The Taller We Build, The Deeper We Dig

At first glance, the title gives away very little, but in this post, I will try and answer every aspect of that very thought. Most of us fancy looking at buildings that reach straight into the sky. Some of us imagine a world in which a smart network of skyscrapers co-exist, (Tomorrow land, etc).

Somehow we as humans have always been attracted to a future that is grand in scale, in terms of infrastructure. However, I urge you to take a step back and assess what I call the viability coefficient of a shared dream such as this.

PARALLELS, LIFE?

The city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates breathes through the lungs of it’s skyscraper. It is chucklesome in some sense if you think about how a country could possibly rise from dust (quite literally) in a span of fewer than 50 years. We often talk about the glamor of such stories but when we remove the blanket that hides, we unveil the darkest of secrets. Without going much deeper into the subject, I would like to say that it is of paramount importance to know that the country we see before us today is a monument of the blood (quite literally) and sweat of foreign nationals that went in to build that dream.

We mustn't fail to acknowledge that in totality the world is a simple math equation, all the numbers added and subtracted to a result of zero, the pair of eyes I would like for you to borrow here is to comprehend the fact that no lunch is free, everything comes with a tangible cost tied to it. The taller we build the deeper we dig, our grave.

SUSTAINABLE, GLAMOR?

Elaborating,” The taller we build the deeper we dig”, literally as we build higher we need a deeper foundation although civil engineering was not exactly meant to be the outlook of this blog. The message that I am trying to communicate through the lines of this article is that these skyscrapers massively increase the stress on land. Incredibly increasing the density inhabited per sq. km.

To put things into perspective let's try and understand this scenario better through a case study.

THE PARADIGM SHIFT

Let us foretake a town of generational agriculturists, habitation is diversified and population density is very low. Allowing enough time for the water table to replenish and feed its fellow inhabitants. As we enter the digital era, the increasing thirst to become one among the netizens and believe in the shared idea of glamor, a lot of the present generation on the attainment of well-paid jobs conquer the soaring buildings in a downtown streets.

Suddenly all this population multiplication that was not meant to happen unexpectedly increases the demand for water in those cities.

Well if you think about it, NOW. The taller we build the deeper we dig in search of water.

DAY ZERO

That is when the world officially runs out of water, fresh/potable water for our consumption.

Well, what a joke?

If anything the world is 3/4ths water and we are more likely to sink than to have a drought.

We’ve heard of Day Zero in Cape Town when millions of people just ran out of the last truckload of water until they sat on top of a landmass that had no water to offer to its residents. Funnily enough, India, or specifically a metropolis like Bengaluru has effectively hit day zero in many of its regions.

Why must we be bothered?

In a study published in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday, scientists reported that groundwater depletion could mean "significant but unexplored potential impacts on crustal deformation and seismicity." These results suggest that human activity may give rise to a gradual increase in the rate of earthquake occurrence.

FUTURE, EXISTENCE?

Humans have been known to have continually underestimated the magnitude of consequences of their actions from the very beginning of their mere existence, or in other words denial. From the idea of building tall to asking if we could have a possible future with eyes for this shared dream. Well, the reply to that is there is no answer.

In the eyes of a modern world economist, the scale of judgment that would be invoked here is this concept of “opportunity cost”. By definition, it is the loss of value or benefit that would be incurred by engaging in that activity.

Life is +1 - 1 = 0, and hence have we really developed? Or are we just where we began?

I'll leave this for you to answer.