In my first year of college I met Ardelia. We hit it off immediately and we've amazingly managed to stay friends for all these years. She lived in Kansas for a long time and for some reason I was not able to visit her there - I waved every time I flew over Kansas on my way to New York or London but she didn't think that was quite the same.
She recently moved to Arizona and so I decided it was definitely time for me to visit her. So off I went. Here's the view from my hotel.
One day Ardelia and I went up to see a place called Arcosanti. My friend Dave introduced me to it a while ago and I was intrigued. It's a fascinating real-world experiment testing the viability of the idea of "arcology". That term describes a place where architecture and ecology come together to create a new way of living. The designs of the architect (Paolo Scolari) who came up with the idea envision large urban areas where living, working and growing the food people consume all merge together to create something sustainable and future-oriented.
His ideas are also driven by the observation that the sprawl of today's modern world are creating a way of living that causes our lives to be pulled apart - we no longer live integrated lives and that causes all sorts of emotional, health and physical ills. Scolari started Arcosanti to see how the theoretical construct he envisioned would work in real life.
It's a strange experience visiting. The concept is very future-looking. But the reality is very old-world. It reminds me of an old Italian hill-town. Living, working and gathering areas are all jumbled together. And everything is hand-made, so it has a great look but it's hard to imagine a massive city emerging this way. Other than turning back to almost pre-industrial times, which I don't think of as something good. But with our current way of life being unsustainable in the long-term, who knows. And at least someone is trying to figure out how to move into the future!
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