Reply #25: Vertical cities [View All]

Architect Paolo Soleri has done a lot of conceptual work on vertical cities - instead of spreading outward, they spread upward, leaving a relatively small environmental footprint and enabling people to take mass transit (elevators, escalators, "subways") to work. There would be open air parks and public spaces, they'd just be 100's or 1000's of feet off the ground. He believes there would be no need for cars except when traveling to another city structure.

There's a slowly-growing experimental site called Arcosanti in the Arizona desert that's trying to build a small-scale vertical city as Soleri envisions it. It's kind of interesting - you can even vacation there and help the workers build it for a week.

http://www.arcosanti.org

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