BLDGBLOG presents an interesting thought experiment from Rebecca Fode, an architecture student whose "Lower East Side Quarry" project explores what it would be like if "the mineral content of the bedrock beneath Manhattan begins to exceed the exchange value of the real estate built upon it?.sensing access to untold wealth, residents of a rent-controlled street on the Lower East Side band together to form a rogue mining union." A move that would not especially surprise us! Fode envisions mineworks underneath every LES building, with more retaining walls added over time to prop up the buildings. Farfetched, perhaps, but there are other cities where the value of mineral resources below ground has already exceeded the value of the real estate above.
· Mining the Lower East Side [BLDGBLOG]
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