So what’s the latest on arcologies? Enormous, city-in-a-building develops that occasionally make the science fiction books as the most efficient living structures for masses of people.
I know Arcosanti is out there. But has there ever been an actual effort to get one of these off the ground (so to speak) in recent years?
I hear Renraku and Saeder-Krupp had a couple those monsters set up outside Seattle…
I recently saw what appeared to be a British-produced travel show on visiting Japan which featured a massive building of this sort in Tokyo. A large part of that segment was devoted to showing the sub-basement of the building and the engineering that went into building an earthquake-safe edifice that size in Japan. Unfortunately I can’t provide more detail than that.
The University of Bielefeld in Germany took an interesting one-building approach which was still going pretty strong in 1996 when I visited.
I don’t know if either of these meets the strict criteria of matching (not having read the Arcology… book) Soleri’s intent, but those are two examples at least moving in that direction that appear to have had commercial viabilty and/or acceptance.
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup” - H.L. Mencken
To me, it seems as if there’s a bit too much dreamy idealism ans SciFiFlyingCarKitchenOfTomorrowism involved in the whole arcology concept, I mean, yeah, great - you live, work, sleep, shop, exercise, play, eat and reproduce without ever leaving (or ‘having to leave’) a single large structure. I’m sure that’s highly efficient, I’m just not sure it’s either very inspiring or what very many people want. Perhaps someone could explain it to me, starting with “An Arcology is different from a prison because…”
“An arcology is different from a prison because inside an arcology as a free citizen, you might do whatever you choose - as long as you don’t violate other people’s rights -, including leaving it if you wish to do so.”
I don’t want to say I’d like to live in an arcology, nor that I think many people of today would. But I think today’s everyday life would seem disgusting to people from past centuries who were accustomed to a different lifestyle, so I can’t see a reason why arcologies, if they turn out to be technically possible and economically reasonable and offer a wide range of employment opportunities and spare time activities, should not attract a large number of residents in the future.
Unfortunately, this is in GQ or I would already be jumping all over this. Arcologies are one of my favorite examples of how urban designers and science fiction writers don’t know anything about people.
So let me just say that there has been a countervailing understanding of what makes for successful urbanism that started with Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities way back in 1961. Almost all informed writing on the subject since has emphasized interaction, exposure to new influences, access to opportunities, serendipitous discoveries, and continuing change as conditions as what makes for great living spaces.
Economic issues of scale also come into play. How do you attract jobs and stores to an arcology? How many people do you have to have to make this viable? In a society in which one in six families move each year, how do you attract sufficient newcomers? How do you build one from scratch up to these numbers? There appears to be nothing between a commune and a city-sized arcology that can be made self-sufficient, which makes them inherently self-defeating.
Of course, any mode of living will attract a minimum number of adherents. A few people live in trees.