Maybe it's time to give Metabolists an opportunity?
Like Archigram's Plug-In City, Arata Isozaki's Clusters In The Air looks like quick-to-erect housing system. However, I don't know how earthquakeproof those city plans are?:
http://workjes.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/clusters-in-the-air/
As to possible nuclear catastrophe,
Yanobe Kenji has been struggling with this subject for decades. But seems like he is more artist rather than designer?
http://www.yanobe.com/works.html
How well Tetrahedron City by R. Buckminster Fuller & Shoji Sadao would...
...withstand Tsunamis?
http://melisaki.tumblr.com/post/1484803506/tetrahedron-city-project-yomi...
A structural engineer
disclosed that the force of moving water is far more irresistible than that of seismic disturbance. Engineers design to resist seismic loads; they don't design for tsunami resistance. The Egyptian pyramids probably represent good tsunami-proof design.
The fuel tanks that would have provided emergency cooling power for the Japanese nuclear plants should have been buried underground -- which is apparently the practice elsewhere. Instead they were washed away by the tsunami. Structures that are removed from the brunt of ocean waves -- either by submersion or by being built inland or at higher elevations -- will be spared.
Tom Cochran, a senior...
Tom Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he would guess that the incident ranks "a little worse than Three Mile Island and not nearly as bad as Chernobyl." But, he complained, he could not look at the data because they had not been made available. "There are too many variables: First is the lack of transparency on the part of the Japanese."
The probability of a core melt had been estimated at about one chance in 10,000 reactor years of operation, he said. "We've had now three core melts in 30 years in less than 500 reactors, he said, referring to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and, now, Japan. "So the probability of a partial core melt is one chance in several hundred instead of one chance in 10,000. So, it's not a good statistic."
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listening to Bruce Shapiro from the Dart Centre, I think he knows whats appropriate what to discuss and when, he's going into some very interesting detail.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2011/3164792.htm
http://dartcenter.org/
My wife comes from Tokyo and happens to be out there at the moment.
After speaking to her and a couple of Japanese clients elsewhere in the country recently it sounds like a very depressing situation.
Tokyo is home to 30 million people and there are now problems getting fuel and food supplies into the city, panic buying is clearing out the shops, and electricity is now being rationed.
This is a very humbling experience, Japan is the most technological advanced and organised country I have ever visited but we should never loose sight of how insignificant we are when compared with the power of nature, and nature being the force that the Shinto religion is based upon.
If anyone can get over this as quickly as possible and restore order from chaos it is the Japanese.
Hmm... I've apparently been misunderstood.
As H.Moon describes, Japan is presently experiencing a massive emergency. The NRDC is an environmental-advocacy organization which operates through litigation and political lobbying; virtuous and effective though they may be in a courtroom, they're neither offering nor able to help stabilize the Japanese reactors, or house any of the homeless people, or really do anything that Japan needs RIGHT NOW.
At this point, the NRDC -- and anyone else who isn't actively helping with Japan's immediate needs -- can only be a distraction.
All I'm saying is that I think thode distractions SHOULD be ignored, and I think that unless Mr. Cochran was misquoted or quoted out of context, his whining shows poor form.
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