If you could transform your city any way you like, what would you change? Would you eliminate poverty, disease and hunger? Would you make sure everyone has opportunities for a great education and a great job? Would you allow everyone more time for recreation?
When we design cities to minimize energy waste and the need for resources these things begin to happen!
Sure, this is just a theory for now. We will not really know the truth about this supposition until we build cities that accomplish these design goals. This should not prevent us from thinking about the possibilities!
If we spend less of our life getting to our life we have more time to live our life, right? Live close to all your help! Shrinking your city to its smallest and most workable form makes this happen. Making cities more three dimensional with architecture above and below ground makes this happen.
Transforming Cities To Their Smallest
And Most Workable Form
Cities are the biggest, most polluting, and most inefficient of all the machines people have made. They are noisy, smelly, stressful places to live. They cannot survive without importing vast amounts of energy, products and resources such as metals, water, and food.
Since pollution is commensurately linked to energy consumption, modern cities pollute themselves in many ways. Chemicals, carbon dioxide, particulates, and even esthetic visual pollution is common in modern cities. If we can make cities more efficient and more effective, we can reduce the pollutants that are byproducts of energy use.
We can reduce our need for energy by improving the ways our cities are connected. By shortening travel paths and building three dimensionally, cities become more efficient and effective. Besides saving energy, this complexification of cities has synergistic psychological value derived from reducing the kinds of stresses associated with life in car based, grid, cities. The common and shared spaces between buildings adds to the richness of architectural design possibilities that flatscape cities (sprawling, low rise, automobile centric) cannot match.
If we improve each city's local self reliance for resources, we will greatly reduce the amount of energy needed to support our lives. We live in a global community that is very poorly connected. What is the most appropriate and proper balance between doing for ourselves and trade with others?
Effective Use of Space
Effective use of space means using complex design principles to allow us to do more with less architecture. Submarines are excellent examples of effective use of space. It’s not how big the space is that is important. Rather, it is how well organized and practical the space becomes during use.
A circle encloses more area for the same amount of resources than any other shape. This idea allows the creation of architecture that uses a minimum of resources to enclose a maximum of space. This is not always desirable but perhaps should be used more often in design.
Linear City
Imagine a typical city that is built to allow automobiles to be the most important system for connecting people with the fulfillment of their needs. Streets, freeways, alleys, repair stations, parking lots, and many more kinds of structures, exist in this city, to serve the needs of automobiles.
Imagine the same city without all the services for cars. Shrink the distance between buildings that used to be separated by parking lots, roads, gas stations, etc.. Wherever it is optimally humane, take advantage of vertical space by stacking living and work spaces to make multiple level buildings. Then make a long line of all the essential buildings of the city and make the line of city loop back upon itself. This kind of city I call a linear loop city. This is also the prototypical example of a “Linear City”.
We may be seeing ever more need for disaster relief for large populations in the future. Many people have been made suddenly homeless by natural disasters and human caused problems. Tower Towns can be a way of helping people made homeless have a place to live. *****
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