What is Arcology? Why and How is it Central?

   Arcology is a word devised by Italian- born laureate architect Paolo Soleri to describe his idea of melding architecture and ecology. 'Architectural ecology' - that is, Arcology, according to the online Oxford American Dictionary, is 'an ideal integrated city, contained within a massive vertical structure allowing maximum conservation of its surrounding environment.'  Wikipedia elaborates on that definition by providing examples of urban places that demonstrate arcology's core principle: a bipedal pedestrian economy of scale. Wikipedia also takes note of the popularity of arcology in fiction, especially sci-fi.
   ArcologyCentral is a personal construction, grown of my life, an experiential study as much as an existential one, begun journalistically as recollection as well as exploration. It's a gateway or entry point into a house of intellectual pursuit for the analytic study of  the ethos of the unique material culture experienced in the "urban laboratory" (Thank you, Ada Louise Huxtable) that has grown to be, is growing to become -  Arcosanti.
   Your comments, concerns, criticisms, co-operative spirit, your own experience, assumptions, fantasies, reflections, and perceptions are very important in this construction. Do not doubt that your role is essential. You are needed to assure its integrity, its scrupulous embrace of frugality: an opportunity to increase self-awareness in  the dream of increasingly conscious evolution.    

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/arcology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology