China's campaign to bulldoze mountains to build cities

http://www.nature.com/news/environment-accelerate-research-on-land-creation-1.15327

by jaboutboul • 12 years ago

36 21 12 years ago

dang• 12 years ago

Url changed from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/china-tearing-down-..., which points to this.

hyperion2010• 12 years ago

This has so many unforeseen consequences. Without even going into the environmental impact, it sounds like they have invested nothing in soil engineering. The authors stress the danger of subsidence, but still it is terrifying to think that people are actually going to build buildings on top of this stuff. Imagine a future where no one remembers that this large patch of land was actually created out of nothing and has not been tested by science (much less time) against erosion and seismic activity how many lives could be lost?

chriskanan• 12 years ago

China already has numerous "ghost cities" that nobody lives in, so this project just seems like an especially environmentally dangerous jobs program: http://gizmodo.com/welcome-to-the-worlds-largest-ghost-city-... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-21/chinas-ghost-cities...

rational-future• 12 years ago

Sure, ghost cities in China... Out of the thousands new developments in the recent years, four were slow to populate (mainly because supporting infrastructure was delayed).

tormeh• 12 years ago

China is a big place. Just because there's no demand for housing in one part of China does not mean that there is no demand for housing in all of China.

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

And do tell me where housing is actually hot right now? Every single second+ tier city I've visited this year has had large amounts of new empty housing, the entire country outside of a few first tiers has long entered bubble territory.

petercoolz• 12 years ago

While I agree with the recommendations of the article, I wish it would cover some of the history of US geo-engineering too.

I wonder what concerns were raised when they filled in Back Bay in Boston, or created artificial islands like Balboa Island in Newport Beach.

angersock• 12 years ago

In the beginning God made the Earth, and the Corps of Engineers has been tampering with it ever since.

jmpe• 12 years ago

"Our lives are spent trying to pixellate a fractal planet."

~A. King in Society

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

That's beautiful and so spot on.

I have found that one key to happiness is to drop judgement and just observe the nature of the world. Appreciate it for what it is, not what you can do to it.

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

Interesting reading, both the article and the various responses across the web. It isn't "new" that mountains erode and become the valley floor, one need only walk along the alluvial fans in Death Valley or any mountain valley to see this happening. There are also examples of sudden changes where large sections of a mountain, in the form of a mud slide, slide into the valley floor below. The claim then that this is 'unnatural' is not supported by the evidence, the tops of the mountains will sink into the valleys, its only a question of time and agency.

So when this occurs naturally, if it is slow enough, it allows for top soil to form, and re-form, as the mountain shifts. If it happens to quickly in nature, or by humans, it results in a lot of exposed rock. However, if you look at the Mount St Helens eruption area, you can see that having these sorts of events (even when they happen naturally) one can reasonably quickly (30 - 50 years) achieve a nominal level of topsoil and a return to fecundity. If humans are the agency for the erosion, they can also accelerate the creation of topsoil by pre-staging components which are normally provided by bacterial colonies. That results in a much faster return to equilibrium. Some examples of humans speeding the recovery can be found in the remediation of various strip mining sites around the world.

Bottom line is that it seems like a lot of work to create flat, and futurely arable acreage but if they have the resources to do so, knowing in advance that is what you're doing gives you a tremendous advantage in building your 'soon to be underground' infrastructure before you cover it up with the material from the mountains on either side.

pjc50• 12 years ago

Do they care about topsoil? I thought this was primarily for construction purposes.

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

At some level they must, unless its one giant asphalt plain, part of the original article mentioned that creating more arable land was part of the goal and that too would require topsoil for non-hydroponic type operations.

homerowilson• 12 years ago

Hey! We flatten mountains in West Virginia too!

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

I was reading James Rickard's new book "The Death of Money" (he also wrote "Currency Wars") today and he goes into a lot of detail on China's problems (investing in infrastructure that may not be used, not pushing consumer spending, etc.) - a recommended read.

I have been taking a class on Globalization. My gut instinct is both China and the USA face extreme problems, and things are just holding together in both countries.

gscott2• 12 years ago

China taking on these large projects that may or may not work out in the future is a good thing for the United States. Otherwise they would be investing all of that into the military and have taken over every country around them already. Let them tear down mountains instead of something else. Sounds good to me. In a million years the terrain will look totally different and what they are doing now may be unrecognizable.

briandh• 12 years ago

The PRC is not interested in taking over "every country around them"; they are interested in Taiwan and a handful of island territories.

gscott2• 12 years ago

They are cutting off counties access to ocean that is within the "exclusive economic zone" of those countries. It's going to come down to filling the ocean with Chinese warships & submarines so that these countries cannot use the sea. It isn't quite taking them over you're right. It's more like making all of the countries that border the South and East China Sea prisoners to the land. If Cuba put an oil rig 150 miles offshore of Florida it would be an act of war.

bane• 12 years ago

Isn't this right out of Snow Crash?

Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road, per usual, only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights.

TMAWHs all have the same layout. When creating a new Burbclave, TMAWH Development Corporation will chop down any mountain ranges and divert the course of any mighty rivers that threaten to interrupt this street plan -- ergonomically designed to encourage driving safety. A Deliverator can go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around.

But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times, you get to know its little secrets. The Deliverator is such a man. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard - one yard - that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance, across the Burbclave, and out the other. If you are squeamish about driving on grass, it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. But if you have the balls to lay tracks across that one yard, you have a straight shot through the center.

thinkerer• 12 years ago

In a country where everything is measured by GDP growth, it isnt surprising.

Mountains actually do affect climate as well...couple with deforestation and making huge dams...

jquery• 12 years ago

Short-sighted thinking. Environmental and structural concerns aside, what about the irrevocable destruction of natural beauty? When I visited China, its massive rolling hills, peppered with rural farms, were one of the most beautiful natural vistas I'd ever seen.

China's campaign to bulldoze mountains to build cities

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