>> That makes sense. However, I'm looking at Easy City as an establish metroplex in Terramagne as of "now." It's still growing, but there's enough of it hooked together to qualify as a metroplex. So, that had to start some time ago in order to reach the current stage. <<
That actually settles a lot of my concerns about the metroplex, because things have only gotten so bad recently.
>> How long ago, and what kind of differences?
The first really public superhero was Granny Whammy in the 1940s, but there were a few quiet soups before that. The numbers have risen considerably since then. In the 1950s people kind of tried to sweep it under the rug, but it all sloshed out in the 1960s. <<
That is the time-line I was picturing, actually. If there were a quiet soup in just the right position, with just the right powers, with just the right amount of common sense, he could have influenced things in the right way, as far as city planning, and flood control.
The difference would be that people would be resigned to it, they would maybe understand that it has to happen, and it would just be one of those things that you have to endure to live where you want to live. Take people living in the Rigolets, all of the houses there are at least two stories off the ground, not an easy thing to deal with, but they do. It floods there, too, but they just live with it. Uhm, the Rigolets are a chain of islands across Lake Pontchartrain, it's considered a suburb of Slidell. It's pronounced 'ri-guh-lees'. So, if the river had to change its bed every so often, and flood, y'know, like rivers do, people living in the way would be prepared.
To illustrate the point of just how much we've messed up the topography down here, the Rigolets did not start out as islands, it was more dry places in the swamp. Now it's islands, because that part of the swamp that used to surround the lake is part of the lake. Ugh. There was an outlet to the Gulf, but yeah, mostly just swamp.
>> One possibility is the Atchafalaya route, which would dump America's main river transport into a completely undeveloped area. I can see why people would prefer to avoid that. Another is the Lake Ponchartrain route, which would be a substantial improvement with less (but not no) disruption.
Other ideas? <<
I'm honestly thinking Lake Pontchartrain would be the best bet. The very best thing, would be if people had let it alone to do its thing, but that's not possible.
>> That's true. A consideration is that the river acts like a mad firehose periodically. Sooner or later it's going to go completely out of control and we'll be lucky to get it to stabilize anywhere. If that's bad enough, people would be grateful just to have it be a river again instead of a lake. <<
They've chained Old Man River, and he ain't happy.
I think the levees cause more problems than they fix, but there could be a way to make them work.
>> Hmm. From what I've read, the historic buildings are actually among the safest. People built first on the high ground, because they lacked the technology to drain and settle the marshes. The earliest of those measures are only about a hundred years old. Most of the really stupid placements are more recent, dating from the latter half of the century. Floods in 1965 and 1995 alerted people to the problems in lower areas of the city. In the 1980s-90s they noticed the land area sinking; that's something superpowers as well as architecture could address. <<
Yeah, it's pretty common knowledge around here that any houses more than 50-60 years old are much safer, and in a much better place. I liked your idea of having houses in low-lying areas be up in the air, mostly because of what I mentioned earlier, some of the neighborhoods in low-lying areas already do that. That's all I meant about doing it right from the beginning.
Let me sum up: instead of all the levees, and draining the swamps, and building houses flat on the ground where they shouldn't be, we let the river take a more natural course, flooding when necessary, and have houses and communities designed to withstand that sort of thing.
Something like that could have been put in place anywhere from about seventy years ago to thirty years ago, though 1965, 1995, or the 1980s seem to be the best bet, because that's when people started noticing a problem.
Alternately, what you've suggested about one or more soups with earth-moving powers altering the terrain sounds plausible. It sounds like it would work more with the environment, than fighting against it, the way we're doing now.
>> Oh, and it would help to add the Easy City tag to your post. <<
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: Thoughts
Date: Jul. 29th, 2014 05:26 am (UTC)That actually settles a lot of my concerns about the metroplex, because things have only gotten so bad recently.
>> How long ago, and what kind of differences?
The first really public superhero was Granny Whammy in the 1940s, but there were a few quiet soups before that. The numbers have risen considerably since then. In the 1950s people kind of tried to sweep it under the rug, but it all sloshed out in the 1960s. <<
That is the time-line I was picturing, actually. If there were a quiet soup in just the right position, with just the right powers, with just the right amount of common sense, he could have influenced things in the right way, as far as city planning, and flood control.
The difference would be that people would be resigned to it, they would maybe understand that it has to happen, and it would just be one of those things that you have to endure to live where you want to live. Take people living in the Rigolets, all of the houses there are at least two stories off the ground, not an easy thing to deal with, but they do. It floods there, too, but they just live with it. Uhm, the Rigolets are a chain of islands across Lake Pontchartrain, it's considered a suburb of Slidell. It's pronounced 'ri-guh-lees'. So, if the river had to change its bed every so often, and flood, y'know, like rivers do, people living in the way would be prepared.
To illustrate the point of just how much we've messed up the topography down here, the Rigolets did not start out as islands, it was more dry places in the swamp. Now it's islands, because that part of the swamp that used to surround the lake is part of the lake. Ugh. There was an outlet to the Gulf, but yeah, mostly just swamp.
>> One possibility is the Atchafalaya route, which would dump America's main river transport into a completely undeveloped area. I can see why people would prefer to avoid that. Another is the Lake Ponchartrain route, which would be a substantial improvement with less (but not no) disruption.
Other ideas? <<
I'm honestly thinking Lake Pontchartrain would be the best bet. The very best thing, would be if people had let it alone to do its thing, but that's not possible.
>> That's true. A consideration is that the river acts like a mad firehose periodically. Sooner or later it's going to go completely out of control and we'll be lucky to get it to stabilize anywhere. If that's bad enough, people would be grateful just to have it be a river again instead of a lake. <<
They've chained Old Man River, and he ain't happy.
I think the levees cause more problems than they fix, but there could be a way to make them work.
>> Hmm. From what I've read, the historic buildings are actually among the safest. People built first on the high ground, because they lacked the technology to drain and settle the marshes. The earliest of those measures are only about a hundred years old. Most of the really stupid placements are more recent, dating from the latter half of the century. Floods in 1965 and 1995 alerted people to the problems in lower areas of the city. In the 1980s-90s they noticed the land area sinking; that's something superpowers as well as architecture could address. <<
Yeah, it's pretty common knowledge around here that any houses more than 50-60 years old are much safer, and in a much better place. I liked your idea of having houses in low-lying areas be up in the air, mostly because of what I mentioned earlier, some of the neighborhoods in low-lying areas already do that. That's all I meant about doing it right from the beginning.
Let me sum up: instead of all the levees, and draining the swamps, and building houses flat on the ground where they shouldn't be, we let the river take a more natural course, flooding when necessary, and have houses and communities designed to withstand that sort of thing.
Something like that could have been put in place anywhere from about seventy years ago to thirty years ago, though 1965, 1995, or the 1980s seem to be the best bet, because that's when people started noticing a problem.
Alternately, what you've suggested about one or more soups with earth-moving powers altering the terrain sounds plausible. It sounds like it would work more with the environment, than fighting against it, the way we're doing now.
>> Oh, and it would help to add the Easy City tag to your post. <<
Done, and my apologies.