Integral Cities

In terms of visions of the city, I have to wonder about A. C. Clarke's idea that, with new materials, all of humanity could be housed in just four buildings. They'd be exceptionally tall, but have minimal footprint. He thought the population would come back down to a billion. The rest of the planet would be allowed to return to nature, and the metals for construction would come from asteroids. 

As a concept, it does make me wonder. It is terribly beyond our present time. It is as far in the future as human hunter gatherers are in our past. But as an idea, it made me wonder. Is it lighter to spread out or to concentrate?

I never quite understand the British fascination with detached housing. Small units on gardens. The maximum exposure of all four walls and the roof to the elements maximises heat loss. Every dwelling must be heated and insulated separately. It also maximises land use devoted to plots, but also, to roads. A large percentage of our footprint is roads. The further we spread out, the further an ambulance must travel to take us to an A&E. Does this make sense?

Even the Romans had a model of apartment blocks, or "islands". First built of wood, then of Roman brick, they were four or five stories high.

Once you bring families together in an apartment block, not too big, and not too small, but about five stories high, just as they do today, in a time tested model that has been used for 2000 years, you see how family life works. Unfortunately when the British tried this, they built too high, and the blocks became unfriendly and dangerous. But when a stairwell is four or five stories high, you have just 10 families sharing the entrance. Ten families is small enough for everyone to know everyone. Neighbours can help each other, and they can lookout for each other. Enter one of these buildings and it feels like entering private space. You are noticed.

The ground floor of the block is devoted to street life. Shops, cafes, pharmacies, and little art galleries. One of my favourite holidays is wandering about the streets of Rome. The place is busy, and yet, the streets feel eternal. There is a mixture of bustle and quietude. A similar effect is felt in Barcelona. You can be in the middle of crowds, then nip round a corner and be in a secluded courtyard, a delicate sanctuary with a fountain, a statue, a garden, and silence.

The architect Renzo Piano wrote that there is a difference between the American plaza and the Italian piazza. A Plaza is a place for companies to flash adverts and promotions at you. They are to be speedily moved through. They exist for a commercial purpose. The piazza, in contrast, exists for no reason. It is a space. It has no purpose. When you enter it, your mind opens up. It is a regular break of silence in the day.

It is very difficult to achieve this once you leave the city. I think, perhaps, as designers try to create eco-villages, they will tend over time back towards this ancient model. There's a book, "Architecture Without Architects", which looks at the patterns that the peoples of the world spontaneously and unselfconsciously created in organic ways as their villages grew over thousands of years. These patterns repeat, they show that people like to come together.

A lot of patterns do repeat, but we need to sort out which are useful ones to replicate and which are not.  Remember we have not yet seen any sustainable post-city societies, and it might well be because that pattern (the city) is inherently unsustainable.   I repeat, that am using 'city' to mean what we now mean by city.

(have you seen The end of Suburbia?  chilling documentary..)

One story that does repeat is the mysterious findings of ruins of majestic ancient cities .. from which their inhabitants seem to have simply walked away.   At least it was a mystery until not that long ago, now it's generally accepted (I believe) that they simply exhausted their resource-base (ie. hit the limits of sustainability) so had to be abandoned.

We have other examples of peoples that simply walked away from agriculture, because they realised it wasn't a sustainable idea in itself.

The time and size-scales change a lot with the available technologies (big cities now are only possible because of massive transport infrastructures, petrol, etc.), but maybe we might just actually find out that cities (very high density settlements with not enough space in between housing to grow food, detox waste, etc.) are simply a mistake. 

There's another thread where we're discussing the Venus project ... have u heard of them?  I've linked it to my blog, but there's a link there to the facebook group from Beyond Awakening..

Very interesting the big tower-blocks image .. bit weird no?  (with all that forest ... why would any humans wanto live all piled up by the millions in a tiny space??)

How do you feel about the eco-village model?

Am very aware that we probably all have very deep emotional ties to these issues.   That's why I find Gibran's analysis fascinating .. he goes right to the core of that.. the city looked at from the internal quadrants.     

I certainly had a very strong emotional attachment to staying living in Inner London.  Lived there for 20yrs, loved it with a passion.  Never thought I would move out.   Now, after 10yrs living in the country (which I found quite difficult at first.. all that silence!! and other things ..), I don't understand how I could bare to live in a city.  Any city, but especially one that huge and crowded.   How any humans can. 

It's not just a matter of 'tastes', but - I think  - of connection with our bodies, with nature, with the rhythms of Life and the rest of Creation.