General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

It is always cheaper to sprawl because most of the costs of sprawl are borne not by the developer, but instead by the occupants and society at large. This is true for factories, housing, everything.

As for tight tolerance manufacturing, UW Nanotech centre has a nanometer scale silicon chip fabrication facility on some floor (not the ground floor) of the building. The main obstacle for the facility was not the location in the building or even the high number of people in the building, but simply the vehicle traffic on Ring Rd causing vibrations.

That is pretty interesting. I can't speak much about semiconductor manufacturing, but I imagine the machines at UW produce a low volume of chips, and the machines themselves wouldn't be the source of vibrations.

That's a different can of worms than the industries you see in this region. Something like this would never be on the second story of a building (Centra Industries in Cambridge). I remember they had to dig down about 10 feet to pour a floating foundation for their waterjet cutter.

Yes, absolutely true that the machinery is less likely to be a source of vibration. But the quantum nano building also had to dig down a huge foundation for their equipment. The building also has a massive cargo elevator, thousands of students, custodial staff working in the building.

I'm sure it's not as cheap as sprawling, but I'm certain it is possible to achieve this.