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I don't see anything wrong with revisiting the arcology concept
except that this seems like a return to the idea of the total design
solution, leaving no space for the actual inhabitant to participate
and no room for the free evolution cities need to avoid eventual
dysfunction. This is very much a perpetuation of the professional
architect's ideal of perfect and immortal design that is at odds
with the reality of the modern urban habitat. So you might assemble
some team of multidisciplinary professional experts to do
development as a group, but it's still a hermetic process of
master-planning that leaves the people who will live in this space
out of the process and severely limits what they can and can't do in
the future. <br>
<br>
The most important of the arcology concepts of Paulo Soleri was the
one he himself so often ignored; the Linear City. The arcology
vision of the future was one of miniaturizing the footprint of the
built habitat to a kind of urban web, returning to nature the space
we squandered on suburbs and the automobile, confining the human
habitat to within a modest fixed distance from a select few transit
routes, freely expanding upward and along their length but not
outward. But the big monumental 'nodal' arcologies were not really
intended to do that job. Indeed, they were never about population
management as is so often attributed to them, functioning more as
centers of culture than concentrations of population. Like other
concepts of the Megastructure movement, they were intended to be a
response to the Leisure Crisis once believed to be imminent with
Total Automation. The primary arcology was the collective, web-like,
Linear City that would eventually span the globe. In Soleri's
vision, most of the population was supposed to live at a roughly
outer-urban/suburban density in the Linear City that would
incrementally subsume the few remaining high-volume transit
corridors, internalizing them with the benefit of future electric
powered transportation. Located at the crossroads of the Linear
City's branches, the nodal arcology was to denote the geographical
logistical and cultural 'points of interest' previously represented
by old cities. He imagined the nodal arcologies as having limited
lifespans because of their monumental nature and monolithic
construction, being obsolesced, torn down, and replaced
periodically, their populations and functions temporarily absorbed
into the Linear City web which, unlike the nodal arco, would never
become obsolete because it was perpetually adaptive. But as
important as the Linear City was, it didn't appeal as much to
Soleri's ego because it never needed the same gargantuan scale of
structure, was more functionally generic in architecture rather than
totally designed, more freely adaptive within its linear confines,
and more under the control of its inhabitants. Later on in life
Soleri did finally seem to clue-into the need to better promote the
Linear City concept and more of his work began to emphasize this,
but it was a bit too late.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://arcosanti.org/sites/default/files/images/LLC%20in%20Fall%207x14.jpg">https://arcosanti.org/sites/default/files/images/LLC%20in%20Fall%207x14.jpg</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.florence-expo.com/back/imgsup/id2789_img3_IMAG_2.jpg">http://www.florence-expo.com/back/imgsup/id2789_img3_IMAG_2.jpg</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://arcosanti.org/sites/default/files/images/photo110921d1.jpg">http://arcosanti.org/sites/default/files/images/photo110921d1.jpg</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ilgiornaledellarchitettura.com/immagini/IMG2012022216492725_900_700.jpeg">http://www.ilgiornaledellarchitettura.com/immagini/IMG2012022216492725_900_700.jpeg</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.archinfo.it/glry/Paolo_Soleri_Sympa_gen_2011/27.jpg">http://www.archinfo.it/glry/Paolo_Soleri_Sympa_gen_2011/27.jpg</a><br>
<br>
I often say that the future of the human habitat may be very much as
Soleri envisioned, but without the giant arcologies because, in the
digital era, they're redundant in the very context they were
intended for. There will probably still be nodal centers of culture,
but such scale of structure was never really needed and monumental
structures work against the contemporary notion of a cultural
cultivator. Culture wants a festival, not a museum or a cathedral.
We still think about the city and the built habitat too much as a
collection of buildings rather than a social landscape, a stigmergic
living infrastructure, a 'backplane' formed by social and logistical
attractors. So we tend to engage in over-design. It's like athletic
shoes today. They're so over-engineered to an exact model of an
idealized human foot that most of them never actually comfortably
fit anyone's feet! We don't need urban bonsai. We need an urban
permaculture. <br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/13/14, 5:22 AM,
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:p2p-foundation-request@lists.ourproject.org">p2p-foundation-request@lists.ourproject.org</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:mailman.1079.1415881354.4299.p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org"
type="cite">From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Stefano Serafini</b>
<span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:stefanonikolaevic@gmail.com">stefanonikolaevic@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:56 PM<br>
Subject: [P2P-URBANISM] vertical!<br>
To: p2p urbanism list <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:p2p-urbanism-world-atlas@googlegroups.com">p2p-urbanism-world-atlas@googlegroups.com</a>><br>
<br>
<br>
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Dear friends,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>please check it out:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rayking/vertical-city-a-solution-for-sustainable-living"
target="_blank">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rayking/vertical-city-a-solution-for-sustainable-living</a>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sustainability and skyrocketing got married. Of course the
book looks like a propaganda pamphlet, but I think we should
consider this trend seriously, and not dismiss it with easy
jokes. We cannot dismiss these people simply by saying that
they are paid by multinational real estate companies, or that
they are lobotomized and/or evil. This is not the point.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Of course "urban islands" (or "continents") in the
wilderness sound to me like a nightmare - especially
considering all we know about neuroergonomics, biophilia,
nature-deficit disorder, etc. But possibly this is were the
market is leading, helped by the rethoric of "green economy"
(I guess that all the industry plants will be settled on Mars,
right?).<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>The authors of the book write down: "Our team is a group
of architects, entrepreneurs and visionaries who believe
that Vertical Cities are a potential solution to many of
humanity's greatest problems. We meet regularly in Portland,
Oregon.<br>
Our Mission is to create a healthy, harmonious, sustainable
and dignified life for everyone through the emerging
technologies of Vertical Cities."<br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We should analyze again the urban future these people are
preparing. Why they are doing it, their reasons, their
scientific and technological ground, their urban and political
ideology, and the reason why things like a "Council on Tall
Buildings and Urban Habitat" exists and is funded by
somebody. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>They look like sharing the same old dream of LeCorbusier,
just on a larger scale, where "les machines-à-habiter" become
whole cities instead of buildings. Possibly, they reflected
about the mistakes brought in by that model, and tried to
solve it by transforming cities into (huge) buildings, and
buildings into cities.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The main reasons for a vertical growth seem the need for
setting more building-free land, in order to preserve "nature"
and food production and reduce human footprint. In fact the
monstruous urban growth of several metropolises since the '90s
seems to substantiate such a point of view. World population
is growing and it's becoming urban at a hugely accelerated
pace. Are there enough data to corroborate that compact
traditional-like cities are a solution out of modern
horizontal sprawl? What about land-hungry Countries like
Japan?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>All the best,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Stefano</div>
<div>
<div><br clear="all">
<div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Dr. Stefano Serafini<br>
<p>
Research director, International Society of
Biourbanism<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.biourbanism.org/" target="_blank">www.biourbanism.org</a>
| <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.biourbanistica.com/"
target="_blank">www.biourbanistica.com</a><br>
Managing editor, Journal of Biourbanism<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.journalofbiourbanism.org"
target="_blank">www.journalofbiourbanism.org</a><br>
Tel./fax <a moz-do-not-send="true">(+39) 0695190008</a>
- Mob. <a moz-do-not-send="true">(+39) 3939426561</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:stefano.serafini@biourbanism.org"
target="_blank">stefano.serafini@biourbanism.org</a><br>
Via G. Giardini, 15b - 00133 Roma | Italy<span
class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
</font></span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Eric Hunting
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:erichunting@gmail.com">erichunting@gmail.com</a></pre>
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