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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

In Minneapolis, they have skyways between large buildings so you're not exposed to the elements in the winter when moving between buildings. I imagine we’ll see similar in hotter climates (underground where the geography supports it, aboveground where not), with folks avoiding the outdoors for significant part of each year.

TLDR It's an urban planning story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway

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Some southern cities in Europe like Barcelona have historical city centers with really narrow streets (enough to walk but no more) with tall buildings. This allows those streets to almost never directly receive sunlight. It's so impressively effective that you can sometimes even feel cold in summer, and in very hot days, heat doesn't accumulate.

http://hdr-photographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barce...

That cooler temperature has got to be compounded by the lack of cars pumping out heat as well. But I wonder how such a design would handle large snow falls. Old northern cities in Europe don't seem as compact.

Older parts of northern cities can be very compact. Never heard of snow being a problem there, they probably just use smaller plowers.

Yeah--my car has an outside air temp thermometer. Big streets are a few degrees warmer than small streets. The only reasonable cause I can see is the heat is coming from the other cars. (Note that this isn't even in heavy traffic.)

It's also the heat from the sun warming the asphalt/tarmac/concrete and that heat warming the air (which will continue long into the night -- "urban heat island" is I believe the name for the effect).

In the Phoenix metro, we moved to an area farther away from downtown that has more nature (there are large parks on two sides of our house). The temperature is regularly 5 degrees cooler here.

Sounds like the urban heat island effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

Construction like this is now mostly illegal in the United States.

Barcelona is not a humid place in the summer, this wouldn't be as effective in humid places where shade doesn't effect temperatures as much

It's pretty humid at least compared to other cities in Spain like Toledo.

But yeah, being in the shade doesn't help that much either as the temperature is still high (and even remains high at night).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy:

Coober Pedy (/ˈkuːbər ˈpiːdi/) is a town in northern South Australia, 846 km (526 mi) north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is renowned for its below-ground dwellings, called "dugouts", which are built in this fashion due to the scorching daytime heat.

Do people still build underground there?

Of course the unintended consequence will be even higher rates of vitamin D deficiency and chronic low nitric oxide levels.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5

Diets will need to change accordingly. Vitamin D supplements are inexpensive.

And of course, it would not be difficult. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.

Certainly a popular solution for harsh winters in Canada. Even some of the universities have tunnel systems. E.g. Carleton with 5KM of tunnels connecting almost every building.

I live in a very cold part of the US but for a couple years traveled frequently to the south of Israel for work. I think a lot of people don’t consider dressing or designing spaces for high heats because most people live in temperate climates. It wasn’t unusual to have 113+ days there in the summer and no one but me (the American) seemed phased by it.

If the predictions come to pass maybe Minneapolis can sell the skyways to super hot regions as they presumably won't need them anymore.

The predictions are that climate change will bring even more extremely cold winters to the Midwest as the polar vortex more often breaks through and moves south.

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