Toward arcology: making ourselves scarce
April 19, 2021 12:21 AM   Subscribe

The City as a Survival Mechanism: Kim Stanley Robinson - "A future with far more cities, and cities that are asked to do far more." (Bloomberg)
Many ideas like this are described in The Industrious City, a new architecture and design book that envisions Switzerland as one big agglomeration of cities that turns the entire country into a single functioning complex. The Swiss already plan to build a 500-kilometer tunnel that stretches across most of the country to convey manufactured goods from one city to the next without disturbing surface life.

To see the climate city, look to planning texts from Holland that describe “vertical farms,” which are skyscrapers that include agriculture, aquaculture, chickens, pigs, and recycling of all waste within towers of food production. Hydroponics and vat-based food production using yeast, algae, and even meats will also be integrated into these towers. This kind of concentrated agriculture will free up land for other purposes while reducing the transport costs of goods from where they’re grown to where they get eaten.
also btw...
posted by kliuless (17 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thank you kliuless, Look fwd to reading the book. I helped shift a (reluctant) landscape conference in this direction recently as I don't think mitigation will be sufficient (fast enough) and 'adaptation' will become essential. I have a strong aversion to utopianism though as it gets in the way of 'good enough'.
posted by unearthed at 2:01 AM on April 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


It was Paolo Soleri who coined the word ARCOLOGY in the late 1960’s. I lived at Arcosanti for 1.5 years in the mid 80’s. At the time, I was naively optimistic that by now the merging of architecture and ecology and land use would be the norm in the built environment. And, for the past 35 years I have been still doing the work, but without the young person optimism I once had. There has been a notable difference over just the past year though, at least in the USA. These concepts are no longer seen as extreme, or unattainable, or provocative. After a 10 year hiatus from (informal) teaching around these topics, I have just started again.

It is possible, with a massive, and swift effort, using nature-based solutions, for humanity to reverse course and restore this most generous, intelligent and elegant system we have-nature. But it really means that the entire structure of just about everything needs to change. And it means that milllions, if not billions of people need to do the physical work of ecological restoration—which is physically demanding work and o so rewarding—there is nothing that I would rather do. However, I do agree with you *unearthed, we have passed into the realm of adaptation for sure. We are at the beginning of a wild ride.
posted by tarantula at 4:59 AM on April 19, 2021 [16 favorites]


As much as I love both Robinson's work and cities, this seems like a poorly considered, qualitative answer to a quantitative question. It's going to take more than stirring prose to convince me high-rise agriculture, or even urban farms in empty lots - though I agree they're better than untended empty lots - is a significant part of a sustainable future. Trucks and farm land are really efficient. Transportation is almost free. Building farms on skyscrapers is about as expensive as agriculture can possibly be. Letting farms do the farming and forcing everyone to pay for the hidden externalities sure seems like a better strategy than HOAs growing asparagus on their balconies.

The High Line (and the similar 606 in my neighborhood) are neat. I love them. They're not a solution. They're not even a park. They're a toy for rich people who like running. (I like toys. I run. I'm not complaining.)

If you ask me, the important thing about cities (aside from their very small ecological impact per person) is that there are so many of them and a single mayor can try out new things. But, please, put solar panels and radiators on my roof and let me pay a carbon tax to import vegetables from Michoacán. Growing vegetables here is a terrible waste of human effort and will use more carbon than the dirtiest shipping vessel you could possibly build. Our community farms are art projects - and important ones - not infrastructure.

Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about the first article. Not the rest, or the post itself.
posted by eotvos at 9:10 AM on April 19, 2021 [7 favorites]


Yeah, most so-called "vertical farms" are just a bad, energy-intensive idea.

(Turning otherwise unused roofs into small-scale farms is not a bad idea at all, at least in wet climates where the water absorption of a "green roof" alone would outweigh any energy savings from just paving it with solar cells. I only know of one use case that has totally made it work, though, Brooklyn Grange in NYC)
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 10:20 AM on April 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


I can't remember whose numbers I've handwavingly citing, but (barring advances in construction materials and/or legacy code changes), you can build up to about 6 stories using conventional vernacular materials, stone or brick and wood. Past that point, you're looking at steel and other materials which basically require the jump to 10 stories or more to cost out. And once you get past about five stories, either way, you start requiring a lot more infrastructure.

Transportation of water up to higher floors requires a not-insignificant investment in pumps and plumbing.

Transportation of ANYTHING up to higher floors requires a not-insignificant investment in elevators.

Successful long-term use of these things requires a not-insignificant investment in maintenance. And that's the main issue I've seen in any older building I've lived in, is that every owner (including myself) defers as much maintenance as they can get away with, and that's assuming you can FIND replacement parts and the skilled workers to operate them.

I trust the Swiss to invest in maintenance. I do not trust the landlords, present or future, of any place I've rented in America.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 10:32 AM on April 19, 2021 [7 favorites]


The High Line (and the similar 606 in my neighborhood) are neat. I love them. They're not a solution. They're not even a park. They're a toy for rich people who like running.

Sorry about your 606 but the High Line is an elevated park, densely planted in parts, with lots of benches and lookouts, and very popular with New Yorkers of every ilk – but not runners, rich or poor, except maybe early in the AM.
posted by nicwolff at 11:41 AM on April 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


I trust the Swiss to invest in maintenance. I do not trust the landlords, present or future, of any place I've rented in America.

USians seem bad at maintenance even as owners, even institutions that have long time horizons.
posted by clew at 12:15 PM on April 19, 2021


You can’t do a ribbon-cutting ceremony for maintenance and nobody buys the naming rights for upkeep.
posted by aramaic at 12:28 PM on April 19, 2021 [4 favorites]


There was an FPP about greenhouses in the Netherlands a couple of years ago. It sounds like they know what they're doing wrt vertical farming.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:42 PM on April 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


That’s always been true anywhere, I should think, aramaic.
posted by clew at 4:18 PM on April 19, 2021


This has been the dominering theory/position among urbanists and architects for two decades.

My (informed) gut feeling is that corona has turned it on its head, and we will see something completely different emerge. Also, although corona is the factor that pushed the change, it has been coming for a while. All the young architects with a vision have looking in new directions for the last few years. In some cases out of the city, towards rejuvenation of small towns and villages, and in other cases towards another image of the city, with less high-rise building and much more green space. No one wants greenfield development, though millions of square meters are still built on greenfield every year. The alternative to the vision described in this article is not the suburbs, though it probably came to be in reaction to the suburbs. We can probably rewild a lot of land without building one single high-rise again, but there are a lot of other issues.

Most of the people who live in the mega cities live in self-built single or two story slums with no utilities. Some of these are in spaces that were nature or farmland less than a generation ago. Some of those areas could be returned to the wild, or agriculture, if the inhabitants were provided with safe and sanitary housing within the cities' limits. There is no need for high-rise building. A lot could be achieved with 3-8 story buildings. Lower buildings are cheaper to build, can be built from sustainable materials and much cheaper to maintain. Thus they will have more affordable rents or mortgages.
Even better, help these people make a living in the small towns and villages they originally came from, for instance through sustainable agriculture or manufacturing. Give women educations and their own incomes and stop population growth that way.

The majority of the world's population are not fed by industrial food production, they live off the land where they are. Sometimes that leeds to desertification, because their farming practices are not suitable for the changing climate, or because of population growth, or both. These issues are best solved by education, not cities.
Cities naturally force a larger percentage of agricultural land into industrial agriculture, since large scale production and distribution is needed to feed the urban populations. This leads to all the problems we know with big ag. It also leads to the landownership being concentrated on fewer hands. This is not what we need.

Interestingly, China, which has been a pioneer in the high tech city-building movement, is now also a pioneer when it comes to reinvigorating the farmland. Well, obviously they have seen the shortcomings of the city-model.

The Dutch pig-farming project is here. I think it was meant as a debate piece at the time, it was presented very differently back then, with more sense of humor. As ivan ivanych samovar says, it doesn't take into account the costs (in both money and CO2) of high rise building, maintenance and services.

Since the 00s, architecture and urbanism have been cynical practices, embedded with capital. And many cities all over the world are themselves speculative corporations, making money off of development, with Dubai as the flagship of speculative urbanism.
Nice things like bike tracks and walkability are band-aids, plastered over the renderings to hide the obvious blandness of the new buildings and spaces.

Corona has shown that it is really uncomfortable to be stuck in a two-bedroom apartment on the 26th floor for months. But it has also shown that government can actually do meaningful stuff, something that has been largely forgotten or denied for the last twenty years. It will be hard for politicians in the future to put up their hands and claim they can't support renewables or sustainable development because "the economy". We know it isn't true.

And just like Richard Florida noticed in the early aughts that "the creative class" were moving into the cities, I'm seeing now that the same people (or their kids) are moving out. Probably first of all because of costs, but also because they want other types of community, safer surroundings for their kids, more space, gardens etc.
posted by mumimor at 12:59 AM on April 20, 2021 [5 favorites]


>You can’t do a ribbon-cutting ceremony for maintenance and nobody buys the naming rights for upkeep.
That's weird, because affiliative association with a pleasant space is great advertising.
posted by k3ninho at 2:53 AM on April 20, 2021


k3ninho agreed, seems to be a marketing problem, the right framing and I feel you could auction slots for this.
posted by unearthed at 3:20 AM on April 20, 2021


>You can’t do a ribbon-cutting ceremony for maintenance and nobody buys the naming rights for upkeep.

Everybody always says this, but the true answer is maintenance is paid for in current dollars, and buildings (and rent) are mostly compounded in past dollars. If your building has lots of churn it might be near-past dollars, but if churn is low, then it's far-in-the past dollars.

It also seems to push maintenance off on some elected group that is advantaged by ribbon cuttings, which in some municipal instances is true, but for personal houses and condos, who's cutting the ribbons?
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:48 AM on April 20, 2021


To complete my thought, people don't spend much money on maintenance because they don't have much to spend. New construction is much easier to finance, both at the municipal level and at the individual level. Tons of construction companies (in terms of housing and condo maintenance) don't even take credit cards, so you have to write a big check somehow, making financing even more complex.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:32 AM on April 20, 2021


Greenfield developers?

Neglecting maintenance might be a reasonable gamble for short lived owners (people, many businesses) who have lived entirely in the Speculative Decades. I doubt it is for universities and municipalities.

I don’t know if some countries are worse at maintenance than others, though the reactions of international fellow students at a US university sure suggested to me the US really is bad at it. The saddest one being an Italian who more or less said "I thought we were bad at repairs!" and then politely demurred.
posted by clew at 8:33 AM on April 20, 2021 [1 favorite]


Techno-optimist writings that ask for more technology to solve the issues of previous technology appears to me like a hoarder believing one more magazine will finally complete their basement collection.
posted by oneboiledfrog at 5:57 AM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


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