Comments on: A Sustainable City?

By: Liam

Liam — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 22:35:53 +0000

The SimCity arcologies were also the first thing to come to mind for me. One of the downsides to building them was always that providing I wasn’t using ‘cheats’ to give myself money, I always found it difficult to finance the cleaner ‘advanced’ arcologies, and would instead usually have to buy the ugly arco that looked like a factory early on.

Do you know if the Arcology you vistited is self sustaining? The building certainly looks interesting, and certainly lends some credence to the concept. But I looked through the site, but the only reference to financing was the selling of the bells, or through donations from what I’m assuming are outside sources. I wonder how they got the ball rolling so to speak.

By: Hannah

Hannah — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 21:07:58 +0000

I’m not sure how they feel about computers in general…I did notice, however, that they recycled old computer chips and used them in their tile-making, embedding the chips into the tiles, and the tiles were then used as stepping stones around different sites.

By: Ira

Ira — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 17:17:54 +0000

Interesting stuff Hannah. The first time I heard of an arcology was playing the computer game SimCity2000 (which i used to play all the time). In the game, the user plans and builds cities and one of the options is to create giant high-density residential complexes called “arcologies.” There are various sizes and shapes of arcologies in the game but they are all large, futuristic-looking vertical structures that house thousands of people. I always loved building arcologies in my cities because they seemed like such a smart way to house lots of people. The arcologies in SimCity2000 were loosely based on Soleri’s ideas and helped to make this term part of mainstream urban planning jargon.

By: sieber

sieber — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 05:26:37 +0000

Do they try to recycle any computer parts? How do they feel about personal computers in general (other than having a website)?