Video of the Week: Shanghai Robots Move Housing Block

Here we have an entire block of buildings being moved a few hundred metres out of the way so that its old location can be better developed.

The block being moved, in Shanghai, has significant historic value and therefore the authorities did not want to lose that culture. But, progress being progress, the new development adjacent to it needed the space - so what are you gonna do? That's right - build unique robot 'movers', dig underneath the entire neighbourhood and allow them to 'walk' the buildings to their new home.

It's not just the successful execution of this idea - which is phenomenal, even if the Chinese guys in the video don't seem remotely pleased with what they've achieved - it's the idea itself that I love. Imagine having the confidence to suggest it as a solution in the first place! The problems were obvious (and not unique) - well-loved buildings in way of progress. To have even conceived that "We'll just move them out of the way" is brilliant.

Then to have made it happen is just mind-blowing.

Congrats to everyone involved - I reckon this tech will save a load of culturally-important buildings across the world, enabling future developments that might otherwise not be possible and encouraging a deeper level of possible agreement between the environmental protection lobby and that of developers themselves.