffected by crime. Plus, in a controlled environment like that, one would assume that if there is a murder it would get censored from the nightly news (if they even bother to have news since it sounds like a really boring place to live) That's good enough. It's his story.