Living with Nature (was: A place to live)
R. Scott LaMorte
Well... how to begin?
I never thought such a simple post of mine would start such a heated
flame war. Such is human behavior, I guess. But despite a tendency
towards personal attacks, some people brought up some interesting
points.
I personally am motivate to change my local by two major influences:
my distaste of city and suburban life, and my love of natural beauty.
I'm currently homeless, couch-surfing friend's sofas and living out of
my truck, and emailing from telephone jacks as I can.
My ultimate goal in regards to a place to live would be something
along the lines of the concept of an Arcology, as developed, I
believe, by Frank Lloyd Wright. An Arcology is a kind of communal
living space, town or city sized, with the specific goal of existing
as self-contained as possible.
I know of only one such arcology, called Arcosante, in the desert in
New Mexico. Sadly, I have heard that it did not even come close to the
dreams of its creators, and now has only a few hundred or less
occupants, who's primary income comes from tourism and windchimes.
The ideal arcology would provide all of its own energy needs, employ
most or all of its occupants, include educational, recreational, and
most other facilities, and recycle most or all of its waste. Food
would be provided by low-impact farming of surrounding areas, with a
strict eye towards ecological preservation.
...
Since few if any arcologies, or any similar such living arrangements,
seem to be currently availble for me to explore at this moment, I've
decided to make incremental moves oward achieving my ideal living
goals. If I can't move to a functioning arcology now, I'll take the
simplest, most realistic step towards one. That is what I am now
looking for in a living situation.
I envision a small community, or even one household. I'd like it to be
composed of a wide variety of people and lifestyles, but with te
common goal of learning how to live together. Resources could be
communal, semi-communal, or fully private; whatever works best. We
would strive to get off the power-grid, grow some of our own food, and
make as little impact on our environment as possible.
I'm an idealist, certainly, but I'm also a realist. I'm willing to
make adjustments to my final goal if it seems impossible to realize.
And findding what is and isn't possible is in itself a subgoal of
whatever my next step may be.
...
Comments and critiques welcomed. Thanks,
Scott
Steve XI The Entity_Attache'
Let's see, as far as I remember the Arcology idea was primarily
worked on by Paolo Solari (sp?) who was an Italian-American
sculptor I believe. He started things out in the New Mexico or
Arizona desert. He did many good things and had many good ideas.
His idea was like a "super-city" and it was the opposite in many
ways from "getting away from it all". He would view the inhabited
hills of the San Lorenzo Valley or Jamaica with horror. His idea
was to concentrate humans and their impact in one area and leave
the rest of the environment alone. This is about as far as you can
get from "getting away from it all." It's like having a space station
on Earth, in fact his putting it in a sort of semi-hostile place
(i.e. the desert, which is not hostile to me, but would make many
of my friends sick, n.b. I am heat resistant to 40C/104F.) seemed
kind of fitting.
There seem to be three problems with this. One is that such a
place unless hacked on by many visual artists is apt to resemble
those people wherehouses that people groan about and refuse to
live in. That can be designed around, it is possible to make it
concentrated but still visually interesting. The second is all
concentrations like that tend to start curious social dynamics
going. It is like a super-city. People who were close to me and
who visited there found it to be run very dictatorially with all
sorts of strict rules and much demand one provide free labor to
keep what he Paolo felt was HIS DREAM alive. Of course the same
charges have been leveled about Stephen Gaskin's farm project
in TN. The Farm has strong defenders and many people who can't
abide it and both have pretty good points. Sad to say it seems
that the communal living situations like that do survive and do
well, *do* tend to be kind of heavy-handed and strict and arranged
around a set of ideals, often religious or semi-religious. So really
they seem to be no place for real *free spirits* for example
some place where you can scream at 3AM at the top of your lungs
and not have anyone come down on you. This is the second big
problem. The Farm does do well for people that like it, and it
does have things like medical care provided by both allopathic
vanilla MDs and natural health care people. Sally Gaskin (I think)
did do a natural childbirth book that several friends have used and
liked awhole lot.
The third problem is that any big concentration of humans does
impact the local environment pretty heavily. It is hard to avoid,
so that means one has to have people to deal with waste, waste
treatment, resources, supplies, food, material that in many cases
has to be hauled in from some miles away etc. It's politically
hard to put up an arcology too near any large city as far as I
can tell. And the people who do all those nice complex things
that keep things going will have to be given some encouragement
or some goodies.
This all requires some planning, and is pretty hard to do.
If you are going to remove yourself from the power grid, are
you going to go without electricity, use batteries, have solar
power backed up by batteries, store energy in a flywheel or
what?? Even if everyone is strictly dirurnal one still has to worry
about lighting because there are people in the center of the
Arcology or beneath the ground. This means to quote the generator
in a Kraftwerk album providing people with "Light, Power and Pictures"
and "Light and Power" at a minimum. One needs to cook food, so one
needs those things. It can all get pretty hairy, but if made to work
it might be fun, and one could then claim one of those great laurels
of American Society, which is: "We did what was couldn't be done."
I could go on, but this is enuff blathering for awhile.
be seeing you,
steve
P.S. Excuse me for quoting entire article but I have been quoted
all of context so much of the time.
Eugene N. Miya
>along the lines of the concept of an Arcology, as developed, I
>believe, by Frank Lloyd Wright. An Arcology is a kind of communal
>living space, town or city sized, with the specific goal of existing
>as self-contained as possible.
Not Wright. Pablo Saleri (sp). I have to check my copy of Arneson.
The spelling is not far off.
>I know of only one such arcology, called Arcosante, in the desert in
>New Mexico.
Arizona.
>Comments and critiques welcomed. Thanks,
Close. Good luck.
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
{uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Second Favorite email message: Returned mail: Cannot send message for 3 days
A Ref: Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, vol. 1, G. Polya