Urbanisation and climate change both rampant

I’ve been wondering what sort of blocks FBR will be using in KSA, and just how different KSA is from Downunder. Blocks will need bloody good insulative properties as the Middle East is predicted to get even hotter as a result of global warming. They are expecting increased wet bulb temperature and changing rainfall patterns, where they’ll have more rain falling, but on less number of days, so they’ll need decent infrastructure and buildings to withstand flooding and heat. Days when it’s too hot to work outdoors (might get up to 60C some days in future!) will increase, but a robot could do the work. On top of this heat problem, the World Bank has declared that 24 ports in the Middle East will be in trouble as a result of rising sea levels due to global warming (CO2 levels have risen from 310ppm in 1950 to 380ppm today). Hell, if they start moving cities further inland, FBR could be pretty busy. Too much rising sea water, not enough fresh water. In my city here in NZ, there’s no charge per quantity of water used. We water our gardens liberally most of the time, and take an ample water supply for granted apart from when the odd drought hits, then we water every second day. On the other hand, there are some 16,000 desalination plants in the world, and that’s how Saudi Arabia makes fresh water. This means a reliable energy system is vital otherwise your population will die from thirst and heat stroke (heat being the biggest weather risk in terms of fatalities). Over 50% of energy consumption is for air conditioning in the Middle East. Heat waves are predicted to last longer and be of increased severity. Those porotherm blocks might be a salvation? Places like Kuwait already suffer frequent power outages and these could become worse if energy demand increases due to global warming. Urbanisation in the Middle East (and many developing countries) is accelerating like nobody’s business (except how FBR’s business will accelerate!), so new buildings will need to be climate resilient. Beyond just the Middle East, nearly 60% of the developing world’s people will live in cities by 2030.

We HC members living in OZ and NZ live in paradise, just worrying about the quickest way to become millionaires. In 2013, the 85 richest people in the world had the same net worth as the poorest 3.5 billion people. Tens of millions of people live on less than $US1 a day. God knows how much worse that got as a result of the pandemic. One report I read said a third of the global population live in slums (in African urban areas it’s more like 70%), but another by UN-HABITAT said 830 million do, so quite some discrepancy of figures there. Either way, a huge number. The latter 2015 report says the world’s urban population will increase by 2 billion people by 2030, but 3 billion will be in need of new housing. That’s claimed to be close to 80,000 new housing units needed per day. Only 200 million people lived in cities in 1890, but in the year 2000 it was up to 3 billion. Put another way, in 1800 2% of people lived in cities, but in 2007 it was over half the global population living in urban areas. It’s projected to be 72% by 2050. 50 years ago only NY had over 10 million inhabitants, now about 34 cities have over 10 million people living in them. In the same 50yr period, the number of cities with over a million people climbed from 80 to 533. You can imagine all the social and environmental issues associated with this. As one paleontologist put it, “we are the asteroid”. Anyway, urbanisation continues, so there should be plenty of building work for FBR, and the waste reduction aspect is a huge plus. If the blocks used can reduce the energy needed for temperature control that will be another plus for FBR in places like Saudi Arabia. We might not build in downtown megacities, but there will be a lot of urban sprawl that would suit Hadrian X. Maybe FBR can build homes for governments to get people out of slums.

Main sources:
Knuth, S. (2020). ‘All that is Solid … ’: Climate change and the lifetime of cities. City, 24(1-2), 65-75. doi:10.1080/13604813.2020.1739903
Salimi, M., & Al-Ghamdi, S. G. (2020). Climate change impacts on critical urban infrastructure and urban resiliency strategies for the Middle East. Sustainable Cities and Society, 54. doi:10.1016/j.scs.2019.101948
Zhang, X. Q. (2016). The trends, promises and challenges of urbanisation in the world. Habitat International, 54(Part 3), 241-252. doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2015.11.018