Friday, 02 November 2007

Land reclamation

It's fascinating to read that the Netherlands will soon be working on building another island. That 20% of all land in the Netherlands is the result of land reclamation is hard to believe particularly coming from a region land is often taken for granted.

Is Holland unique? Not really. Examples include Hong Kong's airport, parts of Cape Town, Singapore, Mexico City, Monaco, Barbados etc.

Some have argued that nature will always want to restore whatever is taken away. In New Orleans for example, while reclaimed land is not seen as the reason why Hurricane Katrina happened, it maybe the reason why the flood protection system failed. Does the argument border luddism? Maybe, maybe not.

2 comments:

Neater said...

The big airport in Osaka is also made on a man made Island in Osaka Bay...and is supposedly sinking

mwandeo said...

sinking!!! a whole airport? that's sounds scary!!