Serious question for #YIMBYTwitter: where height restrictions per se are the issue, why haven’t developers started building vertically but *down*, underground?
I mean windowless apartments don’t sound ideal, but probably less bad than unaffordability and homelessness
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Civil engineer here! There are some problems that emerge when we excavate deep underground, that increase costs significantly. I'll explain a couple of these in the thread below!
First of all, all soil is not created equal. In areas with shallow bedrock, digging out a large volume of space would be prohibitively expensive. In areas without bedrock, the walls have to be built very thick and deep to resist the pressure of the surrounding soil, see below.
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All that volume that is filled with soil within the walls is space that has to be excavated, and then refilled and compacted, layer by layer to make sure that there is no loose soil in between the walls. You could also use concrete between the walls, to resist the pressure...
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If you enjoyed this thread, you might also like the new blogpost I just put out, all about dirt!
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Why not post a commentary on the TV show Silo, re the realism of its posited deep underground town?
while I mostly think that the OP is a bad person for asking that question, thanks for such an informative and interesting answer
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Also want to tack onto this as a kaiju expert; you could awaken some sort of significant uppercase E Evil if you start excavating hubristically
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