Posted on 12/14/2009 5:33:31 AM PST by reaganaut1
Cordes Junction, Ariz. --- In the high desert of central Arizona, more than five thousand miles from the global-warming summit in Copenhagen, sits an aging and unfinished vision of the enviro-friendly, sustainable life that some climate change activists foresee for us all. It's called Arcosanti, created in 1970 by the Italian architect Paolo Soleri, and it is the prototype of a green community of the future.
The only problem is, it doesn't work. And it never did.
Arcosanti is an "arcology," a word Soleri coined by combining "architecture" and "ecology." In Soleri's vision, an arcology is a self-contained city in which hundreds of thousands of people live in a small space, their needs met by green energy sources, recycled and sustainable products, and carefully planned social and cultural events. There are -- G0d forbid -- no cars.
In a Soleri design, masses of people are packed into the small-footprint arcology so that the land surrounding the community can remain pristine, unpolluted by human touch. It was an idea much in fashion a few decades back. "As urban architecture, Arcosanti is probably the most important experiment undertaken in our lifetime," wrote Newsweek in 1976.
Soleri designed models of many futuristic communities, guided by his intense dislike of U.S.-style development. "The 'American Dream,' as physically embodied in the single-family house," he once wrote, "has to be scrapped and reinvented in terms which are coherent with the human and biospheric reality."
...
But today, after nearly 40 years, just a few buildings of the common space have been built, and those are gray, leaky and crumbling. On the chilly December day when I visited recently, there were maybe 50 people there, and there are never, even in good weather, more than 100 or 150 inhabitants, mostly students ...
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Is this the one which supposedly could survive sealed off from elsewhere, but was caught cheating by letting air in, etc. or is that something else?
I don’t accept the premise that the left WANTS us to have “clean, renewable energy”.
They don’t want us to use ANY energy.
I predict that if ANY “green” technology (such as nuclear) became viable, they’d find something about it to oppose its usage.
biosphere
Personally I think they want us all locked up in cities where they hold power. We bitter clingers in flyover country tend to use far less energy than they do and it makes them look bad.
At one point I enamored by solar power. At about the same time, a good friend of my dad, Mr. B went with his wife to AZ for vacation and went to see it. Mr. B still alive and kicking is a retired small business man, of Bronx Italian decent, and cadre of like minded brothers that created a small dynasty in building, metals, refrigeration and could build, fix and restore old cars like nobody's business.
His original language might be to salty for the "Mod's" but, basically he was shocked at the lack of building standards, willy-nilly planning and basically came away with the impression Soleri was a BS artist.
It is funny, man's life span took a huge jump in the early 1900's. it may have been the FDA, but my guess toilets and central heating had a lot to do with it. Also Antibiotic's in 1948 didn't hurt either.
If you think about it these eco-greenies want us all living in a mud yurt eating vegan is a gunnysack for clothes and have total control of medicine at some point. They want to take us back to the stone age IMHO.... For a lot of us here we like central heating to much, and steaks in the frig. For those it is a "not so much" proposition to change to their lunacy vision of this retro-future.
An article like this really needs pictures of the subject.
I believe that the highly-touted Biosphere located north of Tucson was the self-contained glassed-in community that was caught cheating. The place has had a series of owners, the last that I recall was Columbia University. Biosphere was a monumental failure.
Solar is one of those things that works fine on a small scale and it only works when the sun is shining. Efficiency of collection is also a major issue.
I use some solar here in Michigan but its only to charge batteries for a handful of outside lights and to collect some heat from the sun with large double pane low E windows.
Here in Michigan, hydro is the way to go if you want clean waste free energy but the greenies are busy tearing out dams instead.
Yes it does work some here. I have a friend that did the Solar Attic Fans and has cut back his AC load in the summer dramatically.
My question is how much natural gas is here in MI and under lake MI? I am still ticked Engler and Co. shut down looking for oil and gas in Lake Michigan. It is just my gut feel their is something under that water.
I actually wrote to Engler about natural gas drilling and hydro. He was nice enough to send a 3 page letter back explaining the costs of fighting the greenies on the it. Basically the costs of fighting for it far outweighed the revenue generated. He did say that there are billions of cubic feet of natural gas under the lakes but the current political climate meant it was going to stay there.
Their website;
http://www.arcosanti.org/
If done right, it also works well on a large scale. See "solar thermal electric" with on-site heat storage.
This “arcology” is a rabid leftist’s dream: confine everyone in a small space, and tell them how to live. The unfortunate thing for rabid leftists is that most non-rabid leftists and liberals hate them as much as conservatives hate them. But they’ll keep trying.
AGGGHHHH!!!!!
Ok, we could make the state energy independent, and with a couple of nuke plants Gaseous Powered Hybrids such as the "Volt" could make the state not dependent of Saudi Oil, yet the Sierra Club has us by the Balls?
Pardon my french but WTF!!!!! What is wrong with this picture!!!!
This isn't against you CC personally but I needed to vent!
See my assertion -
they don’t want us serfs to use energy
they don’t want us serfs to live comfortably
Sarah Palin has said Natural Gas is the fuel of the Future.
How much you want to bet she knows it is under the Great Lakes and this is why she wants to make Michigan an in-play state?
It never ceases to amaze me that (and I say this as one whose family has farmed land for over 350 years) all these supposed ecology experts seek to apply one-size-fits-all rules on a continental or global scale to a problem which has its solutions only on a local scale. Sustainability in anything applies only to a specific circumstance, and that can change in a few acres--no bromide will suffice, no generality works on a universal basis.
Each plot of land is its own circumstance with unique solutions to being able to make the most of it on an ongoing basis.
Crop rotation, allowing land to lie fallow or using it as pasture, planting poor farmland in timber, are all factors which contribute to sustainable agriculture without the extraordinary use of chemicals, but there is a price to be paid in that the levels of production will likely be less than might be obtained by using less orgainc methods, at least for the short term.
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