New London Plan

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Googleearth, AutoCAD and Photoshop

Urban scenario

New London
In the past, the major cities in the world were mainly distributed in the coastal areas of continents. Today, the sea level has averagely risen by approximate 25 meters, which means most of these cities were flooded. These flooded city zones is classified as the second class land, and new urban systems are built on the ruins of existed city spaces. This essay will take London, which was threatened by tidal flood for long and eventually submerged by the middle of this century, as an example to further discuss the urban regeneration process.

Greater London is in the Thames basin. Inner London, the lowest area, locates in center, surrounded by outer London, the higher areas. Therefore, when North Sea in-welled into the basin, the Inner London was completely drowned. At the same time, the Outer London was transformed to an archipelago system, made of twenty-nine isles in different sizes. These remaining islands became the most primary human settlements, on the other hand, 83% lands in London were submerged by the sea water. In the flooded part, taking the different depth of the sea water and the underwater topography as parametres, water areas are divided into three categories, according to the difficulty for reusing. The remaining islands and the places where used to be open spaces and high grounds now become community area, as they are easiest to rebuild new architecture. The areas with dense buildings, where are relatively hard to reuse, become energy supply field. And the new traffic system are built on the places used to be rivers and roads.

Fig.1 Transform of urban space

Urban Model of London 2090

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Photoshop and AutoCAD

Urban Model

Community system

Walled islands

The new formed islands in Outer London area become the most primary human settlements. They function as economic and political center of the city. The population density on these pieces of land reached 100,000 people per km2. Dams, encircling each of the islands, were built to prevent water coming in and get back lower lands from the sea.

Hyper towers

As another major way, a structure with 400 stories and 1600 meters height, housing a population of 256,000 people was built to create living space in the sea. It is a self-contained city, hosting its own hospitals, schools, parks, a range of entertainment and retail options, and able to process its own waste. 25 of them were set mainly along the international waterways with a freight terminal installed on bottom. Therefore they also function as input ports and distribution centers of the city’s industrial products supply.

Float villages
In the long-term process of North Sea submerging the Thames basin, narrow boats were used as temporary houses to settle refugees. Because of the continuous scarcity of housing land, part of refugees could not get a stationary house for long. They gradually got used to living on the boat and turned it to a permanent place for living. Eventually these people became a semi-nomadic group in the city. When a certain number of narrow boats temporarily concentrate in an area, they form a float village. These docking areas were set on the clear water near the intracity water routes, where normally above the ruined parks and squares with few underwater buildings. At time passed by, markets are emerged among these floating villages.

Pier towns

During the submerging, the tidal shore kept shifting. However, this area was still the first choice for setting temporary refugee camps. In order to avoid the tide, the camps were set on massive structures of pier, spreading on the shore. When sea level rise finally tended to be mitigation, the shore stopped moving at last. Before the balance came, most of refugees got their new houses and left. The rests settled down and gradually turned the camps into a series of satellite towns around the basin. Finally, located in-between the farmland and the city, these towns become input ports and distribution centers of city’s food supply.

Urban Zones and Waterborne Routes of London 2090

Completed in Aug. 2009, Using Photoshop and AutoCAD

Energy supply systems
Due to the rise of temperature, in 2090, the climatic pattern in Thames Basin has been transferred from temperate maritime climate to tropical maritime climate. When North Sea in-welled into the basin, continuous sea wind followed. In order to fully utilize the natural advantages, wind farms were built as one of the main energy supplies in new London. Generally the wind velocity of sea wind is 8-10 meters per second. In this situation, small sized wind turbine with a rated power of 20kw, was appropriate for making use of this wind power resources. 131.6 km2 of wind farms were built, with a matrix of 625 small wind turbines in each square kilometer. The production energy in total is 7,050,000,000 kWh per year, which meets approximately 21% of the total consumption in new London. The rests energy resource is produced by other new energy power generation such as nuclear energy and tidal energy. Because the installation of a small wind turbine only requires an area of 0.4m2, a matrix of them could be easily installed in the ruined city where other larger construction could hardly be built. Hence building wind farms is an important way of re-exploiting the ruined areas.

Public traffic systems

Water transport network
Advanced water transportation network was perfect in the new flooded London. This network includes two parts: international waterways and intracity routes. Merged into the sea, the Thames River and Lee River are largely extended, both in navigable width and depth. After cleaning the ruins along the rivers, ocean ships can easily get to the inlands through them. Their importance in national transportation is greatly enlarged. These two extended rivers make of the international waterways. On the other hand, the intracity routes are set for daily transportation, which includes ferrying services and commuting trips. Most of these routes are set on clear sea surface. The minority of them are built through the ruined Inner London area, above the underwater roads and canals. These routes connect all the components in the urban model together.

Air transport system
Beside the water transportation system, an air one is built simultaneously. Because the usable lands are too valuable to support the long airstrips for the large airplanes, they are massively culled. Instead personal light-weighted low-altitude aircrafts, which can vertically take off and land on a small square, are widely used. Similar traffic system had been vividly presented in the movie The Fifth Elements. More systematically, in 2006, MVRDV brought a better proposal, Skycar City. In this proposal a series of low-altitude aircrafts were designed, in a range from personal skycars to public skybuses. The packing structures for these aircrafts were also developed. (MVRDV, 2006) Today a more advanced air traffic system has been built based on these early researches. A network of airlanes are set up to reduce the load of water transport, and an air rescue team is established as the main force in city’s emergency response system.