Posted on 02/19/2008 4:30:09 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
AMSTERDAM is to go underground as overcrowding and soaring land prices force planners to look beneath the city's famous canals for future urban development.
The canals will be drained to allow architects to build the underground city, which will reduce the pressures of overcrowding and slash the cost of a parking space
Dutch engineers have unveiled plans for a £7.4 billion underground city providing one million square feet of underground retail, leisure and parking facilities.
"There has always been a lack of space in the city, so what we are doing is building a city under the city by using a new construction technique, which will not interfere with street traffic," said Moshe Zwarts, a partner at the architects Zwarts & Jansma.
Residents of the historic houses that line Amsterdam's central canals have to wait up to seven years for parking permits and a garage space can cost as much as £74,000.
Property prices, once a bargain in the Dutch city that is the cultural and commercial capital of the Netherlands, are also soaring. The price of an apartment in the De Pijp district which cost £90,000 in 1999, has risen nine years later to £223,000 or more.
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The one-way streets, on either side of Amsterdam's waterways, are also feeling the strain of overcrowding, and traffic is frequently thrown into chaos for hours by delivery vans and rubbish collectors.
Amsterdam was originally built on drained, swampy marshland and many of the classic Dutch gabled houses along its canals are still precariously supported by underground wooden beams.
To find space for new developments, the Dutch engineers have decided it is easier to build in the clay under the canals.
Under the plans, canal water will be temporarily pumped out in order to start construction beneath.
"Amsterdam sits on a 30-metre layer of waterproof clay which will be used together with concrete and sand to make new walls," said
Mr Zwarts.
"Once we have resealed the canal floor, we will be able to carry on working underneath while pouring water back into the canals. It's an easy technique and it doesn't create issues with drilling noises on the streets."
Youssef Eddini, a spokesman for the Strukton engineering group that will build the underground city, has stressed that the new plan will not cause as much disruption as other projects.
"All materials could be brought to the site by water. We can use the canals as a road," he said.
Yeah, I like it.
Great.
An underground city full of junkies and whores. Soon to be choked with the suicidal sons of the desert.
Can’t wait.
I don’t think I would want to be underground in a country that is below sea level.
God built the world, but the Dutch built Holland.
The Muslims will live on surface while the native-born Dutch will live underground.
Brilliant!! Can someone say New Orleans.
I can’t, for the life of me, understand why New Orleans didn’t consult with the engineers in the Netherlands that seem to handle being below sea-level quite capably.
or the dikes.
“AMSTERDAM is to go underground as overcrowding”
“which will reduce the pressures of overcrowding”
“There has always been a lack of space in the city”
“are also feeling the strain of overcrowding”
Solution: Deport your large Muslem population. This will solve the overcrowding, decrease strains on your social services, decrease crime, and improve social cohesion and national unity.
Exactly. It’s a canal city. What a stupid idea.
Leni
The canals aren’t very wide, and in some locations there are already underground structures alongside the canal (which are, as I recall, pretty damp inside). So to construct any significant structures, they are probably going to have to undermine adjacent buildings.
Actually, the Dutch have used pump designs which originated in New Orleans. The Netherlands' superiority is in building flood control gates to tame the sea, roughly the same task as stopping hurricane storm surges. One such project was planned in the New Orleans area on the 1970s... but some environmentalist wackos sued in federal court and succeeded in halting the project.
Even though the Dutch aren't hobbled by the enviro-idiots, I still wouldn't want to live under a canal.
Makes about as much sense as a subway in New Orleans.
Muzz are thinking -—Wow more stuff for us when we take over
Interestingly, at a million square feet that ‘city’ is a little less than one-quarter the size of the Mall of America.
$7,400 per square foot. Somebody with more knowledge can tell me how outrageous that is or isn’t. And needless to say that price will go higher.
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