Slashdot Mirror

Actually the first step towards the physical realization of arcology took place in 1970 in the middle of the Arizona Desert by the man that coined the terminology. That is if you are discounting the ground work laid by the multi use high rises of the 60 and 70s, such as Chicago's Marina City which with the addition of vertical farming could very well be considered an archology. Ultimately, even with the talk of vertical farming, the idea of archology is only a pipe dream in the United States where land is cheap and there is plenty available. Only once populatation density reaches critical mass will there be a drive for archology solutions.

Don't people have to get to work somehow?

Telepresence. See the Wikipedia telepresence article.

"We must imagine a future without cars."
Designing a city without any cars.
Orson Scott Card on 'walking neighborhoods' (I first thought he was talking of some scifi idea, such as moving neighborhoods, haha.)
Carfree (?)
Monorail Opportunity in Seattle, Washington (1998)

From #19302663:

People got along for thousands of years without cars, so maybe you should consider getting rid of yours.

Also, from #10313790:

This is what I think... There won't be cars in the future. There will only be personalised vehicles to transport each individual. Roads, the larger they are, will not allow single vehicles. There has to be two or more (depending on the road) vehicles required to travel together. Probably the smallest road will allow individual vehicles to travel by themselves. As more vehicles travel together the overall fuel consumption will decrease and fuel efficiency will increase. Individual vehicles will be able to break off from this combined unit as they reach their destinations.

Creating car free cities dupe with >1k comments.

Post #5975896 gets it right:

Even with "emission free" cars, you still expend the energy to move the car to being with. Getting rid of pollution is an important goal, but the ultimate goal should be to conserve the environmental resources required to produce and operate cars. By creating a city in which cars are less necessary, you reduce the energy consumption of the average citizen, even after you factor in the energy required to operate the 24-hour mass transit systems.

Just an interesting tidbit here: "It's things like cars that take people out of public spaces and make a community less safe."
Arcosanti, an interesting experimental town supposedly as an alternative to urban sprawl.
Argument that car-free is too expensive.
An interesting problem in #5975908:

1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!

Apparently Venice is not the solution, either.
Small steps needed to make the change.
Pipes from Futurama? Or maybe, dare it be said, ...

Unless "most of the population" lives "out in the sticks" or BFE (which I doubt, otherwise it wouldn't be called "the sticks" or BFE), I really doubt it.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona - the greater metro area is pretty big. Certainly not as big as LA or NY, but pretty large, and growing constantly (which sucks, IMHO, because I enjoy our desert beauty). There seems to be a Walgreens on every corner. Indeed, I have seen Walgreens move to opposite corners of an intersection - most of the time because they were in a strip mall that was going south. Furthermore, if it isn't a Walgreens, it's an Osco or CVS.

I have a Walgreens within walking distance from my home. Closer to home is an Albertsons with an Osco inside it. Across the street from the Walgreens is a Fry's grocery store, and on the other side is a Circle K. On the last corner is an Autozone.

I am sure there are many people who don't live near a Walgreens, even in the Phoenix area. Most of these people are likely living in new subdevelopments in areas which were once considered "the sticks" not too long ago (
It is really funny to see this herd mentality. Many of these people came to the Phoenix area or moved to these new subdevelopments to "get away from the 'city'", but in the end they end up recreating exactly that which they were trying to escape. The truth is, they can't live without it. If they could, they wouldn't move a mere 20 miles or so away - they would be out in scrubland 100 or more miles out, with their own well (or water tanker/truck), septic system (and/or methane digester), solar/wind/water system for electricity, DirecTV for entertainment/broadband, and cell phones for other communication (or nothing at all, depending on how far out they are). It galls me to see this, as these people are doing nothing more than wasting natural resources, of which we don't have as much as people think we do here in the desert (duh, that's why it is a desert). We're beginning to fight with Nevada and California for water already, and it is only going to get worse. If people were intelligent (I can dream, can't I?), they would congregate within cities in the desert, and build vertical instead of sprawling horizontal, while attempting to use and preserve the natural environment, instead of raping it. The most intelligent would attempt to implement more of Paolo Soleri's arcology and desert living ideas. We need think in more of a "hive" mindset when it comes to living, cities, and scarce resources, especially here in the Phoenix area - because even a city can become a ghosttown if the water runs out.

Although I'd probably qualify them as more hippie than geek, there's Arcosanti, Arizona, not to mention most European cities that have been in existance since before automobiles were invented. I'm personally partial to Dubrovnik, Croatia.

One of the big things to remember in city living is that space is at a premium -- give up the 4 bedroom houses and 3 bathrooms. When you carry most of the things you buy, rather than just drop them in the back of your SUV, you're not likely to do as much impulse buying. And changing out your furniture every year is more difficult when you also have to consider both delivery of the new stuff, and disposal of what you currently have.

It may have other benefits, by providing extra incentives to select items that will last, as opposed to whatever's cheapest.

Starting from scratch is the easiest way to reduce the dependancy on automobiles, but some places are trying to implement disincentives (London w/ a toll for entering the city, Athens w/ restrictions on which cars can enter the town based on their license places). Unfortunately, some don't have the intended results -- in Greece, people would just get a second car, so they had one w/ and odd licenses, and one even.

What is really annoying is 60% of a cities space is dedicated to cars.

That could be easiler utilized by small farms...

Sustainable cities have been dreams since the 60s. Even a half-assed one, but well done in existence, especially since it hasn't received much funding.

http://www.arcosanti.org/

"Now dont think that I'm one of those people that hate driving. I LOVE to drive, I hate HAVING to drive. Suburbs are evil, I applaud companies that stay in the cities."

http://www.arcosanti.org/theory/arcology/intro.htm l

Bet you can't wait for arcologies to come on the scene.

With enough people doing this - there would always be a source of electricity available, and the price would be set - exactly - by supply and demand.

If this were to be done on a large enough scale, with some solar, wind, and ($RenewableOption3), you could avoid large scale electricity generation completely - including the power lines required, and you make use of the vehicles which spend most of their time idle. Heck, with a fuel cell car and a Hydrogen line the cars could be plugged in to both (while at work say), produce electricity for the building, while ending up completely fueled at the end of the day.

(Or - build cities that you can walk in and abandon the car. http://www.arcosanti.org/)

I dont think this one can fly, but someone has been working on the concept for a long while now:

http://www.arcosanti.org/

Somehow, people survived for thousands of years without air conditioning. Could it be that "modern" housing design, where one style suits the entire country, isn't the best idea?

There's a place in Arizona called Arcosanti. It was designed around the philosophy that "modern" housing design is wrong and inefficient. The architect made alot of intelligent design decisions to keep the complex cool, all without Air Conditioning.

I was there a few years ago. It was 105 in the sun. Within the complex, in certain buildings or under the giant arches, it was only 90.

All without air conditioning.

Check into Paul Soleri. He proposed high-density small-footprint city-buildings called "arcologies". His books even show how little room a city like L.A. would take if it were built as an arcology.

It does not seem feasible at this time: the one in the link above is very small and is being built at a snail's pace. Arcologies of the scale Soleri has envisioned have only appeared in the fiction Larry Niven has done in collaboration with other authors. ("Oath of Fealty" and the Dream Park novels)

The solution to the car problem is to build cities that don't need cars. See, for example, arcosanti.

Well you probably seen them in simCity, but didn't know where the term came from. In the 60's Paolo Soleri pioneered the concept of a pedestrian based car free city call an arcology. He released a book called City in the Image Of Man detailing a number of his designs. More information can be had at www.arcosanti.org. Cheers!

Combine this with Pascal Costanza's rather recent (he just revealed it this week) discovery that dynamically bound functions (it's not a CL standard, but he provides a full implementation in his paper in one page of code - try that with Java!) generalize Method Call Invocation and the like, and you really see that AOP isn't anything really new.

It is a way for Kiczales to bring his ideas (and I think they are very good ideas) about programming language reflection to Java. But I don't think this is a good thing, because I don't think Java is a good thing. Chances are only the most trivial parts of the AOP (which is itself a subset of the MOP idea) will make it into mainstream programming in a half-assed way, and then everyone is going to say "we're done, nothing more to do here", just like Java is currently held to be the best OO language ever by some people. (I am especially annoyed by the multiple-inheritance-is-inherently-evil part of the Java camp).

I've recently been reading The Urban Ideal , which is a book of interviews with Paolo Soleri, and in one of them he makes a very lucid statement about the above type of problem, and many of the problems in the world in general. It's now my sig. That is basically what I think of AOP.

Arcosanti is housing project designed and developed by Paolo Soleric

Those bastards aren't going to use Harlan Ellison's screenplay. So don't bother. I'm not surprised. Will Smith's version should be better than the execrable adaptation of Nightfall whose only dubious distinction is that it was filmed at Arcosanti, but it probably won't be better than Robin William's super-schmaltzy Bicentennial Man.

Check out Kit Peak Observatory and Arcosanti.

That said, this bit of video brings up an interesting question that has crossed my mind: What will be the fate of the Center itself? While the focus has been on the destruction of the two main towers, the site itself is very large.

I have heard various suggestions: the owner/developer of the property is considering putting up four new 50-story buildings; some are calling for the twin towers to be rebuilt exactly as they were. NYC officials have been quoted as saying that this is an opportunity for New York to rethink not only its skyline but its vision of itself.

I hope that whatever happens, it is something more interesting that another corporate filing cabinet. Of course there will be an extensive memorial (as well there should be), but doesn't the site deserve something at least as interesting as the twin towers were in the 60s? How about an arcology? Ideas?

Walking around the grounds was somewhat exhausting for a 30-year-old like myself; seniors have often complained about same thing. Because an arcology as Soleri defines it emphasizes vertical integration, Arcosanti employs more staircases than even most urban dwellers are used to. Elevators exist at Arcosanti, but the premium that's put on low energy consumption makes them few and far between. The exercise is heathly, but it's also uncomfortable, especially for visitors expecting Utopia. And Arcosanti's location, the desert, isn't attractive for a lot of people.

It was also difficult to envision any sort of economy of diversity. Being a centrally planned and deployed "city" (a misnomer, according to Soleri), it has all the drawbacks of socialism with none of its merits. Residents are required to develop and maintain (mostly construction work) the project 40 hours a week, and make minimum wage doing so (but the cost of living -- sans cars, shopping malls, rent, etc. -- is dramatically lower). Most of Arcosanti's funding comes from the Soleri bells residents and workshoppers make in the city's foundry, effectively making it a monoculture. And because Arcosanti is designed (and redesigned several times) as a complete, integrated structure, there's little or no space for the growth of commerce. I think that's by design rather than by accident, and Soleri would probably agree, but the lack of career prospects for many potential residents is too limited to make it an attractive proposition that can critical mass into the "urban effect" that Soleri hopes to acheive.

Having said that, I did still enjoy my tour of Arcosanti enough to consider taking a five-week workshop there later this year. By the way, Arcosanti's site appears to be having hosting issues at the moment, but when it's back online, check out the link for the Hyper Building: it's Soleri's commissioned proposal to the Japanese government, which definitely looks as though it inspired the Bionic Building.

I actually visited Arcosanti just last weekend... very interesting place/very ambitious project, but it needs corporate and governmental support, IMHO.

Almost right. What would go under one roof would be Seattle minus all the things that only exist because Seattle isn't all compactly tucked under a roof. The parking and driving infrastructure go right away, of course, as does all the space taken up with lawns. Lots of things that are repeated over and over again so there's always a close one can be repeated fewer times when everything's close.

But remember that the point is not to pack more people in. The point is to free up all that extra space to be open land, available for agriculture, parks, wetlands to protect the water supply and provide habitat, and so on.

And your Bluetooth idea might well work especially well in an arcology. If you have a wireless network access point in each room you still need to have it connected (either wireline or wireless) into the greater network. That might be easier in an arcology.

By the way, you can find more info about arcologies on the Arcosanti home page.