4 ms·

Hah, you beat me to it! :-) Still happy to answer questions, although this is trending on a particularly bad day, as I'm moving house. Leave a question here, ho

by nkoren 9y ago

Hah, you beat me to it! :-) Still happy to answer questions, although this is trending on a particularly bad day, as I'm moving house. Leave a question here, however, and I'll answer it.

soperj 9y ago
I'm reading through your AMA, but how about, what would you do differently today if designing it from the ground up? EDIT: The ama wasn't very long. Also the place seems pretty small, but as someone who doesn't really know anything about it, what was the plan once it breached 5000 people?
- soperj 9y ago
  Also, what did they do with the garbage?
  - nkoren 9y ago
    Answering this question first; will come back to your other tomorrow. - Organic waste is composted for the farm. - Glass is broken down into aggregate for the concrete (glass recycling is barely ecologically justifiable; reuse is better). - Other recyclable and non-recyclable waste is separated on-site and shipped off-site for a waste-disposal company to handle. So not overwhelmingly different to other places, in that respect.
    - soperj 9y ago
      Thanks. Looking forward to the other answer :) Hope the move went well.
      - nkoren 9y ago
        Posted an answer for you. As for the move -- I feel like I've spent the last two days in a bar fight. Definitely need to be rich enough to pay for professional movers the next time I do this!
        soperj 9y ago
        Can't agree more. moving is the worst.
- nkoren 9y ago
  Okay, finally got a moment of downtime to answer this. The first thing I'd do differently is to prioritise the development of economic diversity. One of the most important aspects of cities is the way they create wealth, by facilitating the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services. The possibility of mutually beneficial exchange depends on having a great diversity of actors doing a great diversity of things; if everybody is doing the same thing, there will be no differences that can be exploited for mutual benefit, and everybody will fundamentally be poor. Company towns based can sometimes appear superficially rich based on exports -- eg., everyone is a silver miner, which brings a lot of cash to town -- but this masks the fact that the city lacks an internal engine for wealth generation, and is thus fundamentally unsustainable. (My foundation for thinking about urban economics, BTW is Jane Jacobs -- highly recommend "The Nature of Economies" for a quick primer on her philosophy.) Arcosanti was developed in the absence of a robust economic theory -- in fact I'd say there was a general distain / distrust of economics, as was often found amongst countercultural 1960s types. Economics was regarded as an artificial human construct, the foundation of capitalist/consumerist greed, etc. In place of a meaningful economic theory, Arcosanti was initially developed on the basis of "sweat equity" -- you help volunteer to build it, and then you can live in what you built. But each unit of habitation takes roughly 3-5 person-years to construct, so to make sweat-equity work (in the absence of specialisation, finance, etc), you need to both be an expert in construction and be willing to live in a tent in the desert for 3-5 years. That was the sort of vision that could inspire people in the early 1970s, but by the late 1970s had thoroughly burned itself out. So Arcosanti morphed into being a company town, whose primary exports were workshops, tours, and ceramic/bronze crafts. Not only does the company-town dynamic strangle actual wealth-generation, but this was a damn thin seam to be mining, and Arcosanti has been struggling to get into first gear ever since. To avoid this, I'd engage in fairly conventional finance: take out loans, and offer properties for long-term-lease. Sell this to anybody who wanted to live there, whether they were explicitly in the arcology-building business or not. Re-invest the profits in more construction, and try to foster the generation of a complex urban economy full of independent actors from the earliest possible moment. So that's the first, and most important, thing which I'd do differently. The second thing I'd do differently -- although somewhat later in its development -- is that I'd try to focus less on design and more on planning. This is critical for the lessons of Arcosanti to be exportable elsewhere. You can't have a single architecture firm designing your whole city: just as you need to be able to accommodate a diversity of economic actors, you also need to be able to accommodate a diversity of infrastructural actors. In other words, the question that needs to be answered is not "how should the arcology be designed?", but rather "what systems need to be in place to facilitate the emergence of an arcological design?". Conventional urban planning is based on a 2D grid, with standards for property boundaries, zoning, design standards, interfaces to utility systems, mechanisms for resolving disputes between neighbours, etc. These are grounded in political, legal, and technological systems, which are loose enough to allow for a lot of creativity amongst architects, property developers, etc., but strict enough to ensure relatively harmonious interfaces between them. A physical megastructure -- the city itself -- ultimately emerges out of these systems, but the systems themselves are non-physical. So, how do these systems need to be changed to facilitate arcological emergence? I don't have an a-priori answer to this: I think a lot of experimentation is needed. But that's where the emphasis needs to be.
itronitron 9y ago
Would you be willing to convince Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, to relocate Zappos (and all employees at their HQ in Las Vegas) to Arcosanti?
- nkoren 9y ago
  First you'd have to convince me that that would be a good idea. Many of Arcosanti's problems stem from the fact that it's a (small) company town, and is thus unable to model the socioeconomic complexity or governance processes of an actual city. In that sense, it fails in its objective of being "an urban laboratory". I'm not sure that becoming a company town at scale is necessarily the answer. That said, if Tony Hsieh's vision is expansive enough, maybe you're onto something. Relocating all employees would be a massive process, however. Not sure Arcosanti could absorb that kind of influx quickly -- nor that Zappos would be prepared to go into the infrastructure business to that extent...
  - itronitron 9y ago
    Good point about the company town aspect, and I'm sure most Zappos employees wouldn't be thrilled with the move. I could see Hsieh being helpful in a transition/evolution to a governance process that scales to small city based on his experience leading Zappos.

by nkoren 9y ago

Hah, you beat me to it! :-) Still happy to answer questions, although this is trending on a particularly bad day, as I'm moving house. Leave a question here, however, and I'll answer it.

soperj 9y ago

I'm reading through your AMA, but how about, what would you do differently today if designing it from the ground up? EDIT: The ama wasn't very long. Also the place seems pretty small, but as someone who doesn't really know anything about it, what was the plan once it breached 5000 people?

soperj 9y ago
Also, what did they do with the garbage?
- nkoren 9y ago
  Answering this question first; will come back to your other tomorrow. - Organic waste is composted for the farm. - Glass is broken down into aggregate for the concrete (glass recycling is barely ecologically justifiable; reuse is better). - Other recyclable and non-recyclable waste is separated on-site and shipped off-site for a waste-disposal company to handle. So not overwhelmingly different to other places, in that respect.
  - soperj 9y ago
    Thanks. Looking forward to the other answer :) Hope the move went well.
    - nkoren 9y ago
      Posted an answer for you. As for the move -- I feel like I've spent the last two days in a bar fight. Definitely need to be rich enough to pay for professional movers the next time I do this!
      - soperj 9y ago
        Can't agree more. moving is the worst.
nkoren 9y ago
Okay, finally got a moment of downtime to answer this. The first thing I'd do differently is to prioritise the development of economic diversity. One of the most important aspects of cities is the way they create wealth, by facilitating the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services. The possibility of mutually beneficial exchange depends on having a great diversity of actors doing a great diversity of things; if everybody is doing the same thing, there will be no differences that can be exploited for mutual benefit, and everybody will fundamentally be poor. Company towns based can sometimes appear superficially rich based on exports -- eg., everyone is a silver miner, which brings a lot of cash to town -- but this masks the fact that the city lacks an internal engine for wealth generation, and is thus fundamentally unsustainable. (My foundation for thinking about urban economics, BTW is Jane Jacobs -- highly recommend "The Nature of Economies" for a quick primer on her philosophy.) Arcosanti was developed in the absence of a robust economic theory -- in fact I'd say there was a general distain / distrust of economics, as was often found amongst countercultural 1960s types. Economics was regarded as an artificial human construct, the foundation of capitalist/consumerist greed, etc. In place of a meaningful economic theory, Arcosanti was initially developed on the basis of "sweat equity" -- you help volunteer to build it, and then you can live in what you built. But each unit of habitation takes roughly 3-5 person-years to construct, so to make sweat-equity work (in the absence of specialisation, finance, etc), you need to both be an expert in construction and be willing to live in a tent in the desert for 3-5 years. That was the sort of vision that could inspire people in the early 1970s, but by the late 1970s had thoroughly burned itself out. So Arcosanti morphed into being a company town, whose primary exports were workshops, tours, and ceramic/bronze crafts. Not only does the company-town dynamic strangle actual wealth-generation, but this was a damn thin seam to be mining, and Arcosanti has been struggling to get into first gear ever since. To avoid this, I'd engage in fairly conventional finance: take out loans, and offer properties for long-term-lease. Sell this to anybody who wanted to live there, whether they were explicitly in the arcology-building business or not. Re-invest the profits in more construction, and try to foster the generation of a complex urban economy full of independent actors from the earliest possible moment. So that's the first, and most important, thing which I'd do differently. The second thing I'd do differently -- although somewhat later in its development -- is that I'd try to focus less on design and more on planning. This is critical for the lessons of Arcosanti to be exportable elsewhere. You can't have a single architecture firm designing your whole city: just as you need to be able to accommodate a diversity of economic actors, you also need to be able to accommodate a diversity of infrastructural actors. In other words, the question that needs to be answered is not "how should the arcology be designed?", but rather "what systems need to be in place to facilitate the emergence of an arcological design?". Conventional urban planning is based on a 2D grid, with standards for property boundaries, zoning, design standards, interfaces to utility systems, mechanisms for resolving disputes between neighbours, etc. These are grounded in political, legal, and technological systems, which are loose enough to allow for a lot of creativity amongst architects, property developers, etc., but strict enough to ensure relatively harmonious interfaces between them. A physical megastructure -- the city itself -- ultimately emerges out of these systems, but the systems themselves are non-physical. So, how do these systems need to be changed to facilitate arcological emergence? I don't have an a-priori answer to this: I think a lot of experimentation is needed. But that's where the emphasis needs to be.

itronitron 9y ago

Would you be willing to convince Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, to relocate Zappos (and all employees at their HQ in Las Vegas) to Arcosanti?

nkoren 9y ago
First you'd have to convince me that that would be a good idea. Many of Arcosanti's problems stem from the fact that it's a (small) company town, and is thus unable to model the socioeconomic complexity or governance processes of an actual city. In that sense, it fails in its objective of being "an urban laboratory". I'm not sure that becoming a company town at scale is necessarily the answer. That said, if Tony Hsieh's vision is expansive enough, maybe you're onto something. Relocating all employees would be a massive process, however. Not sure Arcosanti could absorb that kind of influx quickly -- nor that Zappos would be prepared to go into the infrastructure business to that extent...
- itronitron 9y ago
  Good point about the company town aspect, and I'm sure most Zappos employees wouldn't be thrilled with the move. I could see Hsieh being helpful in a transition/evolution to a governance process that scales to small city based on his experience leading Zappos.