Robots move Shanghai city block [video]

Posted by surprisetalk 7/3/2025

Robots move Shanghai city block [video](www.youtube.com)

157 points | 53 commentspage 2

mensetmanusman 7/5/2025|

Changing the view of the Bellevue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I52IwcC3a3c&pp=ygUaTW92aW5nIGJ...

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.

netsharc 7/5/2025|

Hah, people sometimes wonder "This isn't where I parked my car, and it's pointing in a different direction", imagine returning to a building and its pointing a different direction

jffry 7/5/2025||

Here is an article that seems to be the primary source for the time-lapses: https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20250605/...

CommenterPerson 7/5/2025||

This is a tremendous engineering, coordination and public works feat.

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.

joshdavham 7/5/2025||

This reminded me of that classic SpongeBob clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyn-0af_hlI

bmmayer1 7/4/2025||

This is incredible -- serious question -- has anything of this scale been done in the US or Europe? Do we even have the technology?

crooked-v 7/4/2025||

Check out the raising of Chicago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago). From buildings up to entire city blocks were raised, moved on rollers, or both, usually while businesses and residents stayed in them for normal day-to-day life.

wenc 7/5/2025|||

Chicago also reversed the flow of the Chicago River.

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).

userbinator 7/5/2025|||

In five days the entire assembly was elevated 4 feet 8 inches

At a constant rate that's approximately 1.3 tenths (3.3um) per second, definitely far below the threshold for people noticing.

dcrazy 7/4/2025|||

In 1930 they moved an entire telephone exchange in Indianapolis without even taking it offline: https://indianahistory.org/blog/instead-of-moving-mountains-...

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.

pxc 7/4/2025||

So the impressive thing is really the social coordination, the project management, which was doubtless challenging but is hardly unique.

It's still kind of a wonderful, imo. And it's awesome to be able to see it on video like this.

seabass 7/5/2025|||

The town of Kiruna in Sweden is currently being relocated because it is sinking into the iron mine that originally led to the founding of the town. Some buildings are being relocated on tracks in a similar way to that Shanghai video.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/05/why-a-swedish-...

orbital-decay 7/5/2025|||

Structure relocation is 19th century tech, still as fascinating as back then. This was done all over the world, on a much bigger scale than a single block. In some US cities in particular, and in Moscow they moved entire streets like that, with people inside.

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.

hombre_fatal 7/5/2025||

I think the real question is whether we can do it today.

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.

janfoeh 7/4/2025|||

Here is the Kaisersaal in Berlin being moved on air cushions in 1996 [1]. And wasn't a better part of Chicago jacked up building by building some time in the 19th century to make room for a sewage system?

[1] https://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv-artikel/hier-schwebt-ein-den...

quakeguy 7/5/2025||

The Sonic Youth Gig there was awesome ;)

gbil 7/5/2025|||

Back in 1991 a church built in the 1500s was moved on rails at Kifissia, Greece. Sure, not the same scale but taking into consideration the time it was built, it was a great achievement

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...

mayneack 7/4/2025|||

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel#Relocation

In the 60s a massive stone monument was moved 200m up in elevation to avoid being flooded by a dam.

mmsc 7/4/2025|||

Yes, it has been common enough, no "robots" required. The Indiana Bell Building is a famous one from a century ago, which gets videos posted about it on social media ever so often.

foxglacier 7/5/2025|||

Not the same scale but the 4-story concrete building The Museum Hotel in New Zealand was moved on rails in the 1990's https://www.rejigit.co.nz/database/redactor_images/large/689...

Maybe the scale of these other moves were limited by not having the adaptable height jacks to keep everything straight.

dluan 7/5/2025|||

Something similar but different was back in the early 1900s, several city blocks in Seattle were moved or relocated when large chunks of the city were blasted away with water to flatten it. Although most old buildings were simply demolished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle

slyall 7/5/2025|||

Moving single buildings is pretty common

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_relocation

piptastic 7/4/2025|||

not quite the same scale area wise, but interesting nonetheless https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how...

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)

funkaster 7/5/2025|||

lower tech/scale but in Chile (in the island of Chiloe) they have been doing this for centuries for individual houses: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/moving-houses-of-chilo... - although no smart jacks, only bulls and people.

timmb 7/5/2025||

In Romania in the 80s, a number of churches were moved to make space for new building projects. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/dec/14/bucharest-mov...

codedokode 7/5/2025||

Wikipedia says building were being moved since 19th century. We also had a large-scale building relocation during Stalin's Moscow Reconstruction (basically, destroying beautiful historical houses to expand ancient curvy streets into straight wide roads) - some buildings were moved without cutting water supply, electricity and even with residents inside [1]. This probably was intended to showcase the achievements of Soviet engineering but judging by the comments here (and by English Wikipedia article on the topic) nobody even remembers this.

Personally I think that there should be no new construction in historical areas and there is no need to move anything.

[1] https://www.mos.ru/en/news/item/13744073/