I learned about Paolo Soleri from William Gibson's Count Zero (sequel to the much more well-known Neuromancer). Gibson always had a knack for foreseeing not just the automobile, but also the traffic jam:
> But today’s episode kept veering weirdly away from Michele’s frantically complex romantic entanglements, which Bobby had anyway never bothered to keep track of, and jerking itself into detailed socioarchitectural descriptions of Soleri-style mincome arcologies. Some of the detail, even to Bobby, seemed suspect; he doubted, for instance, that there really were entire levels devoted to the sale of ice-blue shaved-velour lounge suites with diamond-buckled knees, or that there were other levels, perpetually dark, inhabited exclusively by starving babies. This last, he seemed to recall, had been an article of faith to Marsha, who regarded the Projects with superstitious horror, as though they were some looming vertical hell to which she might one day be forced to ascend.
> Other segments of the jack-dream reminded him of the Knowledge channel Sense/Net piped in free with every stim subscription; there were elaborate animated diagrams of the Projects’ interior structure, and droning lectures in voice-over on the life-styles of various types of residents. These, when he was able to focus on them, seemed even less convincing than the flashes of ice-blue velour and feral babies creeping silently through the dark. He watched a cheerful young mother slice pizza with a huge industrial waterknife in the kitchen corner of a spotless one-room. An entire wall opened onto a shallow balcony and a rectangle of cartoon-blue sky.
Time for me to give my standard AMA offer to the HN crowd that is interested in this. I knew Soleri well, working with him at Arcosanti from 1992-1996, and the subtext to my entire subsequent career continues to be trying to build arcologies. So, Ask me Anything.
(Oh, and also: the Cosanti Foundation, which runs Arcosanti, is currently searching for a new Executive Director[1], and I'm helping with the search. If you have any candidates in mind, please point them in this direction.)
> 1. What's the most populous arcology that's currently inhabited?
The term "arcology" hasn't really been embraced by the wider urban planning community, so in terms of self-identified arcologies, that'd just be Arcosanti, population 80-100. But arguably one could apply the term to something like Whittier Alaska (population: 318), Masdar City in the UAE (population: 1,300?), or even something like "The Line" in Saudi Arabia, which, when I talked to them a few weeks ago, already had 17,000 people on-site. Lots of projects in China probably qualify, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition. A few may even have been built -- there's a lot that's just on paper.
> 2. Do the seasteading people and the arcology people have much overlap?
Not that I'm aware of, although I'm sure there's at least a bit.
> 3. Are arcologies aimed at making affordable housing or no?
One of the great deficiencies of Soleri's forumlation of Arcology theory is that he incorporated virtually no concept of urban economics, so this question would've just been out of scope, from his perspective. Which is a problem, because it's a good and urgent question, and needs to be answered. Doing so would require evolving the notion of "arcology" well beyond how Soleri defined it, however. (And in my opinion that would be a good and necessary thing, since otherwise it's a largely un-realizable theory.)
So from a more personal perspective, I'd say that making housing more affordable is something which arcologies ought to be aiming at, and given their general frugality -- via minimal land use, maximal sharing of resources, etc. -- should be achievable. But there are many devils in the details which are yet to be worked out.
(Also, it's worth pointing out that "affordable housing" itself may actually be a too-narrow formulation of the problem. Net cost-of-living is probably a better way to think about it. Perhaps your actual living space is actually a bit more expensive -- but given that you don't have to spend any money on a car or gas or insurance or even public transport, then that really ought to compensate. Or perhaps your personal living space is a bit cheaper but a LOT smaller -- but given the fantastic public amenities at your doorstep, it's a richer life overall. In other words, what needs to be optimized is the whole-life package, not just the cost of a domicile. Although obviously the latter does need to be within reach, in a way which for many people it currently isn't.)
> 4. Is anyone working on incrementally built arcologies, or is that just a city?
I'd say that yes, people are "sort of" working on incrementally-built arcologies -- and that's not simply a city.
Again, this is an area where Soleri's formulation of Arcology theory is quite deficient. He always thought about arcologies as things that are wholly self-contained (although not necessarily self-sufficient; he thought that was a false ideal) and built from scratch. There are places in the world (mostly Africa and Asia) where building whole new cities from scratch is a very real prospect, but for the most part, the developed world isn't going to (and arguably shouldn't) do that. In that case, the question is whether the principles of Arcology are something that can be adopted incrementally, and if so, how to do that.
My personal answer would be that yes, there are ways these principles can be brought forward piecemeal in existing cities, via projects that (among other things) promote high-density, car-free, mixed-use development. Here's a good example of such a project, also in Arizona: https://culdesac.com/
There are limitations to this kind of approach, but it's definitely a good start.
> 5. There is basically no discussion of agriculture in the article; is anyone working how arcologies integrate/improve the food system?
Yes! Integrated food production has long been a concern at Arcosanti (and of Arcology theory in general), and there's been an on-and-off agriculture program there, as people willing to take it on have come and gone. This has recently been re-started and re-energized by an independent nonprofit called Arco Agritecture. You can read about them here: https://www.arcosanti.org/arco-agritecture/. There's also a newsletter signup etc. here: https://mailchi.mp/50d2bae3774b/v0z8xb894p
Meanwhile, I just looked at your profile, and "simulation software for electric utilities" is something I have a very specific interest in. If you feel like telling me more, get in touch.
What I think he (Paolo Soleri) is trying to say is this: there is an inherent logic in the structure and nature of organisms that have grown on this planet. Any architecture, any urban design, and any social order that violates that structure and nature is destructive of itself and of us. Any architecture, urban design, or social order that is based upon organic principles is valid and will prove its own validity.
Even if it's easiest done with SCURK, it's still achievable in the game itself. Just really difficult.
And yeah, the execution kinda sucks, but given the resource constraints at the time, it's understandable that it just exploded them all to fake launches instead of having an animated launch for each arco.
I was very excited by arcosanti as a kid in the 70s — just as I was excited by the studies of space settlements.
Ultimately of course I learnt that the reality of life is messy amd with competing interests. Yet these utopian visions still provide a lot of formative insight.
What's funny is that some form of utopia is / was within our grasp, and we deliberately turned our backs on it in the USA.
A walkable city is far less organized than something like arcosanti, as they tend to grow organically. But they do provide a significantly higher quality of life compared to most cities in the USA, because of the focus on car-based transportation.
> A walkable city is far less organized than something like arcosanti, as they tend to grow organically. But they do provide a significantly higher quality of life compared to most cities in the USA, because of the focus on car-based transportation.
It pained me to watch China, which had walkable, bikeable cities, threw it away for car-centric re-imagined cities. They were hoodwinked.
Well, it might be that looking successful is actually far more important than being successful. And for a modern state, looking like an American city is the epitome of success even though said US cities are peeling back the car-centrism.
For a while it was a big genre in science fiction, I loved the stories of people banding together and basically founding their own city (/arcology) and just doing their own thing.
The bells sold at the Arcosanti gift shop [0] are very distinctive and once you start spotting them, you will know people who have been influenced or inspired by Paolo Soleri's architecture.
Great coffee table book. Wish there was a reprint. There is a very handsome, large format (1m+) paper back version I can't seem to track down for purchase anywhere. A copy exists in my alma maters reference library, I drop by once in a while for a flip through.
There’s a copy at the Long Now’s bar (Interval) last time I visited, we had to ask someone to climb a ladder and retrieve it for us from the top of the bookshelf !
Ha! Paolo knew Edmund, and Edmund certainly knew Kevin. Bacon number of 2, although in the original sense it should apply to actors, not to just any person [0].
From the Wikipedia article about Edmund Bacon:
> In 2002, at age 92, he skateboarded in LOVE Park, the plaza he founded and designed at Cornell in 1932, as a protest against the City's ban on the sport.
I didn't know anything about Edmund Bacon. Interesting character.
It was, though not to the full size that was ultimately intended. There’s still a small community of people who live and work there, along with a trickle of visiting students/architects. Definitely worth a day trip if you’re ever in the Phoenix area with some free time.
I remember seeing the 3d scale models of arcologies at the Corcoran Art gallery sometime in the early 70's. They were beautiful, and indeed utopian. Are the model's preserved anywhere, perhaps at Arcosanti?
Some of those models are preserved in the archives at Arcosanti and Cosanti. Unfortunately many of them have been lost to the elements.
There's a lot of interesting work currently being done on bringing those models into virtual reality and even mixed reality.[1] Of course bitrot is always a thing, but hopefully these will last longer!
> But today’s episode kept veering weirdly away from Michele’s frantically complex romantic entanglements, which Bobby had anyway never bothered to keep track of, and jerking itself into detailed socioarchitectural descriptions of Soleri-style mincome arcologies. Some of the detail, even to Bobby, seemed suspect; he doubted, for instance, that there really were entire levels devoted to the sale of ice-blue shaved-velour lounge suites with diamond-buckled knees, or that there were other levels, perpetually dark, inhabited exclusively by starving babies. This last, he seemed to recall, had been an article of faith to Marsha, who regarded the Projects with superstitious horror, as though they were some looming vertical hell to which she might one day be forced to ascend.
> Other segments of the jack-dream reminded him of the Knowledge channel Sense/Net piped in free with every stim subscription; there were elaborate animated diagrams of the Projects’ interior structure, and droning lectures in voice-over on the life-styles of various types of residents. These, when he was able to focus on them, seemed even less convincing than the flashes of ice-blue velour and feral babies creeping silently through the dark. He watched a cheerful young mother slice pizza with a huge industrial waterknife in the kitchen corner of a spotless one-room. An entire wall opened onto a shallow balcony and a rectangle of cartoon-blue sky.
Thank you for sharing.
(Oh, and also: the Cosanti Foundation, which runs Arcosanti, is currently searching for a new Executive Director[1], and I'm helping with the search. If you have any candidates in mind, please point them in this direction.)
1: https://www.arcosanti.org/job/executive-director/
2. Do the seasteading people and the arcology people have much overlap?
3. Are arcologies aimed at making affordable housing or no?
4. Is anyone working on incrementally built arcologies, or is that just a city?
5. There is basically no discussion of agriculture in the article; is anyone working how arcologies integrate/improve the food system?
Thanks for offering your expertise!
> 1. What's the most populous arcology that's currently inhabited?
The term "arcology" hasn't really been embraced by the wider urban planning community, so in terms of self-identified arcologies, that'd just be Arcosanti, population 80-100. But arguably one could apply the term to something like Whittier Alaska (population: 318), Masdar City in the UAE (population: 1,300?), or even something like "The Line" in Saudi Arabia, which, when I talked to them a few weeks ago, already had 17,000 people on-site. Lots of projects in China probably qualify, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition. A few may even have been built -- there's a lot that's just on paper.
> 2. Do the seasteading people and the arcology people have much overlap?
Not that I'm aware of, although I'm sure there's at least a bit.
> 3. Are arcologies aimed at making affordable housing or no?
One of the great deficiencies of Soleri's forumlation of Arcology theory is that he incorporated virtually no concept of urban economics, so this question would've just been out of scope, from his perspective. Which is a problem, because it's a good and urgent question, and needs to be answered. Doing so would require evolving the notion of "arcology" well beyond how Soleri defined it, however. (And in my opinion that would be a good and necessary thing, since otherwise it's a largely un-realizable theory.)
So from a more personal perspective, I'd say that making housing more affordable is something which arcologies ought to be aiming at, and given their general frugality -- via minimal land use, maximal sharing of resources, etc. -- should be achievable. But there are many devils in the details which are yet to be worked out.
(Also, it's worth pointing out that "affordable housing" itself may actually be a too-narrow formulation of the problem. Net cost-of-living is probably a better way to think about it. Perhaps your actual living space is actually a bit more expensive -- but given that you don't have to spend any money on a car or gas or insurance or even public transport, then that really ought to compensate. Or perhaps your personal living space is a bit cheaper but a LOT smaller -- but given the fantastic public amenities at your doorstep, it's a richer life overall. In other words, what needs to be optimized is the whole-life package, not just the cost of a domicile. Although obviously the latter does need to be within reach, in a way which for many people it currently isn't.)
> 4. Is anyone working on incrementally built arcologies, or is that just a city?
I'd say that yes, people are "sort of" working on incrementally-built arcologies -- and that's not simply a city.
Again, this is an area where Soleri's formulation of Arcology theory is quite deficient. He always thought about arcologies as things that are wholly self-contained (although not necessarily self-sufficient; he thought that was a false ideal) and built from scratch. There are places in the world (mostly Africa and Asia) where building whole new cities from scratch is a very real prospect, but for the most part, the developed world isn't going to (and arguably shouldn't) do that. In that case, the question is whether the principles of Arcology are something that can be adopted incrementally, and if so, how to do that.
My personal answer would be that yes, there are ways these principles can be brought forward piecemeal in existing cities, via projects that (among other things) promote high-density, car-free, mixed-use development. Here's a good example of such a project, also in Arizona: https://culdesac.com/
There are limitations to this kind of approach, but it's definitely a good start.
> 5. There is basically no discussion of agriculture in the article; is anyone working how arcologies integrate/improve the food system?
Yes! Integrated food production has long been a concern at Arcosanti (and of Arcology theory in general), and there's been an on-and-off agriculture program there, as people willing to take it on have come and gone. This has recently been re-started and re-energized by an independent nonprofit called Arco Agritecture. You can read about them here: https://www.arcosanti.org/arco-agritecture/. There's also a newsletter signup etc. here: https://mailchi.mp/50d2bae3774b/v0z8xb894p
Hope that helps!
Meanwhile, I just looked at your profile, and "simulation software for electric utilities" is something I have a very specific interest in. If you feel like telling me more, get in touch.
What I think he (Paolo Soleri) is trying to say is this: there is an inherent logic in the structure and nature of organisms that have grown on this planet. Any architecture, any urban design, and any social order that violates that structure and nature is destructive of itself and of us. Any architecture, urban design, or social order that is based upon organic principles is valid and will prove its own validity.
There's a downloadable file if you want to see for yourself. IMO the concept is cooler than the execution. YMMV.
https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology
And yeah, the execution kinda sucks, but given the resource constraints at the time, it's understandable that it just exploded them all to fake launches instead of having an animated launch for each arco.
Ultimately of course I learnt that the reality of life is messy amd with competing interests. Yet these utopian visions still provide a lot of formative insight.
A walkable city is far less organized than something like arcosanti, as they tend to grow organically. But they do provide a significantly higher quality of life compared to most cities in the USA, because of the focus on car-based transportation.
It pained me to watch China, which had walkable, bikeable cities, threw it away for car-centric re-imagined cities. They were hoodwinked.
Arcosanti - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066193 - Aug 2020 (71 comments)
Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Arizona experiment in urban planning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586064 - Oct 2017 (55 comments)
Arcosanti - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072960 - Feb 2015 (28 comments)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsl-GBEZ-_Y
[0] https://cosanti.com/collections/bronze-bells
https://www.amazon.com/Arcology-city-image-Paolo-Soleri/dp/0...
Looks like the URL it points to is dead, so here's an archive link to spare the curious the trouble: http://web.archive.org/web/20170214222943/https://stories.ca...
teeeheheheh
Ha! Paolo knew Edmund, and Edmund certainly knew Kevin. Bacon number of 2, although in the original sense it should apply to actors, not to just any person [0].
From the Wikipedia article about Edmund Bacon:
> In 2002, at age 92, he skateboarded in LOVE Park, the plaza he founded and designed at Cornell in 1932, as a protest against the City's ban on the sport.
I didn't know anything about Edmund Bacon. Interesting character.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
There's a lot of interesting work currently being done on bringing those models into virtual reality and even mixed reality.[1] Of course bitrot is always a thing, but hopefully these will last longer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esysldCzFgs&list=PL-bfFPHb2g...