[HN Gopher] Detroit's abandoned tunnel systems open door to anot...
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Detroit's abandoned tunnel systems open door to another world
Author : rmason
Score : 226 points
Date : 2024-02-10 20:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.freep.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.freep.com)
| dmoy wrote:
| Here in Seattle the underground part of the city is open for
| tours (parts of it anyways). They built the current downtown on
| top of the old one, so it's pretty surreal down there.
|
| Not even tunnels in this case, just like a whole-ass other set of
| streets and storefronts, all abandoned, partially buried, and
| covered on top.
| voidfunc wrote:
| The history of Seattle is fairly interesting for those who are
| not aware of it. A lot of cities have rebuilt from fires, done
| terraforming etc, Seattle kind of took it to a whole new level.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This prompted me to watch this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqRP0ualoI
|
| "fairly interesting" is quite the understatement! Absolutely
| fascinating and hilarious at the same time! Thanks for your
| post TIL
| eps wrote:
| Video could really use more photos and visuals, but it's
| just some dude talking really fast without pauses. Could've
| been a blog post.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Chicago also lifted up its street level, I don't think
| Seattle was unprecedented.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
|
| It's the only article linked with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle, however.
| js2 wrote:
| Sacramento: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-
| original-street-leve...
|
| Atlanta: https://www.atlantafamilies.org/underground-
| atlanta-history/
| saalweachter wrote:
| There's also a certain amount of "and then you're done"
| here.
|
| Maybe one day we'll decide to raise Miami or New Orleans,
| but once all of your cities have raised themselves out of
| the swamps they were built on, you don't need to keep
| raising them for tradition's sake. You're done. And new
| cities, such as they are, we no longer allow to build below
| grade in swamps.
| 13of40 wrote:
| If you want to see something trippy, take a look at the land
| just west of Magnolia and Discovery Park on the King County
| Parcel Viewer. They were planning to fill that in back in the
| day and on the map you can still see all of the streets they
| planned and even some parcels that are still owned by people
| who tried to buy in early. All underwater of course.
| thehoff wrote:
| This is so cool. I didn't believe you so I had to look it up
| and watch some youtube videos, fascinating.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Like New New York in Futurama?!
| ajmurmann wrote:
| It's wild that we used to do radical changes to cities like
| this and now changing zoning or making cities walkable are
| frequently seen as unfathomable.
| kurthr wrote:
| Really? It seems like once a group of people have lived
| somewhere for a generation or two and have a $Trillion
| invested in a place they probably are going to make it hard
| for new comers to make radical changes.
|
| Kinda like a giant codebase that's been maintained for 50
| years and has a million regular users is going to make
| updates difficult.
|
| Find a place people don't already want to live and make that
| better with great new housing designs? Why do does someone
| deserve to move somewhere new and live there cheaper than the
| people who already live there?
|
| Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market
| driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have 10%
| unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is. Imagine the
| time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000 units of
| housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
| bluGill wrote:
| People want to live near evisting jobs so your someplace
| new will be a suburb and generally has constraints because
| of that. You have to get people into the city for example
| which forces car dependance for example.
| ipaddr wrote:
| In his example you also need to attract employers, other
| people. Being first advantages.
| bluGill wrote:
| But you won't as employeers go where the employees are.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Sure but if your preferred design is as great and
| appealing as you say then after a few generations, your
| new city might be getting the jobs.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Would you like to be the first and start a new city?
| Would you move to the middle of, say, South Dakota and
| start New New York City? If it's as simple as you say, in
| a few generations your new city, lotsoweiners, will be
| getting the jobs.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Keep in mind that ten percent figure is not ten percent
| totally unoccupied for the entire year.
|
| The process of leasing is not immediate. In a similar way
| to how 0% unemployment is not actually desirable or
| remotely achievable, you want some slack in housing markets
| so that people actually have price competition and choice.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Because existing cities are where the jobs are located.
| That's why people move there: to have a job and a shot at a
| better life. Some of us feel strongly that 'current'
| residents should not have the right to effectively exclude
| others from the pursuit of happiness and opportunity.
|
| Current zoning is especially odious in who it affects. The
| people it excludes from high opportunity areas are the poor
| and disadvantaged. Supply restrictions in the face of high
| demand lead to high home prices, effectively shutting out
| the poor and young from a better life for themselves.
| p1esk wrote:
| Allow remote work for everyone who does not need to be
| physically present onsite to do their job.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| And in your Zoom utopia, how does remote work help health
| care workers, police officers, construction workers,
| elderly care workers, massage therapists, mechanics and
| so on and so on? How does this help younger people
| wanting to date, start a family, or just have a
| reasonable social life?
|
| I have a more simple proposition: instead of allowing
| remote work, how about we allow new homes to be built so
| the wealthy stop bidding up the price of all the old
| homes and remodeling them?
| p1esk wrote:
| _how does remote work help health care workers, police
| officers, construction workers, elderly care workers,
| massage therapists, mechanics and so on_
|
| I literally excluded all these people in my statement.
| Was it that hard to parse?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| No it wasn't hard to parse. What it was was hard to
| fathom that someone really thinks remote work is a
| general solution to high housing costs. Therefore I
| explicitly pointed out common occupations to remind us
| all about the larger picture.
|
| Well paying IT or white collar jobs that can be done
| anywhere are in the minority, and further the people that
| do hold those high paying jobs are frequently the very
| same people bidding up the price of existing homes in
| high opportunity cities, and pushing poorer people out in
| the process.
| p1esk wrote:
| You do realize that well paid people who spread out
| because they can work remotely create jobs for poor
| people outside of big cities? And in big cities demand
| for housing falls because there are fewer people? How is
| it not a win-win scenario?
| xp84 wrote:
| I don't think the person you're arguing with is against
| remote work or wouldn't agree it's a win-win. I think
| (and I agree) they are saying that it just doesn't come
| close (on its own) to fixing housing on its own for the
| majority of workers, for whom remote work cannot ever
| make sense.
|
| Also I might add that it seems like* most people who work
| remotely do not even choose to fully "maximize" the
| benefit by moving to truly super low cost of living
| locales, I'm assuming it's for social, family, and
| perhaps status reasons. So, yes, economic activity
| outside fancy areas is being stimulated, but not to a
| huge degree.
|
| *source: thinking of everyone I know at my fully remote
| company. Only a few live in places like West Virginia.
| Many live in the Bay Area, L.A., NYC, and like
| Connecticut.
| p1esk wrote:
| Yes, some people won't move. But that should be an
| option. An office job should not be the main reason
| people live in big cities.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Exactly. Remote work is (or at least will be) a net win.
| But it doesn't address the fundamental problem behind
| high housing costs: too few homes in areas people are
| willing to live.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| A huge issue for these small towns are in fact these high
| income remote workers or vacationers. They quickly drive
| up costs of things like housing but also entertainment
| and food in the towns they migrate to, where the workers
| often end up rent burdened living on top of each other,
| not able to save much money.
| csomar wrote:
| Your premise is wrong and the pandemic has proven
| otherwise (except maybe for NYC). People will choose to
| move out of the city if given the choice.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Once it transitioned to an epidemic people came back. Not
| necessarily the same people who left, but housing prices
| are back up to pre pandemic levels if not higher is my
| impression.
| rvnx wrote:
| This is mostly because money lost a lot of its value
| (eaten by inflation, and overly generous policies during
| corona to fix the restrictions they themselves created)
| csomar wrote:
| These people already exists somewhere else (ie: any town,
| mid-west). Remote work will move health care and police
| workers to these places again (or keep them there)
| because the remote workers will create demands for these
| professions.
|
| Many of the jobs done in hubs can be done anywhere else;
| they are the "remotest" jobs out there. Tech, Finance,
| Media, Research, etc... Many of these jobs can be done
| remotely and that will benefit everybody.
|
| Of course, except for the big hubs landowners who are
| essentially exerting a tax on the high-income
| individuals.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Why can't these remotest jobs just be done anywhere in
| the world? Why restrict it to people who are
| citizens/residents of the US?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| They can and already are suggesting this is not a real
| threat. And annoyingly, the jobs that could be
| outsourced, were already.
|
| And that is with corporations playing with the existing
| visa system AND illegal immigration.
|
| In short, remote addresses a lot of issues for an average
| worker. It does mess with existing system for corps.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > how does remote work help health care workers
|
| Are you really asking this question? Cost of living,
| especially housing, is based on supply and demand. As
| remote workers move out from expensive areas the cost of
| living goes down.
|
| And real estate investment funds and landlords don't like
| this...
| Tade0 wrote:
| Remote doesn't necessarily mean "living in the middle of
| nowhere".
|
| Case in point: I've moved to a city 40% the size of the
| one I grew up in so as to be able to afford housing at
| all and it's been great. A friend who stayed there
| recently purchased a 25% smaller apartment for 40% more
| in comparison to mine. It's not even funny at this point.
|
| You have generally more time for all the things you
| mentioned when you don't commute 2h a day.
|
| As for new homes: even now investment demand will gobble
| up any new housing that's built, as the former grows much
| faster than the latter. Induced demand for housing if you
| will.
| kiba wrote:
| Remote work isn't really a solution.
|
| Cities exists because they do something economically and
| socially valuable for humans. It becomes possible to
| support some infrastructures and services, such as
| theater, grocery stores, etc.
|
| All remote work does is distribute some functions to less
| populated areas without solving the core problems that
| plague modern cities everywhere with gridlock and
| vetocracy. Otherwise, remote works would still be roughly
| be distributed to the same cities instead of going
| elsewhere.
|
| If we want to unlock the most value, then yes we do want
| to solve commute 2 hours a day, especially for people who
| still need to commute. Yes, we do want cheaper housing in
| the most desirable cities. Yes, we want those remote
| workers living there anyway.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << Cities exists because they do something economically
| and socially valuable for humans.
|
| And they will continue to exist. Because of remote, they
| will maybe shrink in size, which is not a bad thing.
|
| << If we want to unlock the most value, then yes we do
| want to solve commute 2 hours a day, especially for
| people who still need to commute.
|
| And that part is definitely solved by remote.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| This is what anti city people don't get. My mom grew up
| in a small religious village and left for the big city
| because she wanted a life.
| tonis2 wrote:
| If a group of people is working remotely,for example at a
| smaller village, then health care workers, massage
| therapists ..etc can also move, cause there's more money
| at that small village ?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In vail and other places its already like this. It turns
| out, wages for workers don't go up to match the
| multimilliondollar home valuations. Now Vail has to
| effectively build dorms for their workers in a sort of
| company town situation since they can't find housing in
| summit county they can afford to rent on the wages they
| make. And those dorm projects are met by pushback from
| homeowners.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not sure I understand why we can't walk and chew gum
| at the same time. Like with everything else, life is
| complicate and housing is not that different. Remote
| could absolutely lower some of the pressure in the
| cities.
|
| Unless, naturally, there is another objection to
| addressing something as quickly adoptable as remote for a
| good chunk of workforce -- no reasonable person would
| dispute that not all jobs can be effectively done that
| way.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Because existing cities are where the jobs are located.
| That's why people move there: to have a job and a shot at
| a better life.
|
| I don't know, I live in a big city but I mostly work from
| home despite the office being 20 minutes away by metro.
| Because today's hotdesk flexi hipster office is a
| nightmare for actually doing work.
|
| I moved here because I love living in a big city. Always
| having stuff to do. All the things to discover. Amazing
| public transport so I don't need a car (I absolutely hate
| driving). 20 bucks for a monthly pass and my shoes cover
| my entire travel needs for a month. Literally all the
| shops I need right around the corner. I can roll out of
| the disco at 6am and into my bed. It's amazing. I love
| being in the middle of life.
|
| A lot of my friends love having a huge house in a quiet
| village but I don't understand that at all. I come from a
| quiet suburb but I've always hated that kind of
| environment. Even though I was happy there when I grew
| up.
|
| Also I have pretty niche interests. It's just really hard
| finding a makerspace or a BDSM club in a small town. Here
| I have many to choose from in both categories :)
|
| Also, small towns tend to be very big on the 'family
| values' mindset which isn't something I fit into, if that
| wasn't already clear from the above. In a city people
| know where to keep their opinions on how other people
| live their lives. In small towns they'll constantly
| gossip behind your back. I've lived in one for 10 years
| and hated that.
|
| Anyway my point is, there's many reasons people want to
| live in cities that have nothing to do with their
| personal chance at jobs or money. It's really a very
| different type of society and environment that's really
| desirable for some people despite the crazy house prices.
| lmm wrote:
| > It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere
| for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a
| place they probably are going to make it hard for new
| comers to make radical changes.
|
| Few if any of them actually invested that money. Rather
| they bought when it was cheap and then sat on it (either
| individually or as a family passing it down through
| inheritance) as the price went up - worse still they vote
| to grandfather in cheap property tax rates for people who
| bought early, so they're not even paying their fair share
| at the most basic/direct level.
|
| > Find a place people don't already want to live and make
| that better with great new housing designs?
|
| In today's vetocracy that's pretty much impossible - you'd
| have to find somewhere where not a single person already
| lived. Even then, as soon as you started doing it someone
| would move in and then block you. (Set a rule that requires
| development to continue? There's already a statewide rule
| that cities just flaunt)
|
| > Why do does someone deserve to move somewhere new and
| live there cheaper than the people who already live there?
|
| Being able to move in at the same price would be plenty. Up
| until the '50s people moved where they liked and build what
| they liked where they liked, without any permitting or
| anything. Now it's illegal to build practically anything -
| the vast majority of housing stock is only legal because
| it's grandfathered in, and would be illegal to build anew.
|
| > Now, that said there are huge distortions to the market
| driven by taxes and leverage. Many expensive places have
| 10% unoccupied housing. Think about how much that is.
| Imagine the time, cost, and disruption to build even 10,000
| units of housing, when there are 40-50k units unoccupied.
|
| Unoccupied housing is a scapegoat. A healthy market needs
| some liquidity. If you legalise building new houses then
| unoccupied houses cease to be a problem.
| fma wrote:
| > It seems like once a group of people have lived somewhere
| for a generation or two and have a $Trillion invested in a
| place they probably are going to make it hard for new
| comers to make radical changes
|
| You should look at before and after pictures of cities in
| China over the last 30 years.
|
| Those cities have been around much longer than Seattle.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Median homeownership rate in the US is 13 years. In many
| big cities there are more renters than homeowners. Owning
| for a generation or two is the exception, not the norm.
| jdross wrote:
| Percent unoccupied is a bit misleading because it's point
| in time. If the average tenant stays for 2 years and it
| takes 2 months on average to replace the tenant (given
| repairs, maintenance and marketing) that's 8.3% unoccupied
| at any given time (2/24)
| yellow_postit wrote:
| As a counterpoint -- Paris's bike infrastructure changes.
|
| Despite all the talk of less regulation in the US it seems
| our cities and suburbs are much more protected and
| lethargic to change many European counterparts
| graeme wrote:
| But the restrictions are on this very same group. They
| can't sell or develop their property as they choose.
|
| In practice it is governance by those with the most time on
| their hands. Why does this small group get to restrict
| property rights for the rest of the group?
| mcronce wrote:
| I did a few of those tours when I lived out there. They were
| very cool
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I grew up in Seattle, and my parents would sometimes mention
| the underground tour, but I never actually saw it until I was
| in my late 20s and I took my girlfriend home to visit.
|
| When I did the tour, the guide really played up the
| brothel/prohibition angle and made a few off-color jokes about
| that part of the history (more burlesque humor than outright
| offensive). So maybe that's why parents never took me.
| richardw wrote:
| I'm not sure what the mechanism for burying a town or city
| section is. It seems to have happened since antiquity, so it's
| obviously the rational choice over millennia, but my intuition
| doesn't connect. (Aside from soil deposits and erosion.)
| derekp7 wrote:
| For ancient archeological sites, burial happens when places
| get abandoned (typically due to war, or economic reasons, or
| famine). A lot of land isn't flat, so to build structures you
| have to level off a piece of land which involves moving dirt
| from one place to another. After a couple centuries of
| abandonment natural flooding and erosion will move that dirt
| around and bury the structures. New settlements come in and
| build on top of the new surface layer.
|
| For cities like Seattle, the original town was all wood and
| burned. Prior to that it was prone to flooding. During the
| reconstruction they decided to haul in dirt to raise the
| level of the city for better water management, but that would
| take a while. So businesses were rebuilt in place (but out of
| brick and stone), while dirt was being hauled in and new
| street levels were raised. New buildings were then built on
| top of the existing (essentially turning the existing ones
| into basements / foundations for the new ones). Similar thing
| in Chicago -- the city was raised up, and the second floors
| of buildings became the ground floor, first floor became
| basements, etc.
| richardw wrote:
| Thank you
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Butte MT has a pretty cool little system like this. Basically a
| semi underground street system. A neat relic from a different
| time
| fzeindl wrote:
| How can one imagine this? A big underground hall with a
| concrete ceiling in which there are buildings?
|
| Or are the underground building like a -1 floor to the ones
| above?
| hervature wrote:
| The did it in 2 stages. Before that, you need to know some
| history. A fire burnt down the majority of downtown. So, they
| had to rebuild everything anyway. The downtown was also low
| enough that the sewer would flow into the bay at high tide.
| After the fire, they made certain parts of the downtown
| streets up to 2 stories higher to accommodate a functional
| sewer system.
|
| First, they made the streets higher without touching the
| storefronts. "Crossing the road" would have required climbing
| ladders. Once the streets were in place, they made the
| sidewalk and the new storefronts on the old first or second
| story. So, when you walk around that part of Seattle, there
| is sometimes just two stories of air beneath the sidewalk.
| You can identify these sidewalks through their use of
| amethyst blocks which actually serve/served as sunlight. As
| you can imagine, a block can consist of a single large
| structure and so sometimes the basement of these buildings
| are huge empty spaces. If I recall correctly, the Seattle
| underground is actually disappearing as development occurs
| and put these large basements into use. However, I do believe
| there is a movement to try to preserve at least part of the
| underground by simply buying enough adjoining buildings and
| funding their upkeep with tours (which is where I got this
| information). In terms of touristy things, I think definitely
| one of the more unique things in the USA and probably has
| similar vibes to the catacombs of Paris (without the bones).
| hattmall wrote:
| This is exactly underground Atlanta. They raised the ground
| level and built the new city on top of the old. The old
| storefronts and businesses are still there. About 1/8th of it
| is publicly open, but there's a ton more that's closed off
| and is just trains driving under the city.
| gambiting wrote:
| Like....Futurama style? Where new York is still there in its
| entirety just buried under New New York?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Almost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
| rvnx wrote:
| Seems amazing!
|
| I can see on the tours when you purchase the tickets online
| yourself: "There is a $2.50 convenience applied to each
| ticket at checkout."
|
| What does that mean ?
|
| You have to give tips to a computer ? Is that a thing in
| the US ? Like at the self-service checkout ?
| odux wrote:
| It used to be "for the convenience of being able to buy a
| ticket from home" which is ridiculous by itself because
| online tickets makes things cheaper the venue. Now it is
| "for the convenience of the ability to buy tickets at
| all" because in some places that is the only way to buy
| tickets.
|
| I had an electric company that charged a $2 fee for
| online payment. I seriously considered paying them by
| check every month. The choice seemed to be between they
| charging me $ for an online payment or I charging them $
| (indirectly for all the labor it takes for processing a
| paper check, they even sent me a prepaid envelope). It is
| atrocious that a company charges us for making something
| cheaper for them. (I ended up using my banks bill pay
| feature because I didn't want to risk a check being lost
| in the mail).
| rvnx wrote:
| Thank you!
| m3047 wrote:
| Tacoma has some underground, too. Worked in a building where
| they had us in a shitty office on the bottom floor, in back,
| butted up against the hillside.
|
| We figured out there was some kind of storage back there, and
| because the place smelled so musty and the ventilation was so
| bad we were kinda curious. We rigged the door so that once it
| was opened it wouldn't latch shut again and waited; a few days
| later we were in luck.
|
| Going through the door there was the whole brick facade of the
| building (burnt, ironically), and the bottom of the present day
| sidewalk, three stories up.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| One interesting rabbit hole to go down is finding YouTube videos
| of urban explorers finding their way into such tunnels and
| exploring.
|
| There's some really cool videos of people in London in all sorts
| of tunnels and places they shouldn't be in.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| One of my favorite activities in college was exploring the
| campus - there were parts that weren't closed off to students,
| but I felt like we were probably not supposed to be in. It was
| fascinating walking around, looking at the weird architecture -
| in some places, the ceilings were barely six feet tall, and at
| one point to move between two adjacent buildings you had to use
| a door that was half the height of a regular one. Just a
| bizarre space that, nowadays, would be likened to "the
| backrooms".
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| A few years ago I had the pleasure of spending 10 weeks in
| hospital, which as well as having bits dating back to 1860
| and being extended every couple of decades, is also attached
| to the local uni. The only way I stayed sane was spending my
| nights exploring as much as I could, made all the more
| exciting by having to crawl up stairs and drag my wheelchair
| behind me. I decided very quickly that "no public access"
| signs didn't apply as I wasn't a member of the public, I was
| an inpatient.
|
| Elevators are particularly interesting. You might need a key-
| card to get onto the 4th floor, but it turns out that for
| efficiency half the elevators waited on that top floor. Get
| into elevator, read book for 5 minutes, wait for it to reset,
| go home and let you out in the restricted section. Or this
| entire floor is locked off from the stairway, but the floor
| above is open and the elevator lets me go down a floor and
| get out.
|
| It's honestly amazing where you can end up, especially if you
| combine boredom, time and a bit of a can-do attitude. One of
| my favourite games was using the stick from an ice-lolly
| (sold from a machine in reception) to jimmy the lock on badly
| fitted doors. I also found an ebay pair of scrubs to be
| really useful once I'd worked out how to get into places -
| you'd go down a corridor, have people stick their heads out
| of doors and start with "Hey! You can't be down her---oh
| sorry doctor". I ended up reporting most of it to security
| just after I got released. They refused to engage, but had
| swapped out all the locks when I had a check-up a year later.
| pests wrote:
| I treated my college campus like this. I had tons of secret
| nooks and crannies, rarely used single-occupant bathrooms,
| good reading chairs or study areas, even found a working
| shower in an old CS building that used to be dorms. In
| winter I would know the route through the complex of
| buildings and rarely used passages and connections to
| reduce my time spent outdoors.
| milesward wrote:
| Oh dude I found my sousaphone, plus a like-new Rhodes
| piano, and a whole-ass pipe organ my college had
| forgotten.
|
| Plus the ID card laminator, that was clutch ;)
| dekhn wrote:
| I grew up near Wesleyan U in connecticut; they have an
| extensive underground tunnel system partly for steam
| delivery and partly just to get around in weather. We
| used to do medieval recreation and other stuff down
| there, and I still occasionally dream I'm wandering the
| tunnels, 35 years later.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Are you the inspiration for Stephenson's "The Big U"?
| dekhn wrote:
| Lol, no! That's based on BU, and was published right
| around the time I started LARPing. I can't remember if
| there were tunnels or LARPing in that book, but steam
| tunnels/walking tunnels are common in the northeast, as
| is LARPing.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| There was definitely both! Man, I should re-read that
| book. I read it in college, and definitely felt like I
| was missing out on what I felt _should have been_ a
| quintessential college experience, like losing a
| radiation source, fighting off mutant rats, and building
| my own tank.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Same, we had steam tunnels that you could get into if you
| were careful -- both not to get caught and not to get burned.
| Mechanical rooms that were often unlocked. Weird spots
| between buildings where additions were made.
| blowsand wrote:
| UCSD has an amazing labyrinth of tunnels, some easily
| accessible, some locked away and purposefully obscured, but
| discoverable.
| wcunning wrote:
| University of Michigan famously has a bunch of that sort of
| thing, though they were closed off to students by the time I
| got there. [0]
|
| [0] https://localwiki.org/ann-arbor/Steam_Tunnels
| willis936 wrote:
| I recently got to see the backrooms of an MIT building in sub
| basement 2. You had to go through some tight spaces (think
| ~20") and there was some rotating machinery to stay away
| from. I was surprised at how big it was. When I first went in
| I thought it was just the narrow corridor with the large air
| handler units, but it snaked around a corner to reveal itself
| to be 4-5 times that size.
|
| The entire MIT campus is connected through underground
| hallways, most in use as labs. It's not all in ship shape,
| but tunnels and underground labs and industrial machinery do
| entertain my inner child.
|
| I've heard UWisc's steam pipe service tunnels are cool to
| see, but I never got a chance to explore them while I was
| there.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > You had to go through some tight spaces (think ~20") and
| there was some rotating machinery to stay away from.
|
| This description makes me want to play Half-Life again.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| I've seen a few of those. It's really surreal. It makes me feel
| like our history has been fudged and the singularity already
| happened. It's surreal especially with all the graffiti
| mentioning similar scenarios, or the bullet casings. But even
| outside of that just the crazy amount of buildings that
| suddenly appear. It's pretty wild.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > all the graffiti mentioning similar scenarios
|
| > the bullet casings
|
| > the crazy amount of buildings that suddenly appear
|
| ???
| bowsamic wrote:
| Is this a Control reference?
| userbinator wrote:
| A "rabbit hole to go down", indeed.
|
| The most interesting are the places that look like a time
| capsule or museum --- where everything hasn't been touched for
| decades, and the urban explorers who come along also respect
| that.
| yawgmoth wrote:
| There used to be tours of the Detroit Salt Mines, and indeed the
| Detroit Salt Company is still alive today.
|
| Near the "Uniroyal Giant Tire" [1] off of I-94 is a small tunnel
| that goes under the freeway. Not the same as these, but, well, as
| interesting as the freeway tunnel I suppose.
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Uniroyal+Tire/@42.2714...
| pests wrote:
| Wow, I live five minutes from that tire. Since I was young I've
| passed it a million times on the freeway and also checked out
| the service enterence for it but it was all gated off.
|
| Any more details on the tunnel?
| analog31 wrote:
| My dad had some big chunks of salt from touring that mine. And
| I still remember the tire.
|
| There were also a lot of brine wells south of Detroit, where
| they mined salt by forcing hot water down into a hole and
| bringing up the brine.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| And then evaporated the brine? Or what was it used for?
| analog31 wrote:
| Making lye and chlorine by the chlor-alkalai process. So
| they didn't need dry salt.
| cabalos wrote:
| Diamond Salt is still made this way north of Detroit. Almost
| all restaurant salt in the United States is sourced here.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| How did they miss the tunnel from the Detroit News building to
| the former studios of WWJ? They are essentially the same paper
| these days.
|
| The tunnel is under LaFayette Blvd. The Detroit News remains but
| the TV station is next door. The beautiful Alfred Kahn designed
| studios are now an AFL-CIO union hall.
|
| The main theater used for live TV at the old studios is still
| magnificent.
| richk449 wrote:
| Interesting article, but surprisingly poor writing for a flagship
| big city newspaper. It's full of typos and incomplete sentences.
| Is it AI generated text, or just a frantic writer with a dozen
| more articles to crank out today?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| > The mines remained operational until 1984 and reopened after
| a brief hiatus in 1983 to provide the road salt used by the
| city today.
|
| They... they did what?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think they're referring to the nuclear waste accident in
| 2019 that bifurcated the timeline in 1984 allowing 1983's
| events to continue uninterrupted
| Vecr wrote:
| Dark and/or 1983 reference?
| Schattenbaer wrote:
| Or even Counterpart?
| Vecr wrote:
| Interesting, never heard of that. Or maybe I did, but as
| it's presumably worse than 1983 and Dark I skipped it.
| Edit: It's actually mentioned in my files, so I had heard
| of it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| It's Dark!
|
| _The question is not where, or who, or how, but rather
| when_
| Waterluvian wrote:
| So that's what the thermonuclearhaline is.
| blihp wrote:
| Yep, but what do you expect from an industry near its end. They
| tend to do better with the front page stories, but a lot of the
| local/filler stuff now looks like this. You're not going to
| have meticulously crafted articles with editors to ensure its
| up to the papers standards when you don't have the ad (or
| subscription) dollars coming in to support that level of
| output. So now it often looks more like a blog than a
| newspaper... plenty of more prestigious news organizations are
| looking just as bad these days.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| As I said above: about an average number of errors.
|
| I _suspect_ they rely on an automated spelling & grammar
| checker. Even that should have caught "councourse" but maybe
| because it was capitalized?
|
| "instate" actually IS correct (my bad) but "institute" would
| be much better.
|
| The other errors would get past a spell checker.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This got me curious. Are you seeing things I don't? Certainly
| possible. I loaded this into Word to let its spelling & grammar
| checker go to work.
|
| Detroit stood as the first major U.S. city to instate
| Prohibition"\ -- "instate" should be "institute"
|
| A tunnel of psychedelic lights connects Detroit Metropolitan
| Airport's A and B/C Councourses to an original soundtrack. --
| "Councourses" should be "Concourses"
|
| Almost as quickly as the law was enacted, underground smuggling
| and speakeasies began to appear, with some experts estimating
| Detroit's river crossing to Canada -- I think Word thinks wants
| a "that" before "Detroit's." I don't agree.
|
| Below ground, an elaborate tunnel system connected the Fisher
| to New Center and General Motors buildings to ease employee
| commute. -- should be "commutes" or "commute times."
|
| A tunnel system connects each of the hospitals making safe,
| seamless travel -- comma after "hospitals", add "for" after
| "making"
|
| The steam loops ran on coal until converting into natural gas
| in the 1970s -- should be "converted"
|
| The unique system of service tunnels set a precedent for
| surrounding shopping centers, although they were off-limits to
| the public and remained closed and unpassable after the mall's
| closure in 2015 -- I would have written "impassable" but
| "unpassable" is correct
|
| What else?
| adolph wrote:
| These may be purposeful to backdoor LLM's using there
| content. By listing and analyzing them you are enhancing the
| impact the poison content might have.
|
| Either that or like fictitious entries in dictionaries or
| trap streets in maps to catch plagiarists.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Their content.
| adolph wrote:
| Thats my trap phrase to prevent people from passing off
| my writing as there own.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Never attribute to malice what's easier to explain as
| incompetence.
| adolph wrote:
| Never attribute something to a boring reason what's
| funnier to explain as a convoluted conspiracy
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I'm down with that. Thought you were serious /s
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| Instate is valid. See "reinstate".
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a lot of typos in a short article.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| Are those easily accessible for the random person?
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Everything is accessible with an angle grinder and some
| patience.
| bregma wrote:
| Most places all you need is a high-vis vest and a clipboard.
| In this case, a white hard hat could also be an asset.
| INTPenis wrote:
| That article was almost comical.
|
| Come see our amazing tunnels; gestures at blocked pedestrian
| crossing.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I've long wanted to know if my condo building's basement was once
| hooked up to the Chicago Tunnel Company tunnels. It was built as
| an office building in the loop in 1913, and there were certainly
| tunnels down both streets that my building abuts, so it seems
| fairly likely, but who knows...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Did it flood in 1992?
| cozzyd wrote:
| It's hard to find out! It wasn't a condo building then....
| Loughla wrote:
| Get a clipboard and a flashlight and go look.
| cozzyd wrote:
| What do I look for?
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| we suck ass at preserving history/things in this country. We all
| have this attitude of tear it down and build something better. No
| one is talking about improving/maintaining/repairing what we
| already got.
| bluGill wrote:
| We preserve too much garbage. Many buildings are marked
| hastoric despite there being nothing historic about them. Them
| you can't insulate them, and other such things.
| opportune wrote:
| If you want to preserve it, you should buy it. From my
| perspective, too many people in this country are exerting
| preferences on historicity/neighborhood character/style to the
| severe material detriment of others.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Just curious, if you go to that link, and then press the back
| button, does it give you another spam page? The back button takes
| you to a page full of spam on mobile. Can anyone confirm ?
| lopis wrote:
| Cannot reproduce
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| There are tunnels under the Detroit River too, for rail and cars
| crossings to Canada. The two downtowns are directly across the
| river. So a cool thing would be a Gondola. Things went to shit
| after 911. Instead of opening the borders like in the European
| Union. The borders got more closed down, and things regressed.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Im not entirely sure how your drawing your conclusion.
|
| I grew up in suburban Detroit. Access to Canada has always been
| easy. You need proper identification, but it's not by any means
| "locked down". Beyond personal experience, I had acquaintances
| with cottages in Canada. They never have any issues traveling.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Was a gradual shift after 9/11. US started requiring
| passports (on paper, but if you're a US citizen entering
| without one, I don't think they can do much more than give
| you a hard time). Lots more quizzing upon entry into US.
|
| Good ole days (pre-2000) meant giving a verbal declaration of
| citizenship and being sure to have a decades old crumbly
| birth certificate if they asked.
|
| Canada technically doesn't require passports at the land
| border, but they make it more of a hassle if you don't have
| one.
|
| On the plus side, the Canadian side cares a lot less about
| whether returning Canadians owed taxes & duties. The booths
| used to be staffed by a division of the CRA (Canadian IRS)
| and unarmed.
| myself248 wrote:
| This. Pre-9/11 my family used to pop over to Windsor for
| dinner, and that was absolutely unremarkable. Every
| 19-year-old would hit the bars over there, because that was
| the drinking age. And the outlet mall parking lots on the
| Michigan side were constantly packed with Ontario license
| plates.
|
| I'm jealous of the Niagara crossing that has a pedestrian
| bridge called the Rainbow Bridge because you can see the
| rainbow in the falls' mist from the middle of the span.
| Areas on both sides are pedestrian-friendly and you can
| just walk across, for a $1 fee. It sucks that you can't get
| from Detroit to Windsor without either your own vehicle, or
| boarding a grubby bus.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And you can walk or bicycle across the Peace Bridge for
| free! Lots of places to park for free on the Canadian
| side.
|
| I haven't done it yet myself. But I'll probably do it for
| a parcel pickup one day.
|
| Will the new Detroit-Windsor bridge enable walking/biking
| over?
| vinay427 wrote:
| Yes, it will! I don't live in the area anymore but would
| visit partly to experience walking across when the bridge
| opens.
|
| https://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en/bike-or-
| hik...
| bregma wrote:
| Yes.
| https://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en/The-
| Gordie-...
| vinay427 wrote:
| > US started requiring passports
|
| It's worth mentioning that the enhanced driver's licenses
| and state IDs are still valid, which tend to be easier to
| acquire and require far less paperwork if one is already
| getting a license/state ID, so residents of the more
| populated border states have a somewhat more seamless
| option.
| criddell wrote:
| > if you're a US citizen entering without one, I don't
| think they can do much more than give you a hard time
|
| I've always wondered what they would do.
|
| In the 90's, I once showed up at the US border without
| documentation and basically was let through after a 30
| second lecture. I wonder if it would still work like that?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I think underground systems and places are really cool. BUT,
| confined spaces are crazy dangerous. Be careful out there!
| jacknews wrote:
| Obviously the cars should go in tunnels, not pedestrians.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Detroit, Tunnels. My first thought was this might be what the
| movie 'Barbarian' was based on.
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