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I'd make them much more walkable, by blocking off certain short sections of streets from car traffic during certain hours. Many european cities do this, and it works well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but you have to start somewhere. Why waste money digging up the same street over and over, as most cities do? It seems more efficient to do it once and be done for a long time thereafter.
Here in Seattle, we spend $$$$ buying a tunnel boring machine, bore a transportation tunnel for a section, and then ... ... cut up the boring machine for scrap! It's like setting up a giant printing press to print a newspaper, and then printing 10 copies.
I'd make them much more walkable, by blocking off certain short sections of streets from car traffic during certain hours. Many european cities do this, and it works well.
1. Drive and park close enough to the closed-off street, and fight with other drivers for parking (very common experience around, say, farmer's markets in the San Francisco peninsula).
2. Don't go there; drive to the mall instead.
3. Walk/bike there anyway, putting up with the shitty/dangerous experience of doing so.
I.e., to apply this in the United States would basically amount to "redesign entire cities to be more walkable".
On a heavily-used block with tall buildings on both sides, here's a recipe that will work well: 1. Dig up the street and sidewalks, going down 60-100 feet. 2. At the bottom of this pit, drive in piles if you haven't yet hit bedrock. 3. Build a box, about twenty feet high, to run plumbing, power internet, and other utilities 4. On top of that box, build another one for a train. 5. On top of that box, build another one…
I came up with some ideas a year or two ago : http://tinyvillages.org
I came up with some ideas a year or two ago : http://tinyvillages.org
Fun! But what if I want to learn tuba or practice opera singing? (Not trolling you, I really mean this.)
Obviously little buildings are not going to be adequate for everything like an orchestra or opera performance. So that isn't meant to apply to every single building.
But as far as practicing those things, generally there is sound proofing in those types of music practice rooms, and also I have suggested airtight construction with SIPs and HRV. This means most of the sound is insulated between outside and inside anyway without any sound proofing.
Also, this is partly an alternative to apartments or townhomes, where walls and/or floors/ceilings are shared. So obviously an advantage there even without the advanced construction and ventilation.
On a heavily-used block with tall buildings on both sides, here's a recipe that will work well: 1. Dig up the street and sidewalks, going down 60-100 feet. 2. At the bottom of this pit, drive in piles if you haven't yet hit bedrock. 3. Build a box, about twenty feet high, to run plumbing, power internet, and other utilities 4. On top of that box, build another one for a train. 5. On top of that box, build another one…
You also have to take into account that you will need a place to store the 97500 cubic meters of soil you just excavated, which now have swollen up to 126800 cubic meters, the average dump truck can hold around 10 cubic meters, it would take you more than 10000 trips to move the soil.
This is just one street, never mind the fact that in order for this to be useful you will need to have at least a few kilometers of tunnel at a time.
Also, even if there are no internal combustion engines running in the tunnel, you still need ventilation shafts, subterranean metros have them for a myriad of reasons, even though there are no dinosaur squeezings being burned in the tunnels, for example, what happens if one of those very powerful batteries that run your Tesla happen to catch fire? People might suffocate if you can't force air into the tunnel.
Its a nice idea, but there is a reason why tunnel boring machines and vertical shaft sinking machines are so widely used on built-up areas.