63 THE FUTURE CITIES. 24 ------------------ 1 Floating cities and islands, buildings built underground, thousand meter high skyscrapers- everything goes in Japan. A country which has a tremendous lack of space for it's countless people. Underground. The word lurks many ugly adjectives to the surface; dark, raw, secret, illegal. But in Japan, the underground is the best solution to solve one of the country's worst problems. With a population almost as big as half the USA, all in an area as big as Norway, Japan have no more space for the people. Citymakers have built skyscrapers, and unreal islands, but the lack of space is getting worser and worser. Now the biggest building- companies in Japan think they've solved the problem; gorgeous centers under the surface of the earth whre millions of humans can work, shop and maybe also live. "An underground city is not longer a dream or an illusion. We can count on that it will be materialized in the beginning of the next century", says Tetsuya Hanamura, the boss in Taisei Corp. Taisei called the project "Alice city", after the story about the girl who went under the surface of the earth through a rabits hole. The company, who already have the plans ready, imagines two gigantic sylinders, each on 60 meters hight and a diameter on 80 meter. They will be built as far down as 150 meters below the ground. The will give place for 41facilities for power, aircondition and trashsystems. Every sylinder will be connected with exits to a great deal of pheres. The pheres will include shops, theatres, sporthalls, offices and hotels. Taisei's design for 25-30 000 000 000 NOK, could give room for 100 000 people. Another more ambitious project comes from Shimizu Corp. It will be an unlimited nettwork of underground halls, connected together with tunnels and be filled with offices, sportshalls, libraries and public baths. The project is meant to be built 190 meters below the ground, spread around on many quadrat- kilometers and shall be able to give room to 500 000 people. The costs are settled for 500 000 000 NOK. 2(100 NOK =25 DM or 16 $).1 Ohbayashi Corp. is maybe the most darefull ones. They want to built an undersea factory on the continental- ground outside Inubozaki in the Chiba- prefecture. The multi millionear project will take 30 years to built, consist of 505 tunels, 30 meter high and 20 meter in widht. The underwater complex will be as big as all the factories in Tokyo, Kanagawa and the Chiba- prefecture together. The idea with building an undersea factory comes from the book "How to multiply the name of a city ten times.", written by an earlier president at the university in Yokohama. The continental- ground surrounding Japan is 270 000 square- 41kilometers. The book says that the area under the water can be built at the moment, cause nobody owns it. Ohbayashi is also the firm behind the world greatest skyscraper -Aeropolis 2001- that will stand 2000 meters over the ground. The lunatic-2 2000 000 000 000 NOK 1 building will be a fantastic city inside a tower with 500 floors. If one wants to go inside the building to your office or home, it will be very easy. Extremely fast elevators will carry the passangers from the height of the street to the top of the building in 15 seconds. The Japanese mega- tower will have room for 300 000 people- 60 % of the innhabitans in Oslo. It will take about 25 years to finish the building! When it comes to the underground projects, japanese contructors says that they have all the technology to build it without annoying the once over the ground. They point at such buildings as the 50 kilometer long Seikan tunel; the longest underwater corridor in the world, which connects the mainisland of Japan together with Hokkaido in the North of Japan. Anyhow there's some serious questions left. Even if japanese cities already have underground shoppingmarkets and garages, the depth is by law, not set for a long way down. The reason is a terrible fire in a shopping- corridor in Shizouka that killed 15 people in 1980. Underground stuctures are resistant against eartquakes and waterleaks, but very weak against fire and smoke. 14 The greatest hinder could be the psykological barricade in living away from the sun and the sky. The critics awaits claustophobia. But the japanese continue to build high and low. And the money, well they seem to go on forever. 53 Tom/Paragon