L4 Settlement Part 8

Some more ideas, starting with countable roles to be fulfilled.

I did a quick search about numbers of professionals per capita for healthcare and education.

Doctors ought to be about 2.5 per 1000 or 1250 for the entire settlement. I would assign a quarter of the doctors to each live in a Quarter of the settlement. In this way the doctors in a quarter can split their time between the medical clinic within the Quarter and the hospital downtown.

Nurses ought to be about 15 per 1000 or 7500 for the entire settlement. I would assign these at 2.25 per apartment block; this way every apartment block would have 2 or 3 nurses. These nurses can help with any needs within their apartment block, or at the medical clinic, or at the hospital. If, for example, there are gerontological or palliative care needs for someone within an apartment block, the pair of nurses there could take turns being close by.

Patient attendants ought to be about 20 per 1000 or 10,000 for the entire settlement. I would assign these to be 3 per apartment complex, this way if there is a gerontological or palliative care person at the apartment, the patient attendant can be there, or can be at the hospital.

Primary school teachers ought to be 6 per 1000 or 3000 for the entire settlement. I would assign a quarter of these teachers to live in each Quarter of the settlement so as to teach in one of the four primary schools held within, preferably living in an apartment complex close to their school.

Secondary school teachers ought to be 8 per 1000 or 4000 for the entire settlement. Similar to the primary teachers, I would assign a quarter of these teachers to live in each Quarter of the settlement so as to teach in the one secondary school of that quarter, preferably in an apartment complex close to the secondary school.

I determined that 4.4% of our total population would be university age students which gives us 22000 students. Given a student to teacher average ratio of 25:1 this would require 880 university teachers. The university is downtown so these teachers could live anywhere within the settlement. Their preference could be to live in an apartment complex close to the university, but I would leave it open to them.

As mentioned in the nurses and patient attendants section above, if someone within an apartment complex reaches a certain elderly age where they start to need help, obviously well before that their apartment would be changed to be a ground floor apartment if they had previously been on the second or third floor. One or two of the ground floor apartments can be converted to be a long term care room to make it easier for the nurse and patient attendants to help with the elderly person. We would have them age in place rather than have a long term care home that groups them all together for efficiency. The doctors described above can make house calls to any such patients by going to visit the patients that are in the apartment complexes closest to where they live. Additionally, anyone else living in that apartment complex can spend time with this elderly person.

Pool lifeguards; I found that having about 16 per municipal pool can handle all the needs of that pool. This could be reduced to a quarter in the pre and post summer season if the pool opens earlier than school lets out and has reduced hours. For the 16 pools at the settlement we would need 256 lifeguards; assigned to have a quarter of them to live in each Quarter, preferably each living in an apartment complex close to the pool where they fulfill that role. Perhaps an additional 16 would be needed at the Olympic pool adjacent to the university.

There are likely other roles that I am not thinking of presently, but they would be counted up and assigned as are the ones mentioned above. It is difficult to determine how many people are needed to fulfill roles in the farm cylinder or the industry cylinder, or for bureacratic or recreational roles.

From my own city I would make an agreement with Cozey to have an ongoing order of a wide variety of sofas, chairs and accessories that would be shipped to the warehouse near the launch from Earth space port; to be flown up to the Earth's mid LEO gateway station, to then be loaded onto an L4-Earth ferry ship to be delivered to the settlement zero g box warehouse and then distributed to the apartments within the apartment complexes as citizens arrive. If we have sufficient units in our stock, the newly arrived citizens would get to choose from the variety, then it would be 'shipped' to their apartment by our logistics/warehouse team, and then the citizens can assemble them.

I would order a combination of Casper and Endy boxed mattresses for the beds. We would have a factory in the industry cylinder to make the metal rails of the bed frame, but could import from Earth a small selection of a variety of headboard-footboard combinations that would make use of the metal rails to create the bed. For ease of ordering and for ordering of sheet sets, every bed in the settlement will be of identical size - Full (75" x 53").

The industry cylinder would also have a factory to create towel racks for the bathrooms of the apartment complexes, however, we would likely need to import bathroom mirrors from Earth and hope that they don't break during lift off from Earth. Once at the mid-LEO Earth gateway station they ought to be okay. Perhaps once it is known what elements we can get from the asteroids we could find a way to fabricate mirrors in our industry cylinder.

The apartment complex kitchens will have six or eight induction burners, three or four electric ovens, one or two refridgerators, a commercial dishwasher, and one or two freezers in addition to all sorts of cooking equipment. Most of the food will come on an almost daily basis from the farm, so there won't need to be tonnes of storage, however, occasional shipments from Earth that are plentiful enough for many (or all) apartment complexes could require the need for more storage. There will be stainless steel counters and fixtures that will be produced at the settlement, but the actual induction burners, ovens and other appliances will need to be shipped from Earth. Somewhere in the kitchen or dining hall area will be a small raised bed herb garden so as to provide various fresh herbs for the cooks.

The communal dining area will have long rectangular tables and chairs that could sit eight per table and can be removed if ever that dining area space wants to be opened up for different kinds of events or for more easily cleaning the floor. There would be a fountain drink station that is open at all times as well as snacks so that outside of meal time, people from the apartment complex can still come here and have a snack and drink.