What could Earth’s cities look like in 25 years? The scientists’ visions are stranger than one might expect

2024-07-14 13:07:22

And the answers were much stranger than expected.

For example, countries are making at least a partial transition to sustainable energy using renewable sources such as wind, solar and waves. And, according to science fiction writer and engineer Wole Talab, that means we’ll need to mine more rare earths for batteries. But those mines don’t have to look like deep cuts or holes in the Earth’s surface, she said. W. Talabi, who works in the field of liquids extraction in Australia, says that the mines of the future may be almost invisible from the air.

“Instead of digging up the ground so we can extract the resources inside without blasting or digging a bit,” he says. – We could drill a hole or several holes in the target rock, inject chemicals, concentrate [mineralus] in place and extract what is needed.” Such in situ mines would occupy a small area and could even be surrounded by trees – to blend in with the overall environment.

He envisions mining operations that essentially leave everything behind cleanly, a process he calls “bundling,” or “combining any energy-intensive process with a carbon extraction process and doing them almost simultaneously.” One company, Arca Climate, is already doing this in Australia. The company binds the carbon dioxide to the rocks obtained during mining in a process called coal mineralization, a natural phenomenon that usually takes thousands of years.

Talabi says a similar tie-in method could revolutionize offshore gas platforms. Instead of gray steel panels, the platforms could be covered in glowing solar panels and surrounded by CO₂ feeding on fields of green algae.

CO₂ the excess could also be put back into the ground, my engineer. From the air, in this case, we would see two pipelines running between the coastal industrial complex and the platform, one for gas onshore and the other for CO₂ would be transported to an injection site deep under the seabed, where it would eventually dissolve and mineralize.

Deb Chachra, professor of materials science at Olin College in the US and author of How Infrastructure Works, is also interested in the idea of ​​turning gray infrastructure into green. She sees a future where concrete is abandoned – because cities need to absorb excess water. City blocks could become porous, bordered by lawns and “bioponds” – open areas of soil and plants that would hold back floodwaters – floods that will become more frequent as a result of climate change.

This soft, green infrastructure could also help recharge aquifers. “It would make sense for Mexico City to do this to get water back,” says Chachra. – We might see Mexico City become unusually green – because it would manage water the same way it did when it was in Tenochtitlan. The axolotls would come back, too.”

And Chachra says we may not need conventional batteries at all: “I can imagine a grid infrastructure next to a solar plant that looks like a ziggurat of concrete blocks. You charge the blocks and discharge them as potential energy.”

The researcher draws attention to the fact that in the port of Kodiak (Alaska, USA), where container ships are parked, there is a flywheel that stores the energy obtained by lowering the containers down – and uses them to be able to stack them again. Another example of storage is pumped hydroelectric power plants, which store gravitational potential energy in water reservoirs.

Or imagine a city surrounded by huge batteries that look like hills from which gurgling streams flow. Its ports are connected to offshore drilling rigs that pipe oil for energy and algae for food, while CO₂ the excess is pumped deep beneath the ocean floor.

But how would people travel around this city of the future? Will we have flying cars? Jinhua Zhao, a professor of cities and transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), is skeptical about flying cars, but believes that the way we travel will change dramatically.

The type of transport would depend on the density of the area you are in. If you looked at Mr. Zhao’s ideal city of the future from above, the city center would be full of bicycles, scooters and pedestrians. Robot taxis would help people travel around less populated residential areas, and high-speed trains running at speeds of 480 kilometers per hour would often run on regional corridors, the scientist says. Travel would change completely.

2024-07-14 13:07:22