{"id":1310,"date":"2010-02-07T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2010-02-06T14:58:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T20:58:32","slug":"salt-and-infrastructure-beneath-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2010\/02\/07\/salt-and-infrastructure-beneath-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt and infrastructure beneath the city"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder where all that road salt comes from?\u00a0 A question that’s quite topical today.\u00a0 Mammoth has a post up<\/a> on an operating salt mine<\/a> beneath the city of Detroit.<\/p>\n

\"Detroit<\/a>

Detroit Salt Mine<\/p><\/div>\n

John Nystuen has a discussion of the legal implications<\/a>, acquiring mineral rights for salt 1,000 feet below the surface of an active city.\u00a0 His map of the area shows the approximate extent of the mine in Southwest Detroit.<\/p>\n

\"Approximate<\/a>

Approximate extent of the Detroit Salt Mine. Image from John Nystuen<\/p><\/div>\n

Nystuen notes that the shape of the mine lends itself to the economies of scale in negotiating mineral rights contracts with the larger, industrial landowners.\u00a0 The main east-west axis that connects these areas lies beneath a rail yard.\u00a0 Much of this area of Detroit is extremely industrial.\u00a0 The middle branch of the mine above extends right up to the edge of Ford’s massive Rouge complex<\/a>. This above-ground landscape has some fascinating visuals<\/a>, particularly as it ages but remains in use.<\/p>\n

The layers of underground infrastructure are fascinating – everything from storm and sanitary sewers, subways, aqueducts, and other utilities – to active industry such as this.\u00a0 DC doesn’t have the same kind of active resource extraction, but it does have some massive<\/a> water<\/a> supply<\/a> infrastructure<\/a> that feeds the city’s reservoirs.\u00a0 Not all of it is active, either – but the vestiges of these underground operations on the surface of the city is quite interesting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"McMillan<\/a>

McMillan Sand Filtration site. Image from M.V. Jantzen on flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

This isn’t new ground for Mammoth.\u00a0 Mammoth’s interest in the forms of infrastructure and the design of spaces “looking for an architect” is fascinating, I always look forward to reading their thoughts on the matter<\/a>.\u00a0 Of particular interest is the disconnect between designed, architectural spaces and networked, infrastructural ones.\u00a0 For some reason, there’s enough of a disconnect where the infrastructural frameworks lack the design gravitas – not everything can be a Calatrava-designed bridge, nor does that bridge alone show the true nature of the network’s design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder where all that road salt comes from?\u00a0 A question that’s quite topical today.\u00a0 Mammoth has a post up on an operating salt mine beneath the city of Detroit. John Nystuen has a discussion of the legal implications, acquiring mineral rights for salt 1,000 feet below the surface of an active city.\u00a0 His map […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[452,116,483,158,159,157,151,92,152,156,160],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc","category-detroit","tag-detroit","tag-industry","tag-infrastructure","tag-land-use-law","tag-mcmillan-filtration-site","tag-salt","tag-snomg","tag-snow","tag-snowpocalypse","tag-underground","tag-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-l8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}