Poke around a bit on http://www.arcosanti.org

Basically this architect, Paolo Soleri, makes designs for buildings that are cities. The cool part is they are self sufficient and can hold 60% more people than the average city in the same space. The current working project, Arcoanti, is more like a trial to see how well these ideas hold up.

Wikipedia puts it into better words than I can.

Arcology is a term invented by architect Paolo Soleri, and is a portmanteau of architecture and ecology. So far these constructs exist only conceptually with experiments taking place at Arcosanti in central Arizona, USA. An arcology is an extremely large building, sufficient to maintain an internal ecology as well as an extremely high human population density. Popular in science fiction, arcologies are generally advocated as solutions to the problems of overpopulation and environmental degradation, as they reduce the footprint of cities. Most cities spread across the Earth's surface horizontally — covering more and more land and reducing arable farmland. Arcologies would be 'vertical cities'.

I find this idea problematical. I'm not seeing how a tall building can be self-sufficient. How is sufficient light introduced to grow enough plants to support this very large population? How is sufficient water collected to provide for irigation, etc?

Soleri needs to read Malthus... :yes:

sounds great.
More people, less space, artificial internal ecology.
We should rip up lots of land & build loads them.
Brilliant idea.

We should rip up lots of land & build loads them.
How many animals would that kill?

Soleri needs to read Malthus... :yes:

Why? Perhaps he took high school microeconomics too and settled on a non malthusian growth model.

I've been to Arcosanti a few times and, while it's interesting, just to avoid any confusion, it doesn't function as a self-contained city. They buy food, clothing, etc. from outside. All they make there are bells (which frankly I find rather ugly) to sell to tourists. Almost everyone who lives there makes bells, so living there would be kind of limiting career-wise. It is interesting as a model of environmentally friendly architecture though. His "vertical city" plans are just theoretical. The "experiments taking palce at Arcosanti," at least the last time I visited, was just a small-scale model. Interesting ideas, but I don't see how living vertically would appeal to me personally. That's part of the reason I moved from NYC to AZ in the first place! If any of you get a chance to visit Arcosanti, though, it is definitely worth the visit because it does get you thinking about all the possiblities of environmentally-friendly city planning.

We have the technology to build civilizations in the middle of the most "uninhabitable" regions of this planet. We can create our own materials seemingly from nothing these days and manufacture self-sustaining environments in enclosed man-made structures that are impervious to the elements. We have the technology to light these spaces artificially and create beautiful and healthy "in-scapes" for human habitation. So why are we still moving to mountain tops and cuting down old-growth forests to build homes and the like?

We have the technology to build civilizations in the middle of the most "uninhabitable" regions of this planet. We can create our own materials seemingly from nothing these days and manufacture self-sustaining environments in enclosed man-made structures that are impervious to the elements. We have the technology to light these spaces artificially and create beautiful and healthy "in-scapes" for human habitation. So why are we still moving to mountain tops and cuting down old-growth forests to build homes and the like?


Really? What materials are made "seemingly from nothing?" Last I heard, it takes oodles and oodles of energy, usually from fossil fuels, to make synthetic materials.

Ok. I guess that was a little over the top. LOL. Sorry for that

but...

Stone, plastics, glass, metal, etc. Non wood materials. once the places were built, they could be self-contained. but then, Ludi, i am still in the mindset that we don't belong here. I read the article that you posted for me in the other thread but I have held my beliefs about us not really belonging here for a long time. I will consider what I read but for now, I think it would be best for us to use our technology to create artificial civilisations in places on the earth where other life can't thrive.

Or we could choose to build communities on the earth in a way which allows other life to thrive with us.

Permaculture is a technology which promotes this idea.

http://www.permacultureactivist.net/

I should point out that building cities in places hostile to life takes enormous amounts of resources. Large cities in the desert US are examples of this, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, etc. These place just suck up resources, because they are unable to support themselves from what is locally available. They steal resources from other areas in order to stay alive. I don't see that as being sustainable or reasonable.

OK. Think about the movie Logan's Run. I like the idea of a fully enclosed self-supporting environment. Part of why i have always felt that we don't belong here is because we are so comfortable being inside and we are so easily addicted to "artificial" foods and "comforts". We are constantly re-constructing this planet to suit our needs (whatever they are). We even invent new colors for ourselves. We even seem to have this natural desire to pop pills and drugs to "fix" things. Have you ever wondered why everything on this planet makes us sick? God, I think one of the most compelling reasons for Veganisn is that almost every dread disease that we have encountered as a species has come from animals. I believe that that alone makes a pretty good argument for us not actually belonging here. lets see... The world here is toxic and uninhabitable to our species and our culture is toxic to this world.

This world was fine for billions of years and now, since seemingly 30000 or so years ago, we are settled in and categorizing and naming things, assigning ages to the rocks, re-formulating the air, and in general we have been trying to find a way off of this place for centuries. Heck, we have even succeeded a few times. I know that some folks think the moon landings were all made up but we have the Space Station up and running and there's talk of a Mars Mission in the forseeable future.

The other optimistic solution would be for us to leave this place via a space ship or a labrotory-generated black hole. Either one could be how our kind came to be here in the first place. Our origins are probably less obvious, however and could easily be rooted in ancient scripture but the true nature is most likely lost due to having been re-written and actually re-constructed to suit (once again) the dominant culture. For example, the Noah expedition and the Moses expedition could easily have been the same account and separated to suit the mythos of more than one faction of a religion. The splitting of the Christians in recent history and indeed the re-invention of it in its beginnings as it entered the mainstream are shining examples of this art.

Our kind has indeed assumed the role of counting, categorizing and naming that which needs no counting, categorizing and naming. We have, I believe assumed this mundane task that barely touches the tip of the tail of the tiger which is called discovery out of boredom. We have further amused ourselves by comsuming all that this fine planet has to offer without regard to the consequences. The good thing about our finding our way as categorizers and namers is that in discovering this part of our nature we have begun to once again re-define our nature by definition and in doing so there is now a shift in the culture. Currently, in the field of scientific agreement we have found the nature of DNA. This discovery while hailed as a major "discovery" and the end-all of the basis of human existence is merely the noticing of another "fingerprint" that we all have.

We are no closer to discovering our true nature than we were when Alchemists were creating gold or kings. That actually happened but, as usual, a bunch of quacks got on the bandwagon and the truth was lost.

I suppose that I have rambled enough for now.

All the best,
SG

Yeah, ok, if you want to go live in space, or in a controlled environment, I think you should go do that. But I don't want to, and I know a lot of other people who don't want to. We like living on this planet with our brothers and sisters the other living things, and want to stay here. I can arrange my life to share it with other beings, but I can't arrange to live in a controlled environment or in space. So I'm not personally interested in those options. I believe in helping people pursue options that they actually have some ability to bring to reality, and most people don't have any ability to get involved in space colonization or controlled environment living. But those that want to do those things, I think they should. Just don't insist everyone else do it too.

Yeah, ok, if you want to go live in space, or in a controlled environment, I think you should go do that.
Erm... I get what you're referring to but I wouldn't exactlycall it a "controlled" environment. More an Engineered environment for optimal human existence. No sickness, predictable, optimized design.

But I don't want to, and I know a lot of other people who don't want to. We like living on this planet with our brothers and sisters the other living things, and want to stay here.
I am totally cool with that. I am just talking about taking things to the next level here. Not everybody has to agree but we can still be brothers and sisters nonetheless.:sunny:
I believe in helping people pursue options that they actually have some ability to bring to reality, and most people don't have any ability to get involved in space colonization or controlled environment living. :no: I know, I know.. Some gut just paid $20,000,000.00 to go to the space station. It's totally out of reach for most of us now but who knows what the future holds...

Best,
Soy

Erm... I get what you're referring to but I wouldn't exactlycall it a "controlled" environment. More an Engineered environment for optimal human existence. No sickness, predictable, optimized design.


A fantasy, in other words.

...Continued from above...

for those of us who are interested in such things. ;)

best.

A fantasy, in other words.

Kind of like changing the entire world's dominant culture? :p hey, I'm actually open to either and maybe both ideas.

best

Well, as unlikley as I think changing the culture is, it's at least maybe in a remote way in the realm of possibility, whereas an environment without sickness? When we don't even know the cuases of many illnesses? I'm guessing you're talking about the fairly distant future, whereas I'm talking about people living now, and making decisions about what they believe in. People have control over their own beliefs, they don't have control over esoteric unknown technologies of the future.

We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dreams.

Hmm. :) I guess, just for myself personally, I'm more interested in solutions which I can participate in, rather than those I can't. But that's not saying I think people shouldn't dream, I think they should.

Well I figured more people would be open to the idea of an Arcology considering all of the people complaining about how we are spreading development in to areas where wildlife live. This would not so much be as an enclosed building as a space station would need to be.

A little note on resource consumption, Arcosanti is looking in to having a solar and fuel cell generator installed. It will collect lots of solar power during the light and clear days and the extra power will be stored or used to turn water in to hydrogen and oxygen to power the fuel cell during lower light times.

Here's another alternative city:

"Agraria" is intended to be an innovative Low-energy Use, Small, Sustainable Community. The Low-energy Use designation comes from the knowledge that global oil production will peak soon, followed by natural gas, and ultimately by coal and uranium. Low-energy, in the context of this document, implies a goal of using one-fourth of the current average energy used per capita.1 Sustainable implies a community that can operate, to the extent possible, without inputs (particularly of fossil fuels) and outputs (such as trash and sewage), but also of other materials. Small is a designation based on the founding principles of our organization, Community Service, Inc., that states smallness itself is a value for positive social organization. And finally Community implies a way of living together and is also based on the principles of our organization which views a cooperative way of life to be preferable to current competitive ways of living.

http://www.communitysolution.org/agraria.html

And here's a step towards alternative cities: Walkable Neighborhood (http://www.southmainriverpark.com/)

I think we need to also look at how people react to change. We can take small steps towards these more drastic ideas of cities, but not just "do it now". People don't like drastic change; look at the reaction to high gas prices last year. Did people start buying more fuel efficient cars? No, they complained to their elected officials to do some price fixing instead of conserving energy. But as prices steadily rose and then drastically rose, their ideas about efficiency changed for the better. The same will have to happen with the rest of the resources we get in our cities before change happens on a wide scale. It's all a gradual process.

As for building cities/towns only where the local resources allow, well, I would guess that a strong majority of our current cities (and even cities of the past) would never have been built if that was the criteria for building them. Steel is a major construction material and there are a limited number of places to get iron on the continent. Same for limestone used in concrete. Although I have read recently (on Treehugger.com) that people are coming up with various ways of making concrete from other materials than lime. Concrete could be made with local materials, but you still have the problem of reinforcing it for strength; that's usually done with steel. And forests aren't everywhere for structural timbers. However, if we would just go ahead and legalize the growing of hemp, we could solve the problems of not enough building materials almost overnight :yes:

I would also like to see the problem of overpopulation taken on with the simple solution of limited sizes for families. See that Arkansas family of sixteen children lately? They don't live on a farm, so there's no good reason for having that many children. I guess it never entered the parents' minds that their children would be coming into a world that has limited resources :|

http://www.communitysolution.org/agraria.html


And here's a step towards alternative cities: Walkable Neighborhood


Thanks for those links!