I don't remember the image having a name, but it's from Gerard Oneill's book The High Frontier, Human Colonies in Space. - see OP's link.

It makes a lot of sense in the "Elysium" sense. A rich resort getaway.

It wouldnt be all blue and nice sky either, because no atmosphere. Unless they tinted the glass blue I guess but even then you would either have a permanent night or permanent full on solar hyper radiation. Like how would lighting that even work?

You'd clearly have a roof/floor all over, and it would all be artificial light.

Oh, and levels. You'd get way more use out of the space by making sublevels. But maybe they have that in the picture it's hard to say. Shit, all that dead space would be filled top to bottom of the torus, why leave all those precious cubics empty?

If would be DS9, not Rama.

Agree, for sure. Still, the dream of chill accessible green space is real and should not be ignored. I think low-medium rise, high density with lots of interspersed green spaces is the optimal for cities. I think it can be done such that most land is much greener and more connected than modern suburbs.

and save room for wild nature.

Arguably space habitat is the ultimate way to achieve that goal on earth :-)

Well, if you assume that the air recycling will be done by plants, you are going to have a need for a huge biosphere and probably for a lot of oceanic biome. If you plan on having an agriculture, if you plan on having pollinating insects, you are going to need a huge biomass.

You're going to have far more nature than you will have humans.

This setting usually assumes that you have a fast transport network built in the core infrastructure. So being spread out is less of a problem, especially if you have free electricity through solar panel. That means that moving stuff around on electric motor is going to be basically free.

In a space station I think it'd basically be all high-density pods with a few small shared green spaces for mental health..

Cool and interesting seems like two amazing reasons to do it.

I hate that we live under a mental paradigm that the only thing that matters is efficiency, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

Shit, the nazis were super efficient, doesn't mean they had a good thing going.

Due to low gravity and few pathogens, it might be something people will do for retirement. You can probably expand the time of healthy active years well into your 80/90ties that way.

Given the way society is currently set up, if we pursue space colonization then it'll become a luxury for billionaires to escape an unlivable planet. Worse, the hoards of the capital will have even less desires to fix things.

(This is not some doomer or accelerationist take, just hating on billionaires.)

If we could agree on such a great project and make it happen, that would have a massive benefit for our overcoming the very problem you are talking about.

If we could just agree to do something great together then that in itself would solve a lot of social ills.

Cooperation, not competition. That is the key.

Mine went to

😁

The colours