Hypothetical Architecture (Part 2)

Using hypothetical architecture as a proof of concept, it can be shown that 30 billion people could be housed in an area the size of the state of Kansas: and not merely housed, but provided with first-world dwellings.

This is part of a larger project to investigate the carrying capacity of planet Earth. How many people can live on our planet in a sustainable manner, using renewable resources?

‘Carrying capacity’ is the upper limit of a population in given habitat. It is the ability of the habitat to provide the necessities of life for the population.

This is, of course, a difficult and ambiguous calculation, but it seems that the upper population limit would be several hundred billion. But even that number might be surpassed with technological innovation.

With any population level in the foreseeable future, food is not a limiting factor. Agriculture as currently practiced could provide good nutrition for many times the current population of 7 or 8 billion.

Hunger and famine, which tragically claim many human lives each year, are the results of distribution problems, not production problems. Instances of starvation or malnutrition are not due to a lack of food, but rather to a lack of delivery.

To the contrary, over the last century, production of food has exceeded the need for it. Deaths are the result of a failure to transport food to locations in which it is needed.

Slowing or stopping population growth would not reduce starvation. Even reducing the human population of the planet would not reduce starvation. Famine is the result of human nature; it is not the result of the planet’s carrying capacity.

If there were only 100 humans living on the planet, there could, and probably would, be starvation.

On the other hand, large-scale farming of seaweed would expand food supply beyond anything currently envisioned. Likewise, there is much underutilized fertile land which would expand food supply with traditional, land-based agriculture.

The earth’s mineral resources have barely been used in terms of iron and copper. The same is true of limestone for cement and concrete, and of clay for bricks.

The wise use of various energy sources will leave humans with clean air and clean water.

The works of Thomas Malthus, who wrote during the late 1700s and early 1800s, were misunderstood and misinterpreted to create a wave of concern in the 1960s and 1970s about potential ‘overpopulation.’

This misreading of Malthus led to alarmism in the popular imagination, seen in Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. Various governments formed ‘population control’ agencies and policies. Ironically, decreasing birth rates in many first-world nations led to economic misery as fewer workers had to provide for more retirees.

Declining birth rates also inhibited ‘green’ environmentally-friendly practices, as a shortage of young workers caused employers to find the most efficient practices instead of the most ‘green’ practices.

The question of our planet’s carrying capacity was not explored by the doomsayers of the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, it was simply assumed that this capacity had been reached. Paul Ehrlich’s book is filled with horrifying predictions of what would happen in the next decade or two.

Because the timeline for Ehrlich’s predictions has passed, and the disasters he predicted did not happen, researchers are carefully analyzing the question of Earth’s carrying capacity. No precise answer has been calculated, but it will be well above current population levels, and will be in the hundreds of billions.

Hypothetical Architecture (Part 1)

The phrase ‘hypothetical architecture’ is here used to refer to designs for a building which nobody intends to build. The architect who designs it does not intend for anyone to build it, and there are no people who want to build it.

What is the purpose of designing something which nobody will ever build, and which nobody even wants to build?

Hypothetical architecture can serve as a proof of concept. It can show that a concept is feasible.

In the present case, it can help to answer questions about the carrying capacity of the earth. How many people can live on planet earth?

More precisely, how many people can live in first-world fashion, with sustainable and renewable sources of clean water, clean air, and nutritious food? This exploration provides 200 square feet of living space per individual (a family of 4 would have 800 square feet, a family of 5 would have 1000 square feet, etc.).

While this amount of living space is a bit low for a truly first-world standard, it represents a convenient metric for calculation. Once established, it would be easy to return to the question and recalculate to provide 250 or 300 square feet of living space per person.

Also part of the standard would be first-world HVAC, running hot and cold water, telephone, cable TV or broadcast TV, high-speed internet access, radio, electricity, etc., in each living unit.

This hypothetical architectural experiment will proceed by envisioning a 20-story apartment building which can be reproduced in a standardized fashion to fill an arbitrary number of square miles.

The building would be 54 feet wide and 421 feet long. Exterior and interior walls are calculated as being 1 foot thick. The interior space is conceptualized as square rooms measuring 20 feet by 20 feet. A 10-foot-wide hallway would run down the middle of the building with rooms to the right and left. There would be 20 rooms on each side, totalling 40 rooms on each floor of the building. Space is allotted for stairwells or elevators.

Outside of the building would be a 10-foot margin of green grass and a 10-foot sidewalk. A 1-foot curb would separate the sidewalk from a 10-foot automotive lane. (These units are imagined as replicating, so the next unit would also include a 10-foot automotive lane, forming a two-way street.)

This structure represents housing for 40 people per floor; a 20-story structure would render a building housing 800 people.

The unit, including the building, sidewalk, curb, and one lane of automotive traffic would measure 116 feet by 483 feet. These dimensions would constitute a repeatable footprint.

Replicated, 450 of these structures would be placed within a square mile, arrange in 10 rows of 45 buildings. Within that square mile would also be extra space for parks and gardens.

This would yield a housing density of 360,000 residents per square mile.

Thus housed, 9.7 billion people could be housed in an area which is equal to one-third of the square miles in Kansas.

The reader is again reminded that, in reality, nobody would ever build in this fashion, nor would anybody want to live in this fashion: it would be as unbearably dreary as the Stalinist socialist prefabricated housing (called Plattenbau in the former East Germany) which filled Warsaw Pact cities during the Cold War.

While nobody would build these structures or want to build them, and nobody would live in them or want to live in them, their function as ‘hypothetical architecture’ is fulfilled inasmuch as they serve as ‘proof of concept,’ showing that the earth’s population could not only be housed, but housed in first-world fashion.

Such a small percentage of the surface area of the earth would be occupied by residential structures that huge amounts of land would be left for agriculture, for parks, for undeveloped natural preserves, and for industry.

In any non-hypothetical scenario, obviously, the population would be spread across the various continents of the earth. The housing is here imagined as concentrated merely for the purpose of calculating population density and surface area.

The surface area and natural resources of the planet are sufficient to provide education, recreation, and meaningful work in addition to housing and other basic needs.

A population, of not only 10 billion, but rather even of hundreds of billions, could be housed. There would be ample sustainable and renewable resources to provide clean air, clean water, and nutritious food.