It was an honor to have been awarded the 2015 Brunner Grant by The NY Center for Architecture. My proposal was for a Pilot Study of the ethnosphere of Arcosanti, to find out more about the people who've helped to build it, especially those with an architectural background. It was a needed investigation, I felt, one I'd wanted to explore for a long time.

When the idea for the research methodology came into my head, it came as a stunning flash. I knew it was unique. No-one had ever used sandplay in an organizational field study, essentially multi-gerational, ethnographic and non-clinical, Its diversified population, practically speaking, unified primarily by its interest in "architectural ecology" (aka arcology) as that idea has been manifesting in the experimental project of Cosanti Foundation, an Arizona 501-3C educational non-profit. To add the psychological aspect of sandplay to an in-depth investigation of Arcosanti's "power of place" was sure to be informative.

There was no straight course to that investigation and it it took some doing to get to it. Back in 1986, when I realized it didn't make sense to continue spinning my wheels in organizational dysfunctionality, to stay stuck in the micromanagement administrative style the Cosanti Foundation was demonstrating at that time, it was clear to me that I had to leap away. I took myself to graduate school because I was pretty sure I'd find, somewhere in the rest of the world, that the obstacles I'd been encountering in AZ 86333 might be handled better in other zip codes, other settings. I wanted to find out how challenges that included virtually no investment experience, no substantive ideas about organizational development, were met in other places. Mustering up my sons and me, I headed us back east. 
 
My circuitous route through grad school took me through some remarkable territories. Friends World College was an eye-opener. Dr. John Muir, founder of the Prospect Park Environmental Center in Brooklyn, helped me close the behavioral perception gap I had been experiencing. Tutoring undergraduates in theQueensborough Community College under Gretchen Haynes reinforced my faith in human potential.

But as I was trying to connect the dots between theory and practice, the path through that murky environment got illuminated unexpectedly by an encounter with a talking technique I'd never before encountered - one that used toys and innate human talents to encourage and constructively enable people to express themselves effectively. 

That "talking technique" was called sandplay and when I learned that struggling 4th graders' reading scores had shot up several  grade levels after their teacher made sandplay an element of their classroom learning experience, I was determined to add it to my toolbox. Not only because I was working with so-called "disadvantaged" elementary school kids in NYC, kids with immense practical sense and practical experience who had not much familiarity with the ultra-swift WASP machismo culture into which they'd been flung, a culture that provided plenty of room for horrific conflict every day of their lives; but also because there was plenty of evidence that sandplay was a good thing for all sorts of people. 

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," the saying goes; but fortunately I didn't intuit how much seismic movement there might be. I strode straight in, Birkenstocks be praised. One thing leads to another and poof, after completing an MScEd in Educational Administration with a Visual Arts Focus under Dr. Lorraine Monroe, Elaine Wickens and Katie O'Donnell at Bank Street College and Parsons School of Design in 1988 (the internships for which opened my connections to the practice of sandplay), in 1992 I graduated from McGill University with two Social Work degrees sandwiched around a year or of law school, ready to find out what the practice of sandplay might contribute to what I was witnessing in my world.

[If you're curious to know more about sandplay in the practise of Social Work, there's a 50 pp paper with a then-current bibliography, titled The Imaginable Archetype, downloadable on <http://www.academia.edu>. Sorry, no illustrations. If you need to see the pictures, the original's in the Library of McGill University. ​For convenence, there's also link on this page to a downloadable (unillustrated) copy.]     
 
My initial exploration of sandplay evolved, My instincts as a researcher aroused, I couldn't help but want to push the envelope of what I was experiencing and observing in the multiple worlds of sandplay.

In virtually all of the world-wide associations for the several thousands of practitioners of sandplay, which is best known as a form of Jungian psychotherapy, research usually appears in the form of individual case studies. This is true for professionals in private practice as well as those working in educational institutions, clinics and other health-related organizations. 

To use sandplay not as psychotherapy but as a projective test to "capture a snapshot of the unconscious" in an ethnographic study, particularly on a scale as large as Arcosanti makes possible, had absolutely no precedent. When the idea came to me, I knew, as I said, that I would be breaking new ground. To utilize sandplay in an in-depth exploration of Arcosanti, focusing on its people, was unprecedented. I could hardly wait to begin. 

First order of business after arranging for clinical supervision was to assure I'd have a space at Arcosanti that would be perfectly suited for this unique investigation. Once that space was ready to use, I had no doubt I would soon have photos of many, many sandtrays made by people who'd worked at ArCosanti to share with others interested in the idea of arcology.

I contacted the International Society for Sandplay Therapy in Switzerland to let them know what I was proposing to do. Ruth Amman, President of ISST, had been an architect before she became a Jungian analyst and a sandplay therapist. I was certain she'd want to know about the research I was preparing to undertake. 

The target population of participants in the study could/would, I had no doubt, naturally expand to include current residents, current workshop participants. Even visitors might participate, I thought, if I could arrange to include those who expressed interest in the study - of which there were quite a few, I knew, from my work as a docent and from the reports of Arcosanti's other tour guides whose encounters mirrored my own..

So then, well - bienvenidos, el mundo!?          

A day or so before I set out to go cross-country from my tiny studio in British Columbia, CBC's Radio One broadcast an interview  with Ingeborg Rapoport, conducted by Anna-Maria Tremonti. Dr. Rapoport had just defended her doctoral dissertation at the age of 102. [You can click on the link below if you'd like to listen to the Podcast.] Although it hadn't occurred to me that my research might end up taking 77 years, it was a relief to be reminded, just when I was starting out, that perseverance really does further, as the I Ching says. Not a bad thing, especially when you're taking the first steps of a project, to anticipate that persistence might be required. (In fact, thank goodness for useful insights. Lucky if they come quickly.) 

Me, not so quick but still, pretty much soon.

First of all, it was clear I had grossly underestimated how much time it would take to get the sandplay component of the research study going. Setting up a place to use sandplay as a projective test at Arcosanti took months, not weeks. As well as quite a bit more money than I'd anticipated.

Although "Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong" is a truism, that wasn't exactly what went down. Quite a few things went just fine. But still, there were enough glitches in the plan to assure that by the end of 2015's summer, I was far shy of being where I expected to be. Certainly not anywhere near ready to go to Japan, that September, to connect all the Arconauts there with the Japan Sandplay Therapy Association, as I had wanted/thought/expected I would be doing. 

Well, OK, that's life. But in early November 2015, I slipped and broke my femur. (Very bad idea. I must admit it slowed me down rather a lot. I did some writing about it on this blog in December 2015.)

Still, none of that prepared me for the discovery, when I got back to Arcosanti at the end of November, expecting to pick up where I'd had to leave off, that all the tools and materials for the sandplay-as-projective-test component of the study had been removed from their most excellent, carefully arranged space. Despite the fact that I'd received a message from Mary Hoadley assuring me that my sandplay work was respected by the Arcosanti Leadership Team of Cosanti Foundation, all of the miniatures had been packed up by person/persons unknown, put into a space far less suitable/usable than the one I'd been assigned in the Red Room, the space in which I'd invested a substantial portion of my grant. 

It's difficult to circumvent the impression that the deliberate attack on my research was anything other than spiteful. Having experienced and witnessed that sort of rancor in the past: indifference to voluntary enthusiasm and meaningful curiosity, the relentless squandering of dedicated energy, it's hard to avoid the possibility that the attack was, in  fact, anything else. 

​I'm open to suggestions here, folks. All ideas welcome.    

Daniela Soleri was four years old when I first met her. Lively, vital, bright-as-a-button. Blew my socks off on Day One. Amazed me then, still does. 

There was courage in her when she was a kid. The bravery she's shown recently is an outcome of what was always natural with her. 

To reveal an intimate personal matter to the world at large may seem as if someone's speaking a completely different language from the one spoken when the lingo was all about rescuing wounded soldiers off Hacksaw Ridge but actually, they have a basic  commonality. Both are action-verb based; both perceive a will to respond personally and directly to an immediate human need.

Daniela, taking note of the many women who've been speaking out about unwanted sexual advances made by famed, powerful men, men well-known through the media, decided to reveal her own story, to make public the aggressive sexual attention she'd been made to endure by her often-lauded father. Her #MeToo admission is a call-to-arms. I'm proud to cheer for her but I know very well that waving an honor banner to laud an inspirational warrior-champion is a whole lot easier than marching side by side with one.

Reading the eloquent short essay she posted to Medium about her father's abhorrent behavior, I was stunned. Although it was no secret that Paolo Soleri had always been a guy with a roving eye, a would-be Don Juan who wanted, tried to play practically every woman he found attractive, I hadn't ever, despite years of training and practical experience as a licensed Social Worker in all sorts of settings, considered the possibility that the man's lecherous fancy might include approaching and assaulting his own daughter.  

I rue my lack of insight. "Shoulda, coulda, wish I hadda" doesn't rectify an egregious wrong.

Daniela's ability to distinguish between her father's completrely unacceptable behavior and the value of his ideas is extraordinary. But as I said, she has always been exceptional.

She was owed, at the very least, an apology from her father.

Having received one from mine, I feel strongly that if you get one, you are better off. You might even be perceived as lucky, in the eyes of some people; although "lucky" is usually a title somewhere between curse and blessing. It has always seemed to me that if you can wear that particular label with humility, attaining closeness to the divine is less likely to trouble you. But if humility is  missing from your roster of wanted/needed virtues and values, your troubles are only just beginning...

What I have to say about "It can make a difference, a sincere apology," is that the one I received was my father's gift to me. Every bit as precious as my mother's. (Perhaps it accounts for my tendency to ruminate, an unexpected benefit of my father-the-bacon-lover's honoring Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.)

Does the language of arcology have its own vocabulary of suffering? If so, what I want to know is: How many noun variations are there? If they are quantifiable, how are they qualified? For what purpose?

Where this line of thought started was my wondering about language: If arcology requires a language that's verb-based, action-statement oriented, what balances it? 

My questions about that language could go on, and on and on:

• How is it balancing its inertial mass?
• Has it ever feared potency?
• Has it ever equated some specific action with submission?
• Has it ever questioned how unfolding happens?

Wherever we start to question the hows and whys of what's happened in the past, the list of questions will continue infinitely in an infinite number of directions. A geometry of space and time. Balancing orders of magnitude and complexity. 

Burdens are everyone's business. No-one lives without them. Abusers are most often people who were once themselves abused. Does crediting the unknowns put marks upon us? What might those marks signify? How do we question the worshipful intimacy of coupled parents? How do we question what might be learned/acquired behavior? 

Life's balance is as important as water. Where the oil is, in that equation, was what I supposed the arcology idea rested upon.
Otherwise, I couldn't see what Daniela's father was driving at, much less how his idea about it could be achieved.

Paolo Soleri wasn't great at questioning himself, at questioning his judgement. Nor did he recognize that the need to question is a right, a right that everyone possesses. Not only did he forget to announce what questions he didn't want to be asked; for the most part, he forgot to ask. Period.

Men - and women, too - learn such habits. Overcoming habits takes concentrated practice. Willful practice. (Surprise!)

No doubt Daniela wasn't given an apology because her father was pretty much incapable of admitting he was wrong. No matter how obvious it might be that he was.

Canadian painter Marcia Stone and I made him let us compost the organic waste produced in the kitchen of the Cat Cast in 1968, but not because he agreed that his own idea about what we were doing was totally of the mark wrong. City guy without a shred of experience with any kind of gardening, afraid of dirt, a contamination phobia coupled with other sorts of hesitancies; most likely he gave in because we were adamant. Plus beautiful Marcia, a whole lot taller and much more stolidly built than he was, towered over him. The two of us ganged up on him, overwhelmed him with fact:

"Boss, listen up! Composting works. It's the right thing to do. Better learn how to do it right, and, while you're at it, efficiently." 

He wasn't enthused but he did let us compost the kitchen waste. Maybe ultimately, he did sort of "get" that composting is where and how waste management begins if you're really serious about "frugality" - a notion on which, he avowed, he based his entire value system. (What's not to like about composting? What's not to love?)

But he could not, would not accept the aesthetically elegant, economic solution proposed by Paul Vigne to make passing through the Vaults a whole lot more safe and accessible, despite Paul's considerable training and experience in Interior Design. He could not because he had not thought of it himself. That decision might not have won the "Most Arrogant Statement of the Year" award but it's a lot of years since he said it and there's been no effort made to carry out Paul's readily implementable idea.

Paul's not one to push himself on people, but I'd take book that no-one's thought to ask him about such design concerns - about which, as I said, he knows quite a bit...    

Cosanti Foundation recently issued a brief statement acknowledging Daniela Soleri's letter. It's a good starting point but IMO it needs considerable follow-up. If I had knee cartilage left to make it possible, I'd get down on both of mine to ask Daniela if she and her husband, David Cleveland, could/would consider developing a master plan for a farm-to-table agricultural program at Arcosanti. Needed for decades, it just last year finally made it close to the top of Cosanti Foundation's To-Do-Now bucket list. 

Professors at UCSB, their area of specialization is arid-land agriculture. They know Arizona terrain very well, including Arcosanti's. They have the experience, the resources, the insight needed to coax a comprehensive edible landscape schemata for food, fiber, an apiary, a 'water conservation for survival' strategy - whatever is needed to implement a viable sustainable agricultural plan for the site of Arcosanti.

Plus: If ever there is an opportunity for offering poetic justice, it is incumbent upon us to assess the value of that opportunity. IMO in this case, for sure, "Seizing opportunity by the forelock" (as the I Ching puts it) might help redress a terrible not-right. 

This is surely looking to be a lot of importuning on my part; but I don't suppose it's my bum knees that will impede an affirmative reply. Subjecting my wish to careful scrutiny, I can't personally imagine myself agreeing to consider my own proposition unless I were given complete assurance that the policy decision-making authority entrusted to Cosanti Foundation would unfailingly and in every instance demonstrate consultation with advisors it will accede to.

I'd need complete assurance that every aspect of the Foundation's operations will be copiously, scrupulously documented, made available publicly and openly. That the Foundation will consider a revision of its constitution and by-laws. That it will review how its Board members are selected. That the Trustees' terms of office are spelled out. That job descriptions are made available and that job-performnace review is standardized. That employees do not serve as Board members, as is the general rule in the world of non-profit management, or that Arizona's Board norms are adhered to: three non-employees for every one employee..     

Nor need Daniela. Why should she? Among other issues, in what way does the organizational model of  a "company town" - no matter how fine an idea is behind it, no matter how aesthetically exciting its manifestation - make the arcology experiment as it is currently being handled at Arcosanti serve as an example of a terrific investment opportunity for the multitudes?

One for-instance: How is the CraftsIII Cafe management strategy demonstrating the best possible return on one of its potentially most cooperative endeavors?

Another for-instance: In what way is it possible for potential stakeholders to realize a solid return on their investment? 

For that matter: Who are the stakeholders? There is no mechanism that allows people - including almost 8000 alumni - to secure a place for themselves at Arcosanti. For whom, exactly, is Arcosanti being built?     

May Daniela's initiating this discussion be of benefit.  

I HAD SOME BIG THINKING TO DO ABOUT ARCOSANTI. Mary Hoadley, who is the Site Manager of Arcosanti and also a Trustee of The Cosanti Foundation, informed me that I'm responsible for assuring that Arcosanti will retrofit for ADA-compliance. 

WHAT AN AMAZING PROJECT! I can see a project of such magnitude had better get started immediately - like, right now! - given how timely it is to rectify its absence. Can it happen in smart time for 2019, the year that would have been the 100th birthday of Paolo Soleri? . 

My first thoughts about this unexpected challenge were all tumbled together. I'm sorting them out as I go but high on my list of what I'd like to see happen is that carrying out this essential task will assure that Arcosanti will get to hold the world's title for disability accommodation, *the* place in North America to experience the most disability-aware, disability-friendly design. 

Working out the design algorhythms is an ambitious underaking: There are a zillion (well, probably I exaggerate, but really quite a few) elements to factor into this project. It'll be an ongoing process, examining all of them. The importance of incorporating EVIDENCE-BASED DESIGN into the architectural plan can't be under-stated. Won't it be fun to expand the possibility of a design competition which architecture schools, all around the world, can participate in? 

• I've been putting ideas into a durable basket (arconaut-designed, ya know, which BTW is holding up OK so far) but getting the process underway is taking mucho dipping in. pulling out, wiggling, waving, putting back in. 

FYI, Here are some ideas I'm keeping as a PLACE TO SHARE PLACE TO START:

• <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/education/edlife/disability-studies-a-new-normal.html>
• <https://www.e-architect.co.uk/articles/disability-access-architecture
• <http://www.joelsolkoff.com/mobility_disability_housing/>
• <http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1329&context=gladnetcollect>
• <https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128778558>
• <https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/udl/cresource/q1/p01/udl_01_link_ud/>

IT WOULD BE GOOD TO HAVE A WORK GROUP, PEOPLE WHO LIVE WITH DISABILITY THEMSELVES, PEOPLE WHO ARE "INSIDERS." An important book about this is Nothing About Us Without Us - Oppression and Empowerment - Disability Oppression and Empowerment, by James I. Charlton. The promo bumph says it's "a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities....the first book in the literature on disability to provide a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism....[an] analysis ... illuminated by interviews conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the USA. Charlton finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. His interviews contain striking stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists. As a latecomer among the world's liberation movements, the disability rights movement will gain visibility and momentum from Charlton's elucidation of its history and its political philosophy of self-determination, which is captured in the title of his book. Nothing About Us Without Us expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them. Charlton's combination of personal involvement and theoretical awareness assures greater understanding of the disability rights movement." (There's a Kindle edition, as well as a print one.)

THE STATEMENT OF INTENT downloadable from this page is my response to a request for one from Mary Hoadley. PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE to respond with comments and suggestions.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: WITHOUT THE APPROVAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE BACKING OF THE COSANTI FOUNDATION, NOT EVEN AN INITIATIVE AS POTENT AS THIS ONE CAN HAPPEN. 

A GRAPHIC TO ADEQUATELY CONVEY THE POWER OF WHAT I'M SEEING IS A CHALLENGE. The photo of a woman with one leg is evocative of disability - wheelchair-safe, wheelchaire-friendly, is the Gold Standard for accessibility - but my choosing that particular image came out of mulling over "repetition:"

I started asking myself, "What if repetition games are not different from each other? Do they, as we watch them, evoke one another? What if there is only a 'one game'? What about a 'meta-game'?"

WHAT INSPIRED THIS LINE OF THOUGHT WAS A DISNEY MOVIE "The Jungle Book," a brilliantly made film. Although I've not seen everything Disney Studios ever made, I was inspired by that one to rush to <Gutenberg.org> for a pdf of all of Rudyard Kipling's writing. Living in a post-colonial world as we all do, the mentality of the British Raj has already begun to take on new meaning.

THE REPETITIVE GAME OF DOING WHAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN DONE is a comfort zone of its own. But what struck me square as I started contemplating what gets Arcosanti to show off its capabilities in its approach to RETROFIT DESIGN - was coming to grips with how DO AS YOU ALWAYS HAVE DONE games don't have to end just because a THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE game is also being played. Think

• COMPRESSION AND TENSION
• MARRIAGES OF OPPOSITES

COMFORT ZONES CAN BE ADJUSTED. HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR THERMOSTAT RECENTLY?

There is a touch of anthropological thinking here, obviously. But to fathom human behavior, surely we need to parse out its roots in how we react to personal cultural conventions. How do those elements, taken together, dictate to humans in groups? Isn't reception of what's dictated often quite different from what is actually dictated?

How I got to this was Dr. Spock, as played by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek, who well knew how to put dissociation to use as an actor. What caught my attention was how Nimoy also requisitioned dissociation beyond that recognized public persona display, how he used it to gain precious insight into the character he was building/developing: a male Vulcan who was half-human, a being from another planetary system..

THE DISCONNECT PUT ME IN MIND OF WHAT DISABILITY AND SAFETY MEAN FOR ARCOSANTI but it took my New Denver pal Burgin Jacobs just a few split-seconds to identify the bottom line when it comes to safety. Burgin is especially sensitive to talk about material matters, having been raised in Toronto by architect Bob and urban analyst Jane. What  she identified as the starting point for thinking about safety is SUICIDE-PROOF.

As injunctions go, that one reminded me immediately of what  the NYC MTA has to deal with, Surely worth emulating: 24/7/365, umpteen millions of riders, gigantic quantities of trash, hardly any accidents. Ever

MARY HOADLEY ALSO REMINDED ME THAT PAOLO SOLERI BELIEVED ARCOSANTI WOULD FUNCTION AS A  COOPERATIVE. Which made it no great leap to envision ArCoop administering the Arcosanti Workshop Program that will be needed for perfecto handicap-access retrofitting.

ERGO: OYEZ, OYEZ! HEAR YE, HEAR YE! CALLING ALL ARCONAUTS! There should be multiple work-fronts available for an Arco-op launch of a 2-year startoff phase for such a workshop project. Teams of designers, please talk among yourselves! Come together. all ye like-minded souls!

KEEP IN MIND, THOUGH, THE DESIGN IMPERATIVE IS EVIDENCE-BASED DECISION-MAKING : We want all our teams well-informed by consultation with populations of all sorts of folks who are themselves managing all manner of disabilities, with folks who are - for any reason at all - concerned about accommodation for accessibility and safety at Arcosanti.

PLEASE GET IN TOUCH. You can leave a note on this blog or use the contact page on this website to reach me directly.

​THANK YOU!

​

In 1967, Expo year in Montreal, Christopher Cordeaux was living in an apartment on DeCarie Boulevard. He'd been loaned to the National Film Board of Canada by the Australian Film Board to help the NFB make its first feature film, I learned from Carolyn, his wife, who introduced herself as I was helping her choose fabric at Marshall's on St. Catherine Street, where I'd been hired as a sales clerk. When Carolyn invited me home to visit with her and Daniel, I was so charmed I could not refuse.

Stepping inside the door of their apartment on DeCarie certified my impression that I had met people with whom I would be "friends for life." The refrigerator was an icebox: (how they found ice in mid-summer Montreal is a mystery I've yet to solve). The screen of the TV, kicked to smithereens by Chris in a moment of pique, had been replaced by a Beatles album cover., Sergeant  Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  

Carolyn got me giggling to the point of tears when she told me about her encounters with les grandes dames of DeCarie Street while she and Chris were looking after a friend's aardvark: Pregnant at the time with their firstborn, whenever she wheeled the wee beastie up the street, tucked into an old fashioned wicker pram, les grandes dames could not help but peer into the beautiful antique, expecting of course to see a drop-dead adorable human infant... 

The following year, back in Arizona at Cosanti, stationed in the bell area assembling clay bells, on hand to greet visitors who might want to walk around with a guide, as was typical with visitors, I noticed a young woman who was with her architect-husband and their two young daughters. Naomi and Tony, she told me by way of introduction - from Sydney, Australia.

I did not get their last names, alas, but what happened in those few moments we spent together was that I could not help but say to her: "You know Christopher, don't you? Christopher Cordeaux?"

Naomi demurred at first but I was insistent, could not be dissuaded. "You know Christoper?!" I said repeatedly until finally it seemed she heard me, glanced at me straight back, saying as if from a long ways away: "I do know one Christopher. Christopher Cordeaux." 

"Yes! That's the one!" I flipped back at her, relieved. I can't imagine what she thought of my insistence but her assent was enough, Although I have no idea how I knew, I just knew she knew Chris. I also knew it was important that I let her know I had sensed that she did. (If anyone wants to or can Go Figure This One, Please Please By All Means, Please Do...

It's been a good many years since that day, but if anyone reading this happens to know Naomi, please to let her know that I'd very much like to hear from her, to know how she's doing? Oh gosh, Yes, I would...

​    

fOR EXAMPLE, CNOTICE: THIS IS A LONG, PERSONAL ENTRY] Accommodating my mind to a mind different from my own is the epitome of "puzzle," for me but I consider myself fortunate because generally speaking, puzzles intrigue me. For example, crossword puzzles. especially those in the NYTimes, I take as an invitation to meet other minds head-on for mental exercise. I don't mind allowing myself to be entertained by them: I daresay they expand the space I have for all sorts of other interesting meet-other-minds challenges.

One of those is the puzzle of my 50+ year history with the people of Arcosanti.

It might take another 50+ years of Arcosanti-associating to carry out what I already started but as we are in medias res, the What to do next? - it seems to me - has to be to correct the still-common mis-impression of Arcosanti that's skewed because it is stuck back in the bad old days when the USA's post-Beat, pre-Hippie generation was mindlessly unaware of how 'joined at the hip' its culture was with the hegemony of the automobile. 

Inside and outside mainstream architectural academies, the mention of arcology would engender patronizing, pat-on-the-shoulder dismissal: "Oh, Soleri! That guy who plays in the sand? At that place in Arizona, what's it called - Arcosanti? Where they talk about building an arcology? The hippie commune with the Utopian fantasy ideology?"

Yeah, well, I gotta say it's IMHO (and Yes, I am aware that MHO can be sometimes less than H) that "commune" and "Utopian" are serious misunderstandings of what arcology proposes. Arcology is more than a design concept specific to the construction of Arcosanti's physical plant. It is also, as well, the primary social enterprise of Arcosanti. I'll explain what I mean.

[CONTEXT: Where I'm coming from is a community organization/community development perspective, both of which normally expect to see some sort of short and long term return on all that is invested. In a nutshell this means that opportunities for investment have to appear worthwhile from a financial point of view as well as an aesthetic one. Sidestepping those norms is (again IMHO) an evident flaw stemming from the flaw in the original hypothesis of Paolo Soleri.

Repairing the flaw is not impossible, as problems go. That said, not examining it/attending to it is a "sin of omission" because IMHO that fault has ultimately to be reckoned with. 

If the idea of arcology at Arcosanti is to flourish more keenly than it has since the Carbecue in 1978 and the financial setbacks following that event, the flaws in the original hypothesis can't be ignored. Left unattended, they simply burrow deeper, become more problematic, and unless/until there is committed administrative acknowledgement to the kind of self-examination that results in performance of self-corrective measures, Cosanti Foundation will demonstrate an impoverished incapacity for responsibly actualizing Arcosanti's capabilities, its capacity for maximizing its unique potential.

To benefit the majority of the world's architectural academies/design communities, Arcosanti's administrators must surpass demanding fealty to what has been the fairly persistent emulation of Paolo's original hypotheses, which constellate around implementing massive passive solar designs and are clustered around adopting his unique personal vocabulary of form for arcology at Arcosanti.

Thinking Paolo's original hypothesis was all that would ever be needed to demonstrate the virtue of arcology) is understandable, given the forcefulness of his personality and the stunning effect of his designs when they were first executed, when he first proposed the idea of arcology. But it is becoming increasingly vital to come to grips with and fully appreciate the "hole in the dyke" that is the modest flaw in his central hypothesis. Do we need "rocket science" to staunch the loss of energy made inevitable by the presence of that hole, to recognize what calls out for revision, to neatly and comprehensively respond to and manage such revision in ways that can/will afford compensation for whatever encouragements are needed?

Me, I don't think so. To the contrary: I've come to suspect the rational transparency of the sheer improbability of testing Paolo's original hypothesis is what led to repeated academic rejection, to consequent reiteration of how flawed his hypothesis appeared from a variety of perspectives: cultural, economic, ergonomic, material, scientific, and social, to start with. Given all that history, is it really surprising that Arcosanti might be taken for sci-fi or appear to be "stuck in a rut"?

I noticed the flaw quite a while ago because my history with the idea of arcology is so long it practically qualifies as antique: I began my employment as a Soleri apprentice in 1962. After that, I cycled through a variety of job titles confirming my employee status until 2006, when I managed to earn the higher status "volunteer" confers on the super-lucky.  (Lucky me, to be so lucky!)

In 2015, thanks to a grant awarded by the NY Center for Architecture, I was able to begin the undertaking of a Pilot Study, doctoral-level research that was designed to acquire/provide deeper understanding of how Arcosanti as an experiential education site serves to abet the exploration of arcology through its studious undertakings in architecture, design, performance arts, crafts, arts, sciences, et al. 

My research led me to consider, from a behavioral perspective, how cooperative endeavors seem characteristic of the social construction of Arcosanti. That, in turn, led me to witness confirmation of arcology at what I'd come to think of as the "Urban Village of Arcosanti" manifesting in the legal establishment and subsequent entrenchment of ArCooperative, a formalized, multi-stakeholders' co-operative business that is naturally readily supportive of sustainable development of arcology at Arcosanti.

[Sidebar: From an academic perspective, the Urban Village culture that Arcosanti has embodied to date can be meaningfully compared and contrasted with an Urban Village culture which I happen to simultaneously occupy consequent to the considerable advantages I enjoy (maybe uniquely) as a responsible citizen who is privileged to reside in two atypical multicultural urban village cultures, in two different industrialized Western countries.]

[Caveat: I've also come to recognize that "White privilege" is an aspect of cultural "complexification" which must ultimately be included in any meaningful analytic examination of the development of arcology at Arcosanti.]

This brings me to another, much-appreciated advantage I enjoy: My research is interdisciplinary to the max. Almost wildly so! So far, it touches on:

• architecture/design  (remote/rural and urban/suburban)
• clinical/analytical psychology
• philosophy, religious studies
• anthropology/material culture and linguistics
• human/social ecology, health and human services
• energy resources, transportation technology
• taxonomy, classification systems
• sustainable, critter-safe agriculture - including sustainable bee-keeping
• journalism, crafts and fine art, 
• music, dance and drama

​That's just for starters!

To return to my puzzling about puzzles, which is where this musing started: I've noticed that although I can be fairly intuitive, have been schooled in how to trust my intuition, I'm not always a perfect mind-reader. Encountering the defensiveness of others can serve to sensitize a body, though; and recently I had to wonder if I was under attack. (Passive-aggressive attack, but still. attack.) When I came to the conclusion that a form of attack was actually happening, I wanted to be certain I could respond to the aggression directed at me without going into "attack" mode, myself.

After I'd had some time to ruminate on all that, it occurred to me that masked questions might lurk behind someone's subjective feelings. (By which I mean, feelings I couldn't immediately intuit.)

It may not be obvious that what people don't ask can be a way of asserting power, a way of invading someone else's space but that is what passive-aggressive personality types do. And when I was reminded of that, I got to wondering if/how some form of role ambiguity could provoke projections of absolute negativity, wondered if/how someone might verbally attack another person because s/he doesn't get where the other person is coming from. Which means that someone's minor misgivings about social performance could somehow provoke his/her attacking someone. Especially in environments supporting conflict-of-interest decision-making, taking such conflict as normal might seem normal, yes?

POINT: In that kind of environment, "Others" could include anyone who's not in an inner sanctum of power with which the attacker is familiar.

Witnessing someone obliquely (or directly) attempt to invalidate the credibility of another person's ideas, motivation, experience, accomplishments, and/or ideological curiosity is not a pretty sight. With respect to the puzzle of Arcosanti, witnessing bullying, disrespectful conduct, the disdaining of someone's work, someone's questions, his/her respect for resources, or any other sort of ad hoc pathologizing isn't simply "not pretty." It's downright ugly. It's also unacceptable ethically and morally, as well as being "bad for business."

Any way you slice it, it's acutely distressing.

[Caveat: It also distresses me to encounter the demeaning of any resources, even/especially when/if they can be classified as dirt, waste (including organic/human waste), all of which are elemental necessities for all human populations.]

For sure, there are multiple facets to a large puzzle which is least a 3-D creation. But what I'm noting here is an odd sort of "dark-side" phenomenon that to me appears relevant to the puzzle-pieces that have been crucial elements in the evolutionary development of arcology at Arcosanti. All of those we can examine easily are relevant to understanding how Arcosanti might evolve and for sure there are likely many others to examine. ("Leave no stone unturned," yes?)

For example: the value of time is also a many-faceted piece that should appear in the puzzle box.

Market value and energy-value should, I think, appear as separate numbers. (This is true for me personally since calculating exactly the value of my experience as a researcher, journalist, as a resident volunteer, etc., is a puzzle element I've not yet concluded how to figure in, factor in. But if that's true for me, might it not be true for others?)

As one of the many agents of change who got attracted to an idea Paolo Soleri called arcology, as one of those many agents of change who wondered how that arcology idea could be realized, who wanted to see it realized and still does, I'm here to report that attachment to Arcosanti does occur. It  does indeed occur...oh my goodness, yes, it does.

I don't dismiss my own several decades-long attachment. I don't dismiss the well-consolidated, decades-long attachments of other old fogies entrenched into actual staff-lines, including people now at Arcosanti whose continuing occupation of physical residences in what Paolo called "The Old Town" – the structures at Arcosanti today, which have been the handwork of thousands. All of those attachments may also be measured in decades. Add 'em all up, you get a lot of years...

Irony deserves consideration: Despite Paolo's contradictory hypothesizing about attachment-to-Arcosanti, his opining that attachment wouldn't be significantly important for growth and development of Arcosanti, not only can and does attachment to Arcosanti occur, it's of major importance to those who experience it.

IM sometimes HO, most likely Paolo's misapprehension about attachment was a consequence of his own lack of foresight about (and insight into) the evolutionary advantages of that human trait we call "attachment." That gap in his powers of observation could not (nor did it) remove Arcosanti's appeal. Far from it! Arcosanti's appeal is relatively obvious even if it has not been in any completely obvious way more than minimally secure.

[Observational Sidebar: Arcosanti continues to attract. There's evidence of its power of attachment over the course of time. Apart from the historic example of some of the old fogies (a few of them relatively easy to spot) whose attachment could be consequent to inertia or habit rather than committed affection, what I have been finding in the course of my research study is that just the idea of a place devoted to thinking about "cities without cars" has the power to attract. No-one I've talked with about my research has had a negative response to my explaining that the focus of my study is a place "dedicated to the proposition that it's possible to build cities without cars." To the contrary. That idea is met with universal approval, even by people who love cars, in a way that evokes the power of architecture to attract attention. Especially when that architecture transcends expectations about space/spatial awareness, when it evokes the image of "Frozen music," as Edward Gordon Craig said of it with respect to his set designs, hearkening Schiller and Goethe's "Music is frozen architecture, architecture is frozen music." To encounter a place compelling some kind of kinesthetic realization of "All the World's a Stage" is a compelling encounter. That place is quite a space.]

[Fact Sidebar: Kinesthetics isn't in the eye. It's in the ear. I know this thanks to Canadian Kripalu Yoga-teaching psychologist Devika Eiffert.]

To return to where we started: Meditating about my puzzlement, what came into my head as an insight was that attachment to attraction can have a drug-like effect. It's heady, to be able to attract. (Euphoria-inducing, even - as enchanters know.)

Handling the power to attract is another bailiwick. Euphoria transcends management, n'est-ce pas? How often do you see people trying to manage or quell elation?  

I'll get back to that eventually. But since this blog is up to me and I've been ranting on it about wish-fulfillment for quite a while, I'll not shirk from the task of enumerating my own wishes and to forge ahead with that, I'll start off here (in no particular order) with A Short List: 

1. Five (5) ice-making refrigerators for:

• the Lab Kitchen (right at the entrance to the Vaults); 
• the Community Kitchen in the Colly Crescent; 
• East Housing;
• West Housing,; 
• Crafts III's kitchen.

2. Sensor switches for all exterior and interior lights so they turn on automatically when someone approaches them and turn off after there's no-one there.
3. More better solar-powered exterior lights for safer night walking. 
4. Reliable handicap-friendly access to the Crafts III Cafe.
5. Ongoing Spoken Word Performance Programs in the Colly Soleri Amphitheatre, starting with

• Poetry Slams
• More more better better Shakespeare (for which a sound baffle is needed over the stage of the Colly Soleri Amphitheatre
• Japanese Noh drama (including productions in the marvelous but sadly unused performance space created by Russell Ferguson in Camp)
• Greek drama, starting with the Antigone of Jean Anouilh
• Improvisational Drama (SNL, move over! The Arcosanti Improv Team is waiting in the wings!)

6. Establishing a complete Plumbing Plan that might include being able to monitor all the fish pools in the one integrated water-management system. 

Caveat: You may have noticed that I put Crafts III's kitchen last on the "needs and ice-maker machine" list. That is because it is directly underneath the Crafts III Cafe kitchen, which will greatly benefit from a radical overhaul/renovation.


​

Opportunities to improve yourself are limited if you insist on continuing to do exactly what you've always done even if you're not happy with the outcomes. As the clever, tongue-in-cheek but accurate definition of "crazy" goes, "crazy" is when you expect the outcomes to be different even though the action you take remains exactly the same.

While I was in the middle of contemplating this aspect of my own bull-headed self, I was intrigued to learn that the martial art of Aikido is now in its third generation, just as the psychological craft of sandplay is. That historical discovery hit me square in an under-exercised area of my brain, one which in the past had done some looking into the martial arts but had not stayed steadily concentrated on them.

My loss of condition, I can freely attribute, is due to a lack of focus on my part, to my not keeping that area of my Self stimulated by practice. But experiencing the neat instance of symmetry in those two pursuits was a pure Eureka! moment for me, and I saw immediately several other parallels. Both practices are:

• intimate, complex disciplines;
• pursuits which impel greater self-awareness;
• physical demonstrations of the Self;
• responses to behavioral questions; 
• validations of the existence of opposites;
• methods for exploring conflict safely;
• forms of preparation for unsafe encounters.

All of which got me thinking about the kind of sacred space that any dojo is, along with the rigorous rituals, religiously practiced, that such preparation for self-preservation must entail. I hadn't considered, before, that military training places bear any kind of resemblance to religious sites but making that connection, contextualizing militaristic preparations for combat as a cross-cultural phenomenon, sprang out at me just as spontaneously as Athena was said to have done from the head of Zeus, her father.

Leaping out at me as it did, the thought Beamed Me Up, landed me square in the middle of Arcosanti, under the Vaults which are meant to serve as the "Commons" area of what Paolo called the "Old Town" - the "Town Center" meant to afford one of the most spectacular desert views imaginable to visitors and residents alike, yet undervalued and under-used since it cannot be reached through the Lab Building because the Maintenance teams haven't all got their own proper quarters.

Objectively, by normal world reckoning, the situation looks like what would be the inescapable consequence of any not-for-profit's indifferent relationship with development and fund-raising. In Arcosanti's case, I grant you it's a hangover consequent to Paolo' Soleri's personal relationship with the marketplace.

But despite the burden of that history, the fact is that fund-raising is a non-profit's Board's core responsibility. Continuing to maintain an evasive relationship with fund-raising serves to enable Cosanti Foundation's Board of Trustees to limit the growth and development of Arcosanti.

If that is a desired outcome, it is quite remarkable and should be taken notice of, since Arcosanti is, according to Cosanti Foundation's 501-C3 incorporation statement, Cosanti Foundation's sole project.

How does this bear on Aikido and sandplay? Stay tuned, gentle readers...

My vision for the future of Arcosanti begins right here and now. I propose to begin with what can be done right now, starting with whoever has now or who has in the past had a hand in putting together/keeping together those hand-built, earth-cast concrete structures of the "Old Town" which constitute what people today experience as Arcosanti's habitat, its currently lived-upon terrain. 

If you are such a person, could you please step up to the plate? Because I believe we've got some talking (and reckoning) to do.

First off, I'd like to collect wish-lists. Yes, that's right: WISH-LISTS. You get to say what you wish for! Be careful now. You have to deal with getting what you wish for - no matter what it is. If your wishes come in twos, then that's how they come. Deal with it, it plays just as well as you do. Stay AWARE of it. No need to ascribe BLAME. It's all a symptom of CHANGE. 

No need to worry about there being significant danger that what you wish for will immediately materialize. That's not likely but it's really OK to get every bit as wild with this WISHING for what you want as you will allow yourself to get.

"The improbable, we can do. The impossible may take a little longer!" So there is every reason for you to Please To Get Wild. 

My prediction is: You'll be better off if you go for it even if you feel unprepared. No one is ever prepared, despite their belief. I'm not talking about the obstacles, even though they are always there. For now, forget the obstacles. For now, let them go for we who wish for a "free-fall zone for wishes."

Hit me with 'em, PLEASE? Whether or not you think I'm ready? Whether or not you think you are ready? We're all a part of some experiment, some evolutionary experiment of the Divine Consciousness, whatever the Ephemeral Teachers can/will divulge. If you're comfortable with the understanding of how a BeeHive operates for the benefit of the bees - humans are inconveniences to bees despite the antiquity of their relationship.

[Side bar: I was introduced to this approach to wisdom by followers of a materialist-oriented branch of Buddhism called Nichiren. I appreciate the sly irony of Nichiren, have friends who can chant Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo to the Gohonzon as an emanated, scrolled copy of the Fourth Lotus Sutra for an altar honoring the ritual ceremony of chanting. My contacts with them have not been close Sakku Gakai encounters, I've been exploring other paths - and in all cases, understand that they all lead to the same Light. 
a
So - NO BLAME, as the I Ching says. Implacable good advice, that is, that: "No blame."

"Letting go" may not mean "never ever reflecting back upon it". How else can it become your meditation?.
 
Back to The Wish-Lists: Here's my up-to-the-minute-take-on Some New Post-Paolo Developments Happening at Arcosanti.

From wherever I stand/sit/lay me down, those developments look to be Useful & Interesting.

Whatever it takes for for Useful and Interesting New Developments to materialize will be interesting, eh what? Well it can't be  irresponsible to charge them conscientiously, faithful to the interdependence of all beings, the ideals of all our teachers, ith good agenc. Even Paolo, once we accept the value of Cause and Effect.

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home?" [Mid pleasures and palaces, wherever we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home?]

"Remember the good, gay Times, dear," J's granny advised.

I do, dear Granny, I DO. I DO, I DO, I DO. And the way I do my I DO is: I do my best to not forget:that "Change" is the linguistic equivalent of "Likely To Happen."

Repeat: CHANGE IS likely to happen.

Drowning in the waters through which we all must travel on the way to death from birth isn't how I'd prefer to celebrate the trip. But that how it happens, gentle readers, that I ask you:

WHAT IS IT WE WISH TO SEE? WHAT DO WE WISH FOR OURSELVES HERE? HOW DO WE WISH TO BE PERCEIVED? 

For example: ARE ALL THE WATER-SITES ON THE SITE OF ARCOSANTI CONNECTED? IF SO, HOW? IF NOT, HOW NOT? WHY NOT?

WHAT DOES THE INTEGRATION OF THE WATER SYSTEM HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

Stay tuned. That question is A Big One. It was brought up by Karen Cartwright of Accurate Backflow in Tucson, who knows and understands water systems, plumbing wise. Pinwheeled me back to the assertion made by Paolo Soleri that he was "merely the plumber."

It was the self-deprecation - intended or not (I think it was) - that got to me. Had he meant to make a statement of humility? It seemed so to me, But how close was he to the movement of water at home? I don't know that for sure. How close was he to the movement of water coming from somewhere, needed elsewhere, where plumbing is essential? It didn't seem his forte, quite frankly. But I'm certain that he was concerned enough about the movement of water at Arcosanti (it was, after all, meant for himself with his wife); to acknowledge its dependence upon its plumbing.

Too bad he didn't get to meet Karen in his lifetime. She's his kind of plumber, if ever there has been one. Yes, indeed.

We'll leave that with the Higher Power for now, Safe enough there for that. Let's get on with "Triple Bottom Line Accounting" for the emerging ArCooperative.

I like this! And I wager you will, too:

One thing all this leads to, for sure, is greater cohesion, certitude - contemporary marital values applied to traditional social economic exchanges of every stripe. Kitchen Politics, Creon!

Yes, come to think of it, thinking of my crew of staging hands at Arcosanti, on my own Wish List is a proposal for undertaking a new Theatrical Production of Anouilh's ANTIGONE as a fund raiser for the new acoustic baffle that is needed for the Colly Soleri Music Center's sound stage, to provide quality performance space for the Spoken Word.

Welcome, Improvisational Drama, Poetry Slams, Shakespeare, Flamenco - what you dare! 
​
LET THE DREAM BEGIN TO PLAY AS WELL AS IT CAN DANCE ON STILTS! 

I have been continuing to think (which, as you likely know, can be quite a dangerous activity, no matter how innocently you do it) about Arcosanti and the ADA. The more I think about how important the ADA is as public policy, the more rewarding, interesting, rational and satisfying I believe it will be for Arcosanti to take on the challenge of becoming the "best place in the world to consult" when it comes to information sbout cutting-edge ADA-design.

​Design that's aesthetically pleasing as well as disability-responsible will add a significant cachet to Arcosanti not just because the ADA was enacted in 1990 and "It's about time" but because there is no meaningful reason for Arcosanti to shirk the useful project of affording equal access.

On a personal level, as an Arcosanti docent it distresses me to witness the reactions of first-time visitors when they are confronted with how little attention Arcosanti has paid to handicap-aware, handicap-sensitive, handicap-friendly design. Observing those visitors' discomfort is especially troublesome because I find it completely and utterly understandable. (Personal experience with handicap does tend to have that effect.). 

Which is likely why it probably comes as no surprise that I keep harping (on and on and on!) about how how pressing I feel it is it is for Arcosanti to take on the project of ADA-compliance. IMO, which  I am not ashamed to acknowledge is not always humble, a better understanding of the ADA will be not only of immediate physical benefit for all of Arcosanti's guests: it will greatly enrich the idea of arcology as well as provide short and long-term economic benefits for everyone involved, Moral satisfaction, too.
.      
​When I first proposed that the Arcosanti Workshop Program drill down to meet this admittedly not-small challenge, I was surprised that my suggestion was met with what I thought was a peculiar combination of incredulity, dismay and resistance. Of course, I had to respond...because "Where will we get the money?" doesn't cut it as a rational reaction. The primary responsibility of a non-profit's Board is to raise money. "We've been doing the best we can" is a response that does not change the situation at all, even circumstantially, because whatever effort has been made clearly hasn't been global enough. Or even site-wide enough.

Taking it personally (which I'm allowed to do because I earned myself a "handicapped" label/placard a fair while ago), it seems to me that it is perfectly fair to ask: Who among all the people of Arcosanti has not even one handicapped friend, family member, or acquaintance? It is also fair, I think, to ask: Why is complying with federal law not a priority for Arcosanti?

ADA-compliance/compatibility is a project that will resonate with architecture and engineering educators all over the world. In fact, an international competition will be a very good way to kick it off: ("Start Where You Are" - always!)

To go back to Square One: If Paolo Soleri's idea of arcology is as good for all the world as he believed it was, as good for all the world as many people still believe it is, surely it has to be as inclusive as it can possibly be. Which means - does it not? - that it has to be good for an ethnically, culturally, linguistically, mentally, emotionally - and physically! - diverse population. Right?   

What's it worth? How about starting with what it's cost Arcosanti, so far, to be out of compliance? The medical costs, the physical pain, grief and suffering of people who were injured - never mind their mental/emotional anguish or the high liability insurance costs that Arcosanti has had to bear?

At the very least, surely it's an idea worth considering.  

Arcology isn't usually thought of as a political movement although some years ago, a Trustee of Cosanti Foundation, the 501-3C responsible for development of Arcosanti, suggested he'd like to see Paolo Soleri nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Too late for that, now, but as a matter of policy, Cosanti Foundation has always deliberately distanced Arcosanti from the political limelight, from taking part (or, for that matter, a public position) in political affairs.

With respect, I personally don't see how it's possible to avoid the fact that arcology has political implications. Or that its actual, real-time material implementation must inevitably have huge political ramifications. How is it possible that equitable responses to ongoing thoughtless consumption of the world's precious planetary resources will not affect social (qua  political) organization?  

The industrialized world embraces a number of "truths" - the USA in particular calls them "self-evident" - one of which is that all we humans are created equal. But surely it must be "patently obvious even to the most casual observer" that equality does not mean all people treat each other as equals. Nor does it mean that all people receive equal treatment everywhere they go..

Because arcology is a way of approaching management of the material environment in a more equitable way, one that is much more environmentally friendly and ecosystem-conserving, I can't see, myself,how its implementation isn't likely to radically change how material resources are managed. How could eliminating cars from our cities not affect our lives?

The automobile's economies of scale affect our cities, our suburbs, our rural areas, even the most remote regions of the planet. All of those environments are affected by their continuing dependence upon internal combustion engines, by the use of cars and trucks - especially trucks.

While it is a TRUISM that death and taxes are inevitable, the ​TRUTH is that although for sure Death will happen to us all - to others, to you, to me (and whenever it's seen up close, it's a damned personal encounter), taxes only happen when paying them is demanded. In fact, it's a particularly sad Truth that taxes are not demanded (or paid) proportionately, that there are people with billions of dollars on hand who are able to avoid paying taxes. And if I correctly understood what the supremely bizarre PotUS recently asserted, the aversion to paying taxes (a civic duty) somehow demonstrates that the avoiding person is especially clever? 

I don't get that, myself. Such conceit and self-deception make me wonder if we are so far gone that we cannot see that the perpetual war machine is oiled by the garrison economy's idolatry. Do we not care that there are appalling religious hypocrisies behind that same machine that help to propel it?

We're talking economies of decline here. If we saw clearly that our taxes are being used to support living in a death machine, would we really want to abet its continuing? Who would want that? The common woman? The common man?

Do taxpaying citizens believe that's what functioning "normally" is? Do they all believe War Is Normal?

​Destroying the environment, decimating the natural resources of the only planet we have, is "normal"?

Why doesn't the entire human race universally question this picture? "When will they learn? When will they ever learn?"     

 Paolo Soleri once said that  "virtue and value are to be found beneath the heap of seldom-inspiring ineptitudes."

At the time, I found the phrasing odd but I figured I knew what he meant, Maybe that is why it took me a while to decide it was that odd phrasing, so characteristic of his writing, that largely accounts for why he's been so rarely cited in virtually all serious critical architectural writing..

In 2003, however, after he'd asked me to help him with some writing he was doing, I had a conversation with him that gave me a moment of hope. (Background first, then a quick recap of how it went): 

I'd offered to help him with his writing when I first met him. A mere 51 years later, he took me up on my offer

When I handed him his hard copy after I'd blue penciled it, he sort of gasped in shock after he read it through and saw my markings.

"But that isn't what I wrote!" says he.

"Paolo!" I answer. "You know how when you make drawings for a building, those first sketches you make aren't how that building turns out, they aren't even how the final drawings look? Writing is like that!"

He got it right away, comprehended in a flash - but obviously he'd never thought of it before. Words that fell from his pen, he'd imagined, were cast in stone - or concrete...

After that little talk, I didn't see him let go of a basal faith that his written words were irremediable, but he did his best to let those of us working on his editorial team help him put his ideas into plainer English. Everyone on publications knew that anything he wrote, no matter its subject, would be at best a sliver of an echo of the voice in his drawings, but we darned well saw it mostly through a speculative lens: Its prismatic cultural distortion examines ideas of evolutionary and philosophic approaches to an architectural comprehension.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that Italy will honor the "virtue and value" of its native son's legacy as a year-long event in 2019. Only 2 years away!

2019 is the year of what would have been his 100th birthday. What I wonder is what Arconauts around the globe can/will do to honor/express their stake in his indomitable will to design and construct the spectacular geometries he envisioned for ArCosanti?

What can they do to express themselves in that place? What have they retained of it? What would they like to have back from it? What needs to be done to make living there agreeable for themselves?

I'm aggressive about this, likely, being one of those whose kinaesthetic sensibility underwent an immediate transformation when first I encountered the constructions of his original atelier, Cosanti. "All The World's A Stage" was suddenly Buddhist insight.

Retaining connections counts. I blog here to emphasize that the visibility of place sensory experience shared with other earth-inhabitants is what makes me want us to share its stories. Because its stories are our stories, I want to know

• Who we are
• Where we come from
• What drives us
• When did we?
• Why?
• HOW WAS IT FOR US?

Where to begin?

I'm starting where I am, starting from where I am, too.

What I do here is a story of mine own. There's a Forum page on this site, the Conversations page. It needs a co-administrator or 12! Doesn't matter where you are, Just offer your thoughts, leave comments,wax on. COME ON, WARRIOR CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What about at least one Social Media Monitor? Someone with a get-directly-involved in the conservation conversation who'd help preserve focus, maintain composure, provide a safe container for everyone and still "let it rip" when it's time to see what'll happen. And when whatever happens, happens, people will take it from there, right?

What think you?

In the course of my research for the Pilot Study that's been engaging me for the past couple of years, the purpose of which was to learn more about the ethnosphere of Arcosanti (that is, about the arconauts who've helped construct the Arcosanti of today), I was immediately intrigued when I spotted this 2015 Arcosanti Workshop flyer pinned on the display wall of the Viccolo Primo.
 
As I had never actually observed any Arcosanti workshop group having that statement explained to them, of course I wanted to know just exactly how the Arcosanti Workshop Program is  "Delivering Architecture as Human Ecology." When discovered that the poster's statement was taken from Antoinette Iolanda Lima's very fine 2003 USA-published book about Paolo Soleri, I went straight back to that lavishly illustrated tome.

In Lima's book, arcology is defined as "architecture sympathetic to ecology." Reading that, I had to think (again!) about how people come to interpret the word arcology. For starters, I'll say again  that "architectural ecology" is not identical to "ecological architecture." That being the case, I'll also say again that arcology is a word with some ambiguity built into it.

That's one thing. But here's another: If arcology is analogous to a forest and you mean to convey the idea of a forest, it seems obvious to me that you had better include in your explanation of the definition some notions about trees. 

After I took some time to reflect on that little puzzle, here is what I came up with:

All the conservative (as in: conserving; conservationist) measures required for arcology, for arcological development that can materially embody the urban ideals of Paolo Soleri as he posited them, are geared to reflect a desire for the betterment of the human condition:

• maximizing the interaction and the accessibility associated with an urban environment;
• minimizing the use of energy, raw materials, land, and waste,
• reducing consumption, environmental degradation and pollution;
• providing maximized interaction with the surrounding natural environment

It turns out that it is precisely these sorts of concerns which are at the core of the academic field of Human Ecology, the mission of which is "to discover, disseminate and apply knowledge to meet basic human needs and improve the human condition."

Canvassing the literature, verifying the resources of what is available in universities and colleges offering programs in Human Ecology, I discovered the PhD list in North America includes Cornell; U. of Alberta (Edmonton); U. of Wisconsin (Madison). As it happens, I've had some connections with those institutions, those with Cornell of longest standing. All of them close enough to experience a kind of heady rush of recognition in that first moment of first encounter.

Human Ecology's spectrum as an academic field is broad to the point of vastness yet its breadth is one of its attractions – to my mind, anyway. Although I don't know what comes next (Qui sait? Venceremos, amigos y amigas!) I feel sure that whatever it is, it will turn out to be be “worthy work” – as Dr. Lorraine Monroe once dubbed such constructive, humanistic undertakings when I studied with her at Bank Street College of Education in NYC, or, at the very least, Interesting.

Anyway, ever since I encountered that flyer, I have been wondering about it, trying to suss out just exactly how the tantalizing promise that Arcosanti's workshop program is "delivering Architecture as Human Ecology" can be fulfilled as a practical and scholastic (or scholarly) undertaking.  

One aspect of the potential of this pursuit was marvelously revealed by UK environmental scientist David Wasdell, to whom I was recently introduced by teleconference. An impressive but brief web bio <http://www.meridian.org.uk/About/Director/Pro-About_the_Director1.htm> barely captures the forcefulness of his presentation, which makes a clear case for how vital it is for everyone on the planet to pay immediate, active attention to exactly how we (by which he means all of us humans, each and every one of us, all over the globe) are responding to the reality of Climate Change.  

As well as how we are NOT responding to the reality of Climate Change.  

Because the incontrovertible truth is that Climate Change is a phenomenon brought about by us, by human beings! It is, first and foremost, a consequence of our behavior.

What we do, how we behave, affects the environment, affects our ecosystems, has affected the past, is affecting the present, will certainly affect the future,                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
How will we choose? What will we choose? For ourselves, and for others? 

And for all those with any sort of stake in the future of Arcosanti, how will an interest in arcololgy have an impact on the choices which must be made?
​

Before it happened, I wouldn't have thought landing on the muddy banks of the river of loving disgruntlement might present an irresistibly compelling opportunity to repair an engine, but it does look like that's what's come about. Consequently, I've started to re-examine the relationship between the intake valve and the exhaust valve, an essential mechanical relationship that can be organically likened to breathing.

You can take this for truth: Breathing is Not Trivial. Whether you are conscious of it or not, breathing is an activity despite an unfortunately not-uncommon tendency to take it for granted. Discounting the importance of breathing as an active experience, as one worth paying attention to, is an excellent way to encounter hell in a hurry. A laissez-faire attitude towards breathing gets a sharp comeuppance right quick if you find yourself with any type of breathing problem.

Methinks it's a good idea to start counting your blessings if this has never happened to you since if it does, someone saying "Stop that at once!" isn't worth the breath it takes to utter those words. Isn't going to give you a quick fix. 

To turn a breathing problem off is - Not Simple. A breathing problem is - Dire. 

But if we're getting down to the wire, better consider this: turning breathing off, that's - Game Over.

Doomsday, ya know? No more breathing? That life you were leading? Done.

Because what happens either way is, you get to contemplate being within reach of Doomsday.

And even if Doomsday makes Dire look less grim, you still have to be lucky enough, determined enough, if/when things get Dire, to get a grip, take your chances and opt to relearn the art of breathing.

Maybe none of this is on your radar, right now, but - a word of caution, here - you might want to make sure you're not one of those people who is subject to denial. An insidiously opportunistic flaw in judgement that can affect any behaviors requiring human reasoning, denial greatly interferes with the likelihood of rational decision-making. 

​If denial figures into your coping strategy, the path to your desired goal is likely gonna be a long row to hoe. Matter of fact, that's practically guaranteed.

I noticed this recently at a meeting at Arcosanti during which I heard someone declare a variation of a mistaken assertion that had repeatedly been made by Paolo Soleri over the course of his tenure as President of Cosanti Foundation. ​The statement made at the meeting was that people in search of "community" should not come to Arcosanti to look for it.

It was a tacit way of suggesting, it seemed to me, that there is no "community" at Arcosanti. It was an echo of an oft-repeated mantra chanted by Paolo Soleri (which might perversely have been loved for its contentiousness, even though it was hotly contested throughout the era of its frequent recitation) that went like this:

IT'S NOT A COMMUNITY, IT'S A CONSTRUCTION SITE. 

The statement was patent nonsense from a scientific perspective. Construction site, farm, office, monastery, war zone: people act to create community no matter who or where they are. (Try and stop them! You cannot.) There is scads of evidence to support this: every military installation, every school classroom, every household functions as a community - even if it is a temporary one.

​As McGill Transcultural Psychiatry Professor Dr. Laurence Kirmayer says, "Human beings are social and cultural beings: we are born unable to fend for ourselves and spend the first decades of life acquiring language and learning to navigate culturally constructed social worlds. Cooperative social activity is essential for human adaptation and flourishing." 

Every imaginable type of collective association of people finds and develops unique ways to maintain its own social (qua cultural) norms. Those norms figure into that group's identity, its perception of itself, as a community, Arcosanti is no exception to this rule-of-thumb.

To be fair, the confusion behind the assertion when it was made by Paolo Soleri was likely due to the fact that Arcosanti was often referred to as an "intentional community" and building "intentional community" was not in his mind when he struck forth to construct a "prototype for arcology" on 800++ acres of land near Cordes Junction in the geographic epicenter of AZ. 

That said, despite that historical aside, every individual person, every group of people convening at Arcosanti, engages in some kind of social interaction not only with those with whom they may be traveling but with people they meet while they are there. 

It's a given that humans are social creatures. Ergo: Arcosanti is a social environment as well as a physical one as both a matter of fact and as a basis for conjecturing. 

As an inescapable "matter of fact" this essential truth is one of Arcosanti's most valuable assets. It cannot, should not, be taken for granted. To disallow the importance of the social experience of Arcosanti is at best a grievous mistake. (It might even be perceived as a form of bullying or lead to a legal complaint. It's a litigious society, the US of A that surrounds Arcosanti.)

The fact that Paolo Soleri was not personally able to maximize to its greatest extent the investment of human capital (which has been gifted to his magnum opus over the course of time) has no bearing whatsoever on the beneficial consequences that strict attention to the value of such investment can engender. Nor should it have any bearing. Such recognition is only the beginning of its legacy potential, barely scratches its surface. 

Furthermore, Paolo's unfortunate assumptive error should not prevent those who want to see the legacy of that investment of human capital magnified from pulling out the stops, from making whatever the required effort is, to increase the amount (and rate) of interest that such investment can/should rightfully earn. ​

It is, after all, the generous donations of time, energy, enthusiasm, and talent which constitutes the human capital that has been invested by over seven thousand Arconauts - including those who constitute the Cosanti Foundation's Board of Trustees this very day - that has helped to bring into being the Arcosanti that is manifestly visible at this moment. And from a behavioral health perspective, there is plenty of hard evidence to warrant the firm assertion that denial interferes with perception. To deny that community isn't a concomitant of people gathering together for a common purpose, to ignore the significance of the will to create community, is, in and of itself, practically pathological.

For an obvious example: take someone who says: "If I say blue is red, then blue is red;" or, "If I say I'm not a gambler, I'm not a gambler;" or "If my wife and I say I don't have a drinking problem, I don't have a drinking problem." You hear that, chances are pretty good there's a Big Problem. 

All of which leads to the conclusion that denying the significance of materially productive, emotionally gratifying associations with others is every bit as problematic as denying that a chemical dependency (such as an alcohol or drug habit, as an obvious and common example) causes problems for others or oneself. 

Ignoring difficult truths doesn't make them disappear. This means - not to belabor this issue but to reiterate its importance - it is essential that Arconauts conscientiously consider how to effectively weatherize Arcosanti, and how to meet the admittedly grand challenge of disability-conscious design for Arcosanti. It's federal law, after all, the ADA, and, as has been stated previously in this blog, meeting the requirements for ADA-compliance is not a frivolous pursuit. It is a practical, productive one. ​"Nearling" rationalizations - or any other excuses, for that matter, won't do. Arcosanti can only benefit when getting around its structures is not limited to the able-bodied.

​If arcology is as good an idea as Paolo Soleri thought it was - as good an idea as the many, many thousands of people who come to Arcosanti think it is - it surely deserves to be made available to everyone who might benefit from "breathing it in" - who might benefit from breathing in it.

At the onset of a mid-winter Arcosanti sojourn, having been confronted with how severe the financial penalties can be for under-prioritization of disability-aware design, I've begun re-considering the challenge of how to assure that Paolo's "Old Town" is made not only ADA-compliant but an entirely and beautifully ADA-friendly environment.  

What is required? What needs to be done? What steps must be taken?

From an organizational development perspective, what has to happen is relatively simple: Take it as a valid mission, a vitalizing strategic mandate, and focus attention on it. Begin by striving immediately to broadcast Arcosanti's disability-savvy, handicap-aware retrofit. Identify it as the most architecturally intriguing, cost-beneficial challenge imaginable. Start seeking new workshop participants for the initiative by promoting it as concerted demonstration of collective commitment to realization of cooperative development of Arcosanti, as it appears in Cosanti Foundation's statement of intent (see document below). Integrate this essential strategy into Cosanti Foundation's identity as a 'Vocational School' (see link on this page).

The bottom line is clear: Policy of this kind (i.e., focused planning along with vigilant execution of a safety-aware habitat, as conscientious in its own way as that of, say, NYC's MTA, which safely conducts millions of people 24/7 x 365) will not only help to maintain moderate insurance premiums, it will benefit all those interested in the ideas of arcology - aka "architectural ecology" - including everyone who visits.
 
By "everyone who visits," I am actually referring to all the people of Arcosanti. I say "all" because it is an inescapable truth that no matter what part you may play in either the local or the global community of Arcosanti, no matter how short or long is your stay, in a larger sense - in a global sense - you are a visitor. As are we all! On this planet, in the absolute sense, we are all visitors. 

Make no mistake about this meta-view: it underlies the universal philosophic thesis which Paolo Soleri, in his own unique way, posited: We are all (and will always remain) passers-through on this watery planet Earth we call "home." 

This ephemeral identity is one we all share. It is our universal bottom-line as well as our universal  birthright, a truth that should serve to fuel our collective responsibility for this salty speck hurling through space - on which we are all bound, as Chief Sitting Bull said, "to see what kind of life we can make for the children."

To base development of a "living model" intended for the study of arcology on our identity as ephemeral beings can bring only honor and respect to Soleri's ideological notion of arcology. It also - not incidentally! - accords respect and honor to the energies of every individual who participates in any arcology project. Even casual participation:

You never know what a casual encounter may lead to, right?

Integrating this mandate will serve to exponentially increase the organization's assets since you don't have to be handicapped to appreciate the subtle niceties (much less the obvious ones) of disability-sensitive design. For example: 

Because most people with a handicap are extra-sensitive to cold (with almost any impairment, particularly any motor-function impairment, generally speaking your interior thermostat is off-kilter) one improvement project that can be taken on pretty well instantly is to better heat Arcosanti's interior spaces. 

Heat in winter?! Site-wide weatherization? Oh, yes, thank you!? In fact, given the fact that Paolo Soleri, whenever he was asked if he'd have done anything differently if he were to start over again, building Arcosanti from scratch, responded immediately with one word: "Insulation;" how can it not be of benefit to honor his simple acknowledgement of his own mistake by placing correction of it at the top of an Arcosanti-wide "to-do-now" list?

Ergo: after consulting with a number of technically-savvy Arconauts I have a suggestion, pace completion of the elaborate plans for the long-anticipated greenhouse with heat-duct tunnels to conduct its hot air into all the Old Town's various apartments, classrooms, work and social spaces:

Why not heat them with solar-powered devices after upgrading Arcosanti's existing electrical system to allow for solar power?

Upgrading the existing electrical system to accommodate a new solar array surely can help revitalize the workshop program by attracting people looking to receive credit hours towards their trade certifications: Supervision by AZ-licensed electricians can be arranged by the Workshop Coordinator's team. Ditto would-be plumbers, should use of hot water heat in under-the-floor pipes be elected. In fact, I don't doubt the array of opportunities will be considerable since all manner of would-be tradespeople will profit from such modest expansion of the experiential learning opportunities that Arcosanti has long championed.

This will be a meaningful addition of learning opportunities for the array of engineering and architecture students whose schools will love to afford their students such hands-on experience with what it means to implement disability-aware design, whose professors will welcome such an unprecedented challenge to flex their own design muscle!

Solar cells are readily available commercially. Nowadays they can even be home-built/locally manufactured. Develop a new business for Arcosanti? Capitalize on its talent? Develop an administrative system for ongoing material investment returns for "sweat equity"?

Surely taking such a step will enhance the model for arcology that Arcosanti is meant to prototype, yes?

Plus, here's a super-bonus: Retrofitting existing structures will not necessarily require a host of official permits for new construction, right? Therefore, postponing the challenge of having to pave the road from the Junction and upgrade the septic system is side-stepped, Wouldn't we rather have that than "Aw shucks, do we still gotta wait?" 

Just sayin' - ya know? - is all I'm doin' here, folks. ​That's all. It's easy to get caught up in what didn't happen, what hasn't worked. It's easy to get caught up in spinning your wheels, trying to reinvent the wheel. But you don't have to stay stuck, as the Nearling​ thesis says. The strategy I'm proposing here can give new life to the Arcosanti Workshop program. Its cost-benefit will be both immediate and compelling. 

​One challenge at a time, friends. One challenge at a time. 

​​"START WHERE YOU ARE."







.

​

On Pearl Harbor Day in the USA, Hope the Guide Dog turned 6 years old. We saw friends we hadn't seen in several months, a celebration on many counts. Stretched the mind as well as the legs to walk about a place we know well; got me thinking about differing perceptions of complexity. 

What came to mind as I puzzled the strata of social relationships across North America's history - including the "Who are they?" stratum of humans comprising the ethnosphere of Arcosanti - was Canadian poet Milton Acorn's observation about the "layers" you see in "complicated vegetables" (like lettuce and cabbage). Which got me to thinking again about demographics. Who are all the humans of Arcosanti's ethnosphere? What have they in common? How are they different? 

A major impetus behind my asking Arcosanti's builders about their time at Cosanti and Arcosanti was my curiosity about their experience, my wondering if had made a difference, professionally and/or personally, in their lives. Paolo, when interviewed by David Licata in the preview clip of his film (see link on this page), assumed it would be a positive experience but we have little evidence that his assumption was being monitored. I figured it would be interesting to investigate that, and that's what I set out to do. 

As naively as I could, not assuming I could predict exactly how anyone would respond. Maybe some would say No, it didn't, Maybe some would say Yes, it did. 

Which meant I could start with a simple, direct question: Did it? If the answer was Yes, I could ask: How? If the answer was No, I figured there could be a way to get a handle on learning Why Not?

For sure whatever I was given would be a challenge and, since I had to start somewhere, that's where I started. But once I started asking, what I found surprising (although at the same time, it wasn't a surprise) was the emotional intensity of responses I was starting to document.

What I was being told was that working, living, participating in the workday realities of ArCosanti had been an exceptional and memorable experience even for those who hadn't remained in touch with the place, with people they'd met there . 

Pretty intriguing. I could see I'd have to probe deeper to find out What about the place, the experience of being there, had made it so intense? I could also see that such probing could quite possibly get complicated. Every place has a global context as well as an historical one. While media perception of Arcosanti might call it and its leadership group, Cosanti Foundation, a "planned community developed by architect and philosopher Paolo Soleri" and an "experimental community designed to be in harmony with the environment" (as the NY Times did in its 2002 obituary for Dr. Mel Roman, who'd been a Trustee), the fact is that Paolo Soleri resisted that "community" label. "Construction site" was fine; "construction site" he understood. "Community" was trickier to clarify. 

Whatever 'Arcosanti community' now exists, whatever community has ever existed there, exists by virtue of the fact that one has been spontaneously generated by ArCosanti people. What's making that happen?

Even if Captain Jean-Luc Picard's "Let it be so" comes to mind, ArCosanti is not a made-for-TV fiction show. It is not being built in or for outer space. Its crew is altogether human: given to human joys, human pleasures, human sufferings, human sorrows, human failings. 

Whatever commonalities its humans share, whatever their similarities, whatever their differences have been, whatever they've disagreed about, it seems to me it will be necessary to contextualize their relationship with ArCosanti in their respective socio-political arenas. How will all those who have participated at ArCosanti please be counted, be accounted for?

The Wall Street Journal's recent article about Arcosanti (see link below) appears more than 40 years after its first one, which took careful note of a young woman's operation of the industrial crane used to set in place the grand concrete arches positioning the massive Vaults of Arcosanti's "town center," its Commons.

Major news, it was, back in the day, for a girl to be handling that heavy equipment. Deftly, too, did Ms. Natalie Keller demonstrate quite some talent. Yes, indeed, she did.

The recent article, which appears under "Life," a section of the esteemed newspaper sandwiched between "Arts" and "Real Estate," manages to neatly diss the place, effectively burying its people by ignoring them. Accompanying the text are what look to be WSJ staff photos: attractive images of a lithe beauty neatly tucked into, draped upon or prancing across some of  the many sculptural forms at Arcosanti.

A strikingly crafted gal for strikingly crafted forms seems fair. But since there are no captions to identify where any of the photos were taken, it's not likely viewers will have a clue what they're seeing unless they happen to already be on fairly familiar terms with the place.

The text of the article, moreover, leads the reader to imagine Arcosanti has turned into an irrelevant commune - as featureless, community-wise, as a dried-up ghost town. This, I have to concur, in a way is sadly understandable. Many people - me, among them - recognize that Arcosanti will benefit greatly from serious bootstrapping, a concern that has not infrequently been directly addressed in this blog.

What I find unfortunate, however, is that not a hint of what is significant about Arcosanti's history survived WSJ's fine bluepencil-wielders to illuminate what has determined its intent. It keened me particularly because just a few months ago in its same Life section, an article on Renzo Piano appeared, lauded the Pritzker prize-winner for his admirable design and equally admirable execution of an extensive and apparently intensive reconstruction of Giambellino, a populous suburb of Milan. 

Piano's accomplishment is admirable and intriguing, bound to be of certain interest to anyone who's already encountered the idea of arcology but - surprise, surprise! - neither article connects the dots, offers the fact that the premise of Piano's important focus (the appropriateness of a pedestrian economy of scale) was the principle proposed by Soleri over half a century ago. 

Granted, Soleri certainly wasn't alone in advocating for the application of foot-scale to urban habitat design problems but - le voila: once again, his historic contribution to contemporary engagement in eco/socio-friendly desire for "walkable cities" (as well as eco/socio-friendly debate about what's needed to create "walkable communities") is disabled.

I don't get it. Why would the WSJ not want to advantage its readers with contextual information about the trend towards "green" development?

I've seen this tactic before, the shutting away of an unusual-for-its-time but not impractical idea about how we might effectively get to diminish our egregious over-consumption (which BTW is carefully tracked by WorldWatch Institute - see link below) and find that avoidance a pity, every time it occurs.

When an unusual-for-its-time but not irrational and certainly not impractical idea gets deemed "Utopian fantasy," not only is its aesthetic rejected, its personal satisfaction capacity effaced, its intimacy derided; but - very problematically for those who want to invest advantageously (as in, wisely) - its economic potency is rendered inconsequential.

Another missed opportunity. ​Dang!

It's hard  - for me, anyway - to see how applying the "Utopian Fantasy" label to a modest model for eco-sensitive development is a healthy prescription for the woes of the would-be leaders of capitalism's cut-throat world. Particularly because from a (small "c") conservative - as in. "conserving" and "conservationist" - point of view, the truly "Utopian" fantasy is the one manifesting as our burdensome, utterly irresponsible over-consumption of the planet's most environmentally sensitive, precious resources.  

​Gotta hand it to the WSJ: A more thorough devaluation of an old/new idea with vital economic relevance is hard to imagine.

I'm not reticent about asserting that public transit is relevant to the idea of arcology. But upon reflection, I see that I was skeptical about the culture of automobiles long before I encountered Paolo Soleri's idea of how to counteract their hegemony. 

Cars are deeply embedded in contemporary society. Their presence is taken for granted rather than seen as strange, which means it will take an enormous shift in political will for their authoritarianism to be much diminished in our lifetime. 

The reason for the impasse is relatively simple: People don't want to give up their horseless carriages. Not for anything, not for anybody. Certainly not for iron horses despite the fact that even in their current, less-than-ultra-modern version, they are an excellent investment, a much better economic bang for the buck than automobiles, especially if you compare them with airplanes. Because the fact is, you can transport 1000 people 1000 miles for 300 gallons of diesel fuel on a train. Every time a big jumbo jet takes off, it blows out the equivalent of 30,000 car exhausts. Trains are safer, more efficient, more comfortable. Could easily be more rapid. High-speed rapid. More luxurious, too - as once upon a time they were.
​
Me, as I said, I'm personally a skeptic when it comes to cars. I learned to drive when I was 16 (my mother insisted I had to know how to change a tire before she would let me take the wheel after I got my learner's permit; showed me how to do it herself, too) but it seemed to me there was somehow something wrong about them. The space they took up, their sheer mass, the speeds at which they traveled, the reckless way people operated them, their mindlessness.

My skepticism increased when I realized that the fact of my wanting to get into the guts of their mechanical operation was being discouraged because I'd been born female, because one's sex was a cultural factor that influenced/determined how social and professional roles were gendered, and those roles were for the most part fairly strictly classified by sex.

It was OK to do well in languages, math, science, social studies, music, art, drama, gymnastics. But girls in high school did not play lacrosse even though it had been a women's game among the native peoples who devised it;. Boys in high school did not become cheerleaders despite the athletic prowess required for the tasks involved. If you were female, you did home ec and/or secretarial. If you were male, you took shop and/or auto mechanics.

I don't recall any exceptions and what's more, underlying all that was the fact (actually, the threat) of required military service IFF you were male. Which was, IMO, to our shame. Alas! In Flanders Fields, where poppies grow...

To some extent, things have changed over the course of time. In Westernized countries today, a woman driving a car is taken for granted. Women become architects, doctors, carpenters, electricians, plumbers. Women are pilots, public figures. We may very well soon see one rise through a stunningly thick glass ceiling to become President. 

But a propos transit,  I've recently been privileged to meet some remarkably fine women who work on the LIRR, a branch of the MTA, NYC's transit system, which manages to safely transport millions of people in very close quarters, millions of miles within a relatively small physical region, every single day of the year: 24/7 x 365. 

But despite these gains in behavioral health (assuming that equality of person is a rational and viable behavioral health standard), has the nation in which Arcosanti resides eliminated misogyny and racism, or shaken off the oil-dependent reliance it has upon automobiles, which helps perpetuate social inequality and environmental degradation? 

How might Arcosanti successfully address such concerns?