Friday, May 18th, 2012
Annie Flint on a titanic city not fit for purpose
“You can’t imagine these floating cities sinking” they said on the morning news programmes But they are not floating cities. Neither are they cities nor are they fit to float.
In a city, we have an infrastructure of roads and rubbish tips, and telephone exchanges that we seldom see – the equivalent of below decks on a cruise liner. In all the total 177 foot high of the Costa Concordia only 26 ft was below decks infrastructure and the rest cabins and ballrooms, restaurants and beauty salons, gyms and theatres
A city is maintained by public sector workers from Chief Executives to sewage workers and fire fighters. On a cruise liner, theses roles are filled by the crew. But if we had a catastrophe in a city, we would hardly look to the sewage workers to save us so is it realistic to expect the magicians and dancers or even the chefs and waiters of the Costa Concordia to save the customers?
But if we had to abandon one of our cities, then there would be queues of traffic to leave just as people on the Costa Concordia queued for the lifeboats. Widespread panic would also prevail as we sought to escape some unimaginable and unexpected – at least by us – tragedy.
And of the crew – well, the cuts have reduced essential workers so we had better be “Big Society” training our beauticians to man the lifeboats.
Lack of training thus this…
Do feel free to comment on whether you such large cruise ships have a future.
If you want to blog for wowdewow and be paid write to info@wowdewow.com and we will send you guidelines on how to write for us.
We are looking for an experienced blog editor familiar with wordpress and who has writing skills. If that’s you, write to info@wowdewow.com with your CV and we’ll get back to you.
Related posts:
