As we do our silly Chicago tradition of dyeing the river a violent shade of green, I think it's a good time to remind people that our ancestors *reversed the flow of the river* to provide safe drinking water from Lake Michigan and earlier, in the 1860's, *lifted the entire city* to improve drainage and public health.
Remember that any time someone says heat pumps and renewable energy are hard.
@najakwa Hey, I wouldn't mind.
Somewhere I heard the phrase that Missouri has two big cities and they're both trying to leave and it's equal parts funny and depressing.
It's truly unfortunate for both KC & STL that the remainder of Missouri is so utterly immiserating and that—as they say—"Missouri lives company"...
It's weird how this still happens in Chicago! I watched them move a turn of the century house (which had been given protected status because it was the last of that historical neighborhood) in the near south side from its original site on a vacant lot to a different spot by McCormick and it was really awesome.
@TechConnectify Chicago is such a fascinating city with such a cool history.
Imagine the engineering talent required to figure out how to raise entire buildings in the 19th century without modern machinery.
Ancient Egypt would like a word.
I fell in love with architecture on the Chicago River. It provides a beautiful vantage point to take in all the marvelous skyscrapers. Unlike other cities that cram you on the sidewalk between looming towers. The Chicago River pushes buildings apart, giving you the opportunity to really take in the city’s glory in glass, steel, and concrete.
Truly incredible feats of engineering.
@TechConnectify Us Dutch literally gained almost half of our land area by taking it from the sea and various lakes, and have what is probably the most complex waterworks and flood protection systems in the world, but a bunch of glorified reversible aircon units and renewable energy plants are too hard?
People have utterly forgotten just how good us humans are at these sorts of things.
@grumpasaurus That took me a minute.
As a Chicagoan, the thing that is the most jarring in that movie is some of the landscapes. Really hard to keep up suspension of disbelief when a giant dam appears supposedly in the vicinity of Chicago!
@TechConnectify With the technology available a century ago in Seattle, engineers tore down some rather large hills, built an island out of dirt upon which sits most of the industrial district, and turned a huge tide marsh into a major downtown city with skyscrapers.
Yeah, we can do this. Any billionaire or politician who says we can’t is a huge weakling.
@ezarowny @TechConnectify wait are people arguing that? I’ve definitely heard the (much more reasonable) argument that mandating electrification without infrastructure investment will cause major problems for a grid that’s already overtaxed in many places.
People who think we can’t possibly build that are silly.
@ezarowny @calcifer There are also a ton of people who just don't believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I don't typically feel the need to say "we will need to build up the grid" when I discuss electrifying all the things because to me that's an obvious statement and it's also something *that is in fact happening* if not in the research realm in the action realm.
But a lot of folks either use that as a gotcha in arguments for electrifying or legit don't think we're working on it.
Chicago is a city that has always *werked*. I miss it.
@TechConnectify
Well, they reversed the flow to pump sewage away from their drinking water supply. Which didn't exactly endear themselves to communities newly "downstream."
Otherwise, what you said.
@TechConnectify @meander kinda wish the flow was put back these days. Great Lakes needs all the water it can get, especially water it should be getting.
Safe drinking water can be done without messing up the watershed.
(But yes heat pumps and renewables need to be done too)
@TechConnectify all true and worthwhile to think about. Also true and worthwhile to think about is how much more complex public works projects are now. In 1860, Chicago was home to around 100,000 people, and all of Illinois had 1.7M
As of the 2020 census, Chicago now is home to 2.7M people. The complexity of urban infrastructure has grown along with that. Which means a modern major engineering project of any kind is orders of magnitude more complex
Will to act is still, of course, a part of the equation. But it’s also legitimately harder to act in a world that has had a population explosion and the related growth in urban complexity to support it.
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