[1] https://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv-artikel/hier-schwebt-ein-den...
As for your actual question, I'm pretty sure we (US, Europe, humans in general) could do quite a bit more than we do now if we had a reason to do so. (or were 100% sure about the results)
The technology in this video appears to be computer control of the many pistons underneath the raised block. I would estimate that could be done with roughly 1970s-level of technology.
In the 60s a massive stone monument was moved 200m up in elevation to avoid being flooded by a dam.
How come these buildings don't have any of that? Or is the support in form of metal rods which these structures are freely screwed to?
https://parametric-architecture.com/shanghai-relocates-7500-...
The houses: https://shanghaistreetstories.com/?page_id=1288
Maybe the scale of these other moves were limited by not having the adaptable height jacks to keep everything straight.
https://www.e-architect.com/images/jpgs/leipzig/bayerischer_... / https://www.e-architect.com/leipzig/bayerischer-bahnhof-buil...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...
They also rebuilt much of the city because it was wiped out during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and now the grid system is one of the most commonsensical ones in any major American city.
Chicago is an example of a (more or less) clean-slate engineered large city -- one that arose as a result of tragedy (fire) and failure (cholera).
Also, how can they scoot some, but not all, jacks over on any given step, and alternate? I understand that rigidity isn't fully binary, but I figured that buildings were on the more rigid side.
Great snapshot of classic Shanghai architecture, blended with new, like this really cool coffee spot: https://www.archdaily.com/973430/birdie-cup-coffee-fog-archi...
For smaller buildings, you might jack it up, and put wheels under it to move it. For smaller buildings on perimeter foundation, you might unbolt it from the foundation to move it, and attach it to a newly poured foundation at the new location.
Repairing a sinking foundation is similar... Dig under, lift up as needed, fill in under the sinking areas, hopefully with something more stable.
Much taller buildings need deeper anchoring. Small buildings on sites with difficult soil conditions need deeper anchoring too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/05/why-a-swedish-...
At a constant rate that's approximately 1.3 tenths (3.3um) per second, definitely far below the threshold for people noticing.
The robotic part is that all the lifters have load measurement, probably in at least 3 axes, and report stresses to the controller. Other ways of moving big structures require getting big rigid steel beams underneath to make the building strong enough to move. Like these US building moves.[2]
Sorry, could only find reference in Greek language but the pictures and diagrams are universal :) plus translation options are always available https://www.mixanitouxronou.gr/to-ekklisaki-pou-xethemelioth...
It's just expensive and there's no reason to do that unless the city is being actively developed, which Shanghai still is, and older structures are in the way.
I wonder if humanity in the future will make this a typical part of every house so that they can slowly move towards or away from water.
e.g. When NYC expanded its subway system for the first time in 50 years in 2017, it cost $2.5 billion per mile. 8-12x more expensive than similar projects in foreign cities.
There might be too much regulation and too much cost and too many meetings and too many contractors and too much political conflict to do many of the feats we did in the 19th and 20th century.
Earliest example on wikipedia seems to be from 1930:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Building_(Indianapolis)
More here:
In order to renovate/rebuild the bridge they first built a new half (full lanes) next to the old bridge, collapsed the old bridge, then built the other half where the external half of the old bridge used to be, and finally moved the previously newly built half to join that latter new half, so that the new bridge can take the place of the old one, all of this while parts of it could still be used for traffic.
It is the kind of "German Engineering" which people used to talk about, but sadly our government didn't feel that this was an opportunity to do some proper PR. The Chinese have become experts at this kind of PR.
We've been moving buildings for 100s of years, its cool to see the advances in it.
I'm sure they're doing something more elaborate there, but in residential you do this underpinning technique if you want to replace or extend your foundation (in my case, putting a basement where there is a crawl space), where you mark the foundation into 2' segments and label them A, B, C. Then you go through and dig/cut out all the "A"s, and pour footings and foundations in place, then repeat for the Bs and Cs. I'm thinking about doing this for my crawl space just to have some more space for storage.
Using words like "robots" and "AI" shows how much hype has taken over the latter two fields, with actual achievements being modest in comparison to the hype.
Seeing the time lapse of that whole city block being moved in one lump made me think of that. Very cool.
