Could this city/forest urban landscape design I visualize ever become workable?

Hmm. You want to build an underground transport system way below the level of the tree roots.

Just what do you think that would do to the ecosystem and most particularly, the rain forest?

Not in the rainforest. Rainforest trees have shallow root systems and are pretty fragile, plus the ground is not conducive to that kind of construction unless you completely clear the land.

Perhaps if you could find a hardwood or redwood forest, you could build a city like that. But I’d rather you left the forests alone.

If you were a dictator it would be interesting to convert an existing city that way, someplace like Seattle or San Francisco. But I think the residents would object.

I think it might drive away the wildlife and force them further into crowding.

Forget about the city structure… how do you feed those people? Where does their water come from? How is sewage treated? Electricity? There’s a lot more to a city than buildings and transit. And subway transit isn’t so great for getting across town when there are no cabs.

@zenvelo Thanks. That was helpful. Of course I don’t see a reason why humans would go out of their way to integrate a city with a forest. Unless there is no choice. But for whatever fantastic reason, you are saying it’s possible to do such a symbiotic fusion?

@CWOTUS Everything that a city needs would have its own place, a water reservoir, its water treatment plant, electric stations. I don’t think its beyond human engineering skills to make it all possible.

Sure. I think we can probably build a city anwhere. Maybe the city would be very vertical with the forest all around it, so you don’t take away too much land? You could commute from the 50th floor down to the business offices on the lower floors. Take bridges out to the forest. There could also be floors that have no walls in various parts of the buildings open to the outside with indigenous plants. Maybe you don’t want to make the buildings taller than the typical tallest trees? That might limit things a little.

@JLeslie Yes. Whatever works as long as you have a functioning city and an existing forest combined. Thinking about how beautiful it would look is amazing.

And if a new city is to be built, why not make it that way, increase the number of trees in the planet?

@mazingerz88 Yes, you could do it if you had the political will and buy-in.

I’d suggest a lot of trails for mountain bikes.

@zenvelo Oh yeahh. I’d do it if I were the Sultan of Brunei. Instead of building a golden palace with a huge underground harem. Planning alone would probably take 10 years though and 150 years before completion. More or less. It would take generations to say the least.

Now’s time to call upon the elves for assistance. They’ve been building forests into trees for centuries! I’m sure they’ve rainforest dwellers, too.

I don’t know, but it sounds beautiful. @ddude1116 Don’t forget the Ewoks!

@augustlan Yes! Ewoks are infinitely more diplomatic, too!

It’s nice to have dreams, I suppose, but I like dreams that have at least a passing resemblance to the real world that people actually live in.

It’s not feasible to imagine an actual city – where people can live in structures, and not trees and caves – that doesn’t include actual “structure”, meaning building materials transported to the site/s and somehow raised into place and fastened.

The building materials can be found at some sites, such as mud and straw for bricks, sticks and logs for wood construction, and so on. But even so, those things have to be processed in some way to be usable for “city” construction. Bricks have to be shaped and kiln fired. Lumber has to be sawn into consistent shapes. It’s not feasible to suggest that massive quantities of building materials can be transported – especially to a place that doesn’t even “exist” yet – via a subway that also hasn’t been built. You’ll need surface roads, and a lot of them. Maybe even railroads.

Electric power generation won’t simply “happen” somewhere, no matter how carefully you decide to plan for it and segregate it. The power plant is another huge capital investment requiring transportation of materials and workers. They aren’t likely to arrive by subway, either. Transmission of the power is another issue entirely. If you expect to develop strictly solar or wind power, then good luck to you. Assuming you don’t plan to be at the mercy of the diurnal cycle and variable weather conditions, you’ll need massive battery storage (or maybe pumped storage of water for off-hours hydro generation), and… lots more land and materials.

Handling the provision of potable water and draining / pumping sewage also takes piping. Yes, open canals and aqueducts for water, and open sewage canals have “worked” through history, but they’ve also killed untold millions of people in awful ways at an early age, too. If that’s your idea of “saving the planet”, then don’t sign me up for this project. Again: you need the workers, the building materials and the places to put these things. A sewage treatment plant also doesn’t stand alone and pristinely closed off somewhere. (Potable water treatment plants may not be as noxious, but they are every bit as dangerous.)

As to the question of why people would even want to live in this city, if it had no industry to speak of, that’s another open question.