What is Arcology? How/Why is it Central?

   Arcology is a word devised by Italian-born laureate architect Paolo Soleri to describe his idea of melding architecture and ecology. In the online Oxford American Dictionary, "arcology" ("architectural ecology") 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.net is my personal construction, grown out of my own life. Experientially and existentially, it was begun as a personal  recollection, as journalism, as notebook and exploration. It's a gateway, an entry point into a WiFi'd puzzle-house of my own pursuits. It serves me as way to begin the analytic study that  I envision is deserved by the ethos of the unique material culture of the "urban laboratory" (cf: Ada Louise Huxtable) that's grown to be, is growing to become, Arcosanti.
   Your comments, concerns, criticisms, co-operative spirit, your own experience, assumptions, fantasies, reflections, and perceptions are important in this construction. In fact, your role is essential. You are needed to assure its integrity, its scrupulous relationship with the embrace of frugality: an opportunity to increase self-awareness in  a dream-context of increasingly conscious evolution.    

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