Ziggurats Of The Future  

And the million or so people living in that pyramid (no sunshine for most of them, artificial lights all the time, a bit dystopian!) will require quite a space around to be not open fields as pictured, but farmland to supply them food, mines to supply them resources - if only to make up the losses in recycling - and so on.

Does anyone live on that land? If so, why wouldn't more people want to live there? If not, how do the people get to and from the pyramid every day to their farms and mines? Where do the roads go to, another ziggurat?

It's strange, this idea of a constant retreat from the countryside into concrete and glass, or bioplastic or whatever. Why?

It seems like the old-fashioned conservationist idea. "We'll have our living space here, and then nature will be there, and never the twain shall meet, we'll just look at nature on the weekends, and only from paths, don't touch anything, please." It seems more pleasant and intuitive to mix it up a bit, to live with rather than beside nature.

But that was exactly the type of thinking that led to suburbia. Let's all live 'beside' nature.

How's that working for our ecosystems? I don't know about this pyramid thing — there's the problem with fire for instance, and people who don't like us now fly jets very fast into the biggest things they can find.

But I'm a New Urbanist / Ecocity fan. Check my summary page on "REZONE" under "Solutions" for the many arguments why. It seems to be the most energy efficient, materials efficient, embodied energy sensitive, humane, anti-car, anti-pollution, culturally, architecturally and psychosocially friendly way to live.

Sorry, forgot to post the REZONE link.

Mate, modern suburbia isn't living with nature, and never was. All those crew-cut lawns being mowed every Saturday are not natural.

All suburbia shows is that pursuing the illusion of something rather than the thing itself is bad. Which, you know, duh.

It's likewise an illusion that we can live beside nature. We can't just put up walls around ourselves or some nature reserve and expect everything to remain pristine. The two interact and mix, our pollution goes into the forest's water table, and the forest's birds come and shit on our cars, the possums in our roof space.

It's better to accept the mixing, and make sure that the mixing is productive rather than destructive.

There's a confusion of categories here. Sure we pollute and now it seems global in impact. But there's no reason we have to have our accountants and doctors and brain surgeons and computer designers all living 'with nature'... food specialists have to respect the land, "Cradle to Cradle" industrial design has to behave more and more like an 'industrial ecosystem', and if we can one day end up in a renewable world running on renewable energy built with renewable recyclable materials in closed loops of both biological and industrial 'ecosystem', then it's all good... even the lawyer living in a New York high rise.

Reducing the size footprint of our cities is probably one of the most important steps we can take to reduce our ecological footprint.

Summary: we don't have to live 'in' nature to respect it and heal it if all the principles above are obeyed.

I might add (one more time) that these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

There's nothing wrong with being a permaculturist living at one with the land, and there's nothing wrong living a post-modern industrial lifestyle in a bright green building in a city designed with sustainability in mind.

People should be encouraged to choose either option (in preference to the status quo), rather than arguing about which one is superior (which will always be a subjective choice based on the preferences of the individual).

Agreed, however I think an argument could be made that it might be more efficient with our materials to cram a good majority of our people into Bright Green eco-cities to free up the land for ecosystems, local agriculture, forestry products (more and more important as we hit 'peak everything'), and the smaller permaculture villages and townships.

I'd think it likely the majority of people would choose to live in bright green cities rather than the rural alternative (especially given the mass drift towards the cities that has occurred in recent decades - imagine if these cities were nice places, instead of the "planet of slums" cities people are currently flocking to).

However, I'd leave it up to individuals to choose how they want to live their lives and not try to cram anyone anywhere...

Thing is, we already 'force' people to live suburban lives because it's the main town plan the authorities recognise. All this fluff about 'not telling people how to live' is just that, fluff... we already DO tell people how to live. "You shall buy a suburban home because it is what we are building..."

The town planners give into their developer mates, and say "Go forth and build wall to wall suburbia!"

Somewhere some legislation has got to change, big time.

However these people have chosen suburbia (cities) over rural permaculture lifestyles - which they could choose if they wished to, by and large.

So the point is that we need to make cities bright green - not that we need to force anyone to do anything (unless you count carbon taxes - with offsetting income tax cuts - as "forcing").

2 websites I've been enjoying lately are NewUrbanism.org and UrbanDesign.org both of which make a strong case that people simply don't have the choice as reasonably priced New Urbanism ecocities just don't exist. It takes counsel zoning laws to change, and laws require a new social movement, which in turn requires campaigning to generate the cultural awareness.

But it's starting to happen. As you know whole segments of inner-city Sydney are being rezoned as ecocity structures. Once this trend really gets going who knows how fast it will catch on? A lot can happen in one generation.

Well - I can live with changes to zoning laws and building codes - they already exist.

Its more the "thou shalt live in an urban arcology" type of government mandate that I'm opposing (and its "year zero" opposing equivalent - "thou shalt move to the countryside".

If the legislation already exists, then why are new suburbs still springing up? How does it work? Who designs this madness and why?

I'm saying that zoning laws and building codes already exist and that you are (I think) suggesting changing them.

If that is the case then I don't view this as forcing people to do anything too unusual - as opposed to demanding they all live in green ziggurats.