I've been continuing to think (which, as I'm sure you know, can be a dangerous activity) about Arcosanti and the ADA. The more I think about how important the ADA is as public policy, the more rational, rewarding, interesting, and satisfying I believe it will be for Arcosanti to take on the challenge of cutting-edge ADA-design. Design that's aesthetically pleasing as well as disability-responsible will add significance to Arcosanti not just because the ADA was enacted in 1990 and "It's about time" but because there is no good reason for Arcosanti to shirk the useful project of affording equal access.

It actually distresses me, as an Arcosanti docent, to witness the reactions of first-time visitors when they are confronted with how little attention has been paid to handicap-aware, handicap-sensitive, handicap-friendly design. Observing their discomfort, I find it quite understandable, which is why it probably comes as no surprise that I have been harping 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 admit is not always humble, it will be not only of immediate physical benefit for all of Arcosanti's guests, it will, I predict, enrich the idea of arcology considerably, provide short and long-term economic benefits as well as reasonable moral satisfaction, 
.      
​When I first proposed that the Arcosanti Workshop Program drill down to meet this genuine challenge, my suggestion was met with what I thought was a fairly peculiar combination of incredulity, dismay and resistance. To which I had to respond... 

"Where will we get the money?" doesn't cut it as a rational response because the primary responsibility of any non-profit's Board is to raise money. "We've been doing the best we can" does not change the situation circumstantially since 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 perfectly fair to ask: Who among us, dear readers, has not even one handicapped friend, family member, or acquaintance? 

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 ethically, 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 those injured - never mind their mental anguish or the high liability insurance costs Arcosanti has 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 so it took me a while to decide that it was that odd phrasing, so characteristic of his writing, that largely accounts for why he's been rarely cited in virtually all serious critical architectural writing..

In 2003, however, he asked me to help him with some writing he was doing and 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, it was, when 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 a sliver of an echo of the voice in his drawings, but we darned well saw 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 his 100th birthday. What I wonder is what Arconauts around the globe canl 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 it? What have they retained of it? What would they like 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. "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 when you do.....

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.

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, undertake it as a vitalizing strategic mandate, focus attention on it: Strive to immediately broadcast Arcosanti's disability-savvy, handicap-aware retrofit as the most architecturally intriguing, cost-beneficial challenge imaginable. Begin 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).

Integrating 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 and execution of a vigilantly 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 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 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.

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 we call "home." 

This ephemeral identity is one we all share. It is our universal bottom-line as well as our universal  birthright; it is 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 vision 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 that Paolo, 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 humble 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 can suggest, 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 is in addition to the array of engineering and architecture students whose schools will love to afford their students opportunities for hands-on experience with what it means to implement disability-aware design, whose professors will welcome such an almost 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 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 de rigueur rather than an "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?

So said George Bernard Shaw's Joan when she demanded fine steeds to serve her mission. Although her wish was granted and she was able to ride into battle, society's reward for her efforts, subjection to the Inquisition's delivery of its unique idea of justice: imprisonment exacerbated by sexual assault; a trial ending with execution by fire; doesn't much resemble pleasure to me. Martyrdom and sainthood are a high price to pay for horses even if they enable a spirited young woman to champion a noble cause. No matter how extraordinary the cause, no matter how fine the horses, excruciating pain and suffering are scarcely minor ordeals. Despite her unassailable place in history, "enjoyable" hardly seems the right word to describe her fateful errand's bounty. 

Suffering, the Buddha noted, is a most fundamental element of the human condition. Who is not vulnerable to the "three poisons" (greed, aggression, ignorance)? Who is not vulnerable to their effects? And isn't it notable that humanity in general is comprised of at least as many slow learners as quick ones? 

​If that weren't the case, how could we blithely continue to pollute this watery planet on which we live?

It is, after all, the only home we have. 

Arcosanti is a very small dot on the surface of the planet. Although its mission has certainly touched the lives of some, it has not yet been able to greatly advance architectural enterprise by influencing political decision-making, at least not where habitat, the building trades and construction industries are concerned.

Is it important to be concerned? 

You bet it is. Good grief! In 1985, the think-tank WorldWatch Institute reported that the USA, with 5% of the world's population. occupying but 17% of the world's land mass, was consuming 75% of the world's resources. How can that be healthy?

My own prejudices continue to favor the possibility of a practical future that can demonstrate broader application of the ideas of arcology. Playing in the sand, as Paolo Soleri discovered, can lead to the building of more than seaside castles the oncoming tide will wash away. What isn't at all clear, though, is what can be accomplished without a shift in consciousness on the part of Cosanti Foundation. Its well-meaning Board of Trustees is faced with figuring out how to replace a conflict-of-interest administrative style with one that can implement a plan for sustainable development. (For some relevant background information on non-profit management, see the downloadable article and and a related link below on this page.) 

However, if the planet is lucky and more people follow the example demonstrated in the Youtube below, perhaps a time for arcology will come sooner rather than later. The alternatives don't promise much of a future for planetary survival, do they?  

After I managed to break my femur at Arcosanti last fall (not great sport: <http://www.arcologycentral.net/blog/disability-consciousness-raising-101-the-crash-course-version>), Guide Poodle got mustered over to the Guide Dog Foundation <https://www.guidedog.org/> so I could refocus myself and get on with the demands of relearning how to walk. Our educational sabbaticals took us in opposite directions: me to BC by way of Spokane; she, thanks to the amazing Puppies in Flight volunteer program <http://www.assistancedogsinternational.org/about-us/affiliated-organisations/us-airways-puppies-in-flight-program/> to Kentucky from Phoenix by way of Nashville. Her sojourn included going to NY, which included seeing her Puppy Walker, who now works for the GDF.  

After I managed to get back onto both of my feet, she returned to Arizona with Anne Mercer, GDF's chief consultant trainer. One heck of a gratifying reunion, it was, in early July, affording opportunity for Arconauts to become better informed about the protocols for when a service animal and its human come to visit or to stay.

"Ignore the dog" was the message. Not easy when the dog is as charming, smart and fuzzy white as the one assigned to me, right?

But I was reminded of the many patient folk I met during my stay in the rehab hospital, a goodly number of whom had gotten there by means of car-related injuries. Although I was the only one in that bunch whose mishap had involved a non-moving vehicle, reflecting on Guide Poodle's terror when she saw me tumble and heard me scream brought to mind an article that Dmitri Roussoupolos sent me two decades ago, when I'd come within micro-seconds of losing my life in an encounter with a car in mid-winter Montreal. Thinking about how much of Guide Poodle's training has dealt with the minutiae of traveling in cars and other internal combustion vehicles got me searching for Dmitri's article. After I found it in my files, I posted it on CritDesign's Green Energy blog <http://www.critdesign.info/green-energy-blog/how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-car> but I'm still wondering how it is that no social rights or ecological advocacy group has yet been able to mount a successful challenge to the ways in which we've come to accept the god-awful, terrible violence that's perpetrated through our dependence upon the automobile. 

It's been over half a century since Paolo Soleri began actively questioning the automobile's ubiquitous, seemingly omnipotent omnipresence but even back then, cars were practically taken for granted. Challenging the consequences of our dependence upon them and their iconic power was considered so ultra-radical that Soleri was by more than a few people dismissed as an unrealistic "Utopian" visionary. I find that odd since the only truly Utopian vision is that humans can continue to plunder the resources of planet Earth without deleterious consequences for its planetary ecosystems.

It is obviously no easy matter to shed our collective car dependency. Even at  Arcosanti, use of a car is virtually inescapable on a day-to-day basis. Visitors brave the unpaved road between Cordes Junction and a Visitor Parking lot located behind the Lab Building leading to the Vaults (a structure intended originally to serve as Arcosanti's point of entry) and, as rule, both residents and guests expect they'll have to drive somewhere, frequently and/or regularly. Some, in fact,  habitually commute between the "here" and "there" of one place and another, which I find amazing and ironic, to say the least.

For Arconauts to be thus dependent upon cars is curious but I recognize that it takes a lot of determination to overcome a monster handicap. Which makes me wonder if the handicap is due to a technological glitch - or a spiritual impasse? 

Here's what a Warrior Code from medieval Japan says:

I have no parents; I make the heavens and the earth my parents. 
I have no home; I make hara my home.  
I have no divine power; I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means; I make docility my means.
I have no magic power; I make personality my magic power. 
I have neither life nor death; I make the art of regulating my breathing my life and death. 
I have no body; I make stoicism my body. 
I have no eyes; I make the flash of lightening my eyes. 
I have no ears; I make sensibility my ears. 
I have no limbs; I make promptitude my limbs. 
I have no laws; I make self-protection my laws. 
I have no strategy; I make 'sakkatsu jizai' (free to kill and free to restore life) my strategy. 
I have no designs; I make 'kisan' (taking opportunity by the forelock ) my designs. 
I have no miracles; I make righteous laws my miracles. 
I have no principles; I make 'rinkiohen' (adaptability to all circumstances) my principles. 
I have no tactic; I make 'kyojitsu' (emptiness and fullness) my tactics. 
I have no talent; I make 'toi skumyo' (ready wit) my talent. 
I have no friends; I make my mind my friend. 
I have no enemy; I make incautiousness my enemy. 
I have no armor; I make 'jin-gi' (benevolence and righteousness) my armor. 
I have no castle; I make 'fudoshin' (immovable mind) my castle. 
I have no sword; I make 'mushin' (absence of mind) my sword.

Arcosanti may not be medieval Japan but even in XXIst-century America, to fully engage in challenging the dominance of cars and embrace the idea of a car-free society, might we not do well to emulate the virtues of  Bushido? 

Although the material culture and physical landscape of the variety of experiential education opportunities that are afforded by Arcosanti continue to witness individual participants enjoying personal growth as well as vocational exploration; although the era of social media's expansion is apparently increasing the ease of communication for many people, the wired world's plucky new version of intimacy does not actually come with any sort of guarantee of its integrity.   

I was intrigued, therefore, to come across a paper University of British Columbia Professor Wayne Ross has recently posted on <academia.edu> about class as an aspect of social stratification. That is, he asserts, rarely discussed. He makes a good point. Even in the mini-culture of residential Arcosanti, there is class stratification that has been largely glossed. It's hard to foresee what will ensue when/if that stratification is challenged,   .        

Shelter is a basic, fundamental necessity, akin to potable water, breathable air and arable land. Because the impulse to welcome people whose homelands have rejected them is a powerful one, there have lately been many public and private conversations about refugees.

Arcosanti has not yet sought to shelter political refugees despite the fact that there have been opportunities to do so, despite the fact that arcology, Paolo Soleri dared to say, is a surefire way to improve humankind's odds for replacing mere chance survival with an integral, truly humanitarian habitat.

The jury is still out on how this might be proven but still, there is ample evidence supporting the observation that humans as a species tend not to survive well without basics. Surely it is unlikely there will be much disagreement with either of the following equations:

• No air =s no life.
• No water =s no life.

But how about:

• ​No arable land =s starvation?
•  No shelter =s grave stress?

And what about:

• No intimacy =s little or no self-esteem?
• No self-examination =s hypocrisy?

From time to time, I've seen people refuse to make use of their natural gifts. Whenever I've observed such negligence, what I felt I was witnessing was (to use a moral term) a sin; but my reaction is tempered by expectations derived from experience. One of the consequences of my years in various educational environments is my desire for answers to fundamental questions that are related to moral values, like:

• How shall we improve our chances of being able to make use of all our natural gifts?
• How might we consistently exercise our capacity for spiritual independence?

These are not feathery questions. They are no-holds barred challenges to battle. They came into my mind because I was thinking about Elie Weisel, whose eloquence and conscience raised the consciousness of millions of people - even the angels must have wept while reading his words or heard him speak about the terrors of the Holocaust - but I was also simultaneously thinking about Arconauts wishing to see Arcosanti build itself quite rapidly, this day and every other day forward.

Consequently I've started collecting suggestions for a "Wish List" of site-enhancing projects for an Arcosanti Community Cooperative to address. Please feel free to offer your own! So far, to the question [Think of one place at Arcosanti that you like very much and you'd like to see improved; tell what you feel would improve that space as well as what you like about it] a few of the responses have been:

• Crafts III: a screen door with a magnetic latch; a small sink (with running water) on the patio.
• Bakery: operable windows (one-way glass?), convert use of that space to one conducive to video and movie watching.
• Lab Building and Lab Kitchen:
  

1. "off-hours" Soda Shoppe and Leftovers Coffee Bar.
2. Construct a glorious new Maintenance Shed with huge skylights 

• Classroom: Establish a formal relationship with the people involved with <https://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/urban-laboratories/> and <http://www.urbanlabplus.eu/> that can/will develop a  forum for Guest Lecturers, including a series given by current contributors to <https://urbanlaboratories.wordpress.com/>
• ArcoMart: Relocate to the space in the Crescent that was promised for it (where the gym equipment is. Ping-pong table stays, the rest is divided up between the Library and other exercise-equipment friendly spaces.)

The idea of an Arcosanti cooperative (or a number of cooperatives working in cooperation with one another, along the lines of Mondragon) has been in the air for some moons. But thanks to a recent presentation facilitated by Rob Jameson, discussion is starting to sound practical rather than theoretical. Focus has been thus far largely concentrated on "what kind of coop should it be?" - choosing from among the following models:

1. Regular Cooperative: one type of stakeholder (i.e., consumer, worker)
2. Multi-Stakeholder Coop: two or more types of stakeholders (i.e., community agriculture, co-housing)
3. Fair Share; all types of members. 

Although it seems obvious that (1) won't cut the mustard, I'm not clear yet what advantage (2) has over (3) as I'm not yet familiar enough with AZ's legal rules for cooperative formation, development and management to be able to assert why I'd think either of those two looks to be the one most likely to achieve success, more likely to be strategically simple, more likely to promote informed discussion. But you can click below to read more about these options.

To paraphrase the Third Duino Elegy of Rainer Maria Rilke: One thing, alas, to espouse the cause of arcology, another altogether to empower its broad implementation.

Take waste, for example: I remember Paolo Soleri saying, some 40-odd years ago in an off-handed way with respect to his plans for Arosanti, that he was 'merely a plumber' - as if waste management were not as essential to constructing habitat as a sound foundation is. Perhaps he meant it as a kind of joke - his humor was often subtle - but plumbing is fundamental in western society and should by no means be taken for granted even if that's a common tendency.  

I'm strong-minded about this, having lived in places with no indoor plumbing or running water, having witnessed less than 50 years ago people in the rural South who lived in "shacks" with open sewage running outside. I've known folks who survived the "dirty 30's" by gleaning farmers' markets at the end of the day for scraps, flattened tin cans, saved glass jars to reuse and reuse some more. All those folks helped me become more aware of how innovative people can be about waste management. Plumbing is certainly related.

Then I also got to wondering how cleverly innovative Arconauts will be when they freely exercise their capabilities to address a variety of dreams shared at Arcosanti.

Arcosanti has been held steadily in situ tending the water hole put in place below Paolo Soleri's swimming pool by Mary Hoadley, first woman in Arizona to manage an industrial-scale waste treatment system. The feat of the Oxidation Pond as an experiment in handling black water on a large scale evinces decades of dedication attesting to powerful conviction that the potential and overall efficacy of that system is capable of doing what it's spozedta. I daresay it must be meant to inspire our concern for the most basic aspects of waste management. (FYI, see documents below for some current how-to thinking on this subject.)

I know I'm not alone in thinking about plumbing. Visitors and Arconauts alike ask or comment upon Arcosanti's current waste management program, wondering if/how it can fulfill a grand vision of what arcology waste management systems might achieve. As a docent guiding visitors, I'm asked point-blank if there is a grand plan for waste-management as well as who's involved (professional expertise/advice-wise) with its development. I don't know for sure and I suspect that the jury is still out on that one since the scuttlebutt has it that no major construction can occur without bring the present system up to county standards (and paving the access road).

What I'm wondering myself is: How can what has been put in place thus far serve to inspire the adventuresome garbage Warrior-style greenhouse that, Hunza-like, can convert pure waste to pure energy?

​One hasn't yet been built at Arcosanti but it's inspiring to see the pick and shovel work being done to separate gray water from black. Huzzah, huzzah, hooray for the hard-working Arcosanti workshop teams! It's exciting to ponder how some of the many varied and possible innovations might manifest, any combination of which will surely enhance the already great value of the considerable holdings at Arcosanti for which The Cosanti Foundation is responsible. 

Whatever the plan may be, holding fast to Mary Hoadley's near-legendary and practically immutable involvement with waste products hasn't given Arcosanti - yet - a "farm to table" garden matching its economy of scale, even if there is one in (of all places!) Detroit <http://www.globalpossibilities.org/a-new-kind-of-urban-farm-in-detroit/> and a training program for one in (of all places!) California at San Quentin prison <PlantingJustice.org>, while practically primordial relationships between food production and waste management are (maybe predictably) evident in Amsterdam: <https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/vb.1010847105623136/1141378185903360/?type=2&theater>

Arcosanti's commitment to strategic planning for totally effective waste management hasn't yet fostered development of site-based craft industries to manage reclamation of site-produced waste as, for example, Construction Junction does in Pittsburgh <http://www.constructionjunction.org/> nor has it compelled notables like Garbage Warrior architect Michael Reynolds to offer specialized workshops to explore his alternative approach. Anna Edey has also yet to come a-calling to talk about her Solviva <www.solviva.com> waste-handling method. Nor do I know what evidence there is of any ongoing support for the prospect of an Arcosanti Living Machine <http://livingmachines.com/Home.aspx> although that idea was introduced some 15 years ago by once-was Workshop Coordinator Wes Ozier, even if it seems possible one might be viable given its strategic realization in Scotland <Findhorn: new frontiers for sustainability>. 

Nor has there been a concerted effort to implement methane generation, Arconaut Brendan Siegl reminded me, so as to use lagoon waste as a power source for foundry and kilns. One wonders if such a system <http://www.jcgep.org/about.html> save Arcosanti a great deal of money?   

Still, it's gratifying to see the dedication and extraordinary effort of inspired energies like those of Mary Hoadley applied to some of the tasks of resource reclamation. Such energy does help to mobilize collective will on behalf of this planet, this place called Earth which all humanity must learn to share.

Speaking of which, BTW, there was a timely seminar on June 21 about the related, equally fundamental concern of community agriculture: <https://living-future.org/events/urban-agriculture-and-community-farm-systems>

I myself have an affirmative bias about waste management: I serve on a Regional Resource Advisory Committee in the Central Kootenay Regional District of BC where there's now a Zero Waste policy so I am totally in favor of people being willing to help manifest some sort of Garbage Warrior mentality - which can been seen happening in a variety of ways as the articles below indicate. More power to such happening...

One inescapable fact, however, is that even if "Muddling Towards Frugality" has been going on for decades, it muddles on in a world still sliding perilously further away from frugality, perhaps even more so today than in 1979 when the book by Warren Johnson, then a San Diego State University Geography Professor, was published. (Not an easy muddle to wish a solution for, but how many of our muddles have ever been wished for?)

For me, mulling on muddling got me pondering how Arcosanti can better impel all its core mandates. In the course of my mulling, I came across Sam Talbot-Kelly, a Vermont-based artist who's spending time in the Kootenays this year, whose intriguing investigation of the 'archetype of authority' in our lives supports the idea of authority being less about 'power over' than "leading to expressing 'empathy, sovereignty, and humility.'" That idea and Sam's artistic exploration of it just  caught my attention.

A primary reason it drilled me is that sandplay, a principal research tool in the doctoral study I've begun that was seeded by the 2015 grant from the NY Center for Architecture's Brunner Foundation, uses archetypal investigation, exploration, documentation, and analysis to obtain fundamental information about our perception of the human ecosystem that has been driving the architectural environment of Arcosanti.

Reading about Sam's work led me to consider the intriguing possibility that more than one "archetype of authority" may appear in sand trays people make. What will such archetypes reveal about the arcology-minded?

The splendid sandplay installation in the Red Room is still underway. (Silly me: I thought it would take just a few weeks in 2015 for its complete construction but a year later, with a great many dollars invested, it's still shy of completion.) Still, it is utilizable and beginning to serve its purpose although I did not expect to have to put that aspect of the research on hold at all and was nonplussed when it was suggested to me that it ought move it to another location. 

It occurred to me that it might be possible to find space for it on the east side of the Amphitheater's Crescent in the area allocated for a Library. No small move, that would be, especially since I've been totally stoked by how cunningly the Red Room installation was made possible, perfectly showcased in that place by Randall Schultz, fine wood worker, maven as long as I've known him of Arcosanti's ArcoMart, for many years a chief dragon on its Maintenance team. (Design details of Its pride of place setting were perfected by Scott Riley, Jeff Stein, Tomiaki Tamura, Mark Baris, and Lana Morris,)

I'm totally stoked, can hardly wait to see the final outcome! A hearty round of applause to thank them all. Their amazingly gratifying design will permit all the assembled materials for sandplay to be put to use by all who'll want to play with them. 

Witnessing the sandplay pictures made with miniatures and sand (a micro projective test) will inform the macro context of Paolo Soleri's "playing in the sand" - which is what I've been aiming to do for many moons.  

"Patience is a virtue!" grandma used to say, so I am doing my best to exercise my patience muscle (the exact physical  location of which is, BTW, a well-kept secret).

I'm not excited to relocate the installation without seeing it completed where it is - without testing it in situ. I 'd like to see us start where we are, utilize the available micro-context at will to broaden our perception of what the macro context may include. Employing the methodology of sandplay will afford us an appropriate context for augmenting what we might think we can know about those who are arcology-minded. 

Recording individual (and group) sandplay responses to daily (as well as eternal) questions cannot help but be inherently a basic contribution to how to facilitate and promote the testing of arcology conceptually and practically. 

If it is to be as convincing as it is meaningful, we can/should all strive together to gather, from those who seem arcology-minded, a body of objective evidence about its human ecosystem. To utilize sandplay as a tool that allows self-reflection, to make use of deploying miniatures in sand for an experiment of the sort proposed, may be almost as unique a leap for Arcosanti as Arcosanti was from Cosanti. But the similarity, at least in principle: framing the built environment concisely to leave the natural environment intact; mirrors, it seems to me, the experience of participatory enactment. 

Time will tell; but how often will the projective test of sandplay be identically performed as an integrated miniaturization of an individual's self-expressive complexity? That, I have little doubt, is unknown. I hesitate even to attempt to predict until we have amassed much more data. What I am certain of is that employing miniatures in such model construction cannot help but serve to bolster and expand the arena of whatever discourse has been taking place at Arcosanti, whatever discourse is already in its possession. It cannot help but expand the appreciation of and communication about Arcosanti as an idea of arcology.

To further that, I've been seeking to persuade the model-makers of Arcosanti to include the placement of a model of Arcosanti itself proximate to all the shelved miniatures in the Red Room so that it can be immediately available to the players. As a 'play within a play,' it will be useful to see how players will incorporate into a sandtray picture the idea of Arcosanti represented in an available model. 

In Japan, where many Arconauts live and sandplay as a clinical process has been cutting-edge since its discipline was first introduced decades ago by Dora Kalff, CJ Jung's associate, there's been expansive experimentation taking place within the Japan Sandplay Association. Using sandplay as an investigative research tool at Arcosanti adds an entirely new dimension to that research arena. I see this as an orderly approach worthy of Paolo Soleri's intention, inspiring an improvement of the potential for arcology to be perceived as an achievable, realizable approach to sustainable human settlements.

It was basketry maven Jane Lewis, a dear friend, late of New Denver, who pinpointed the illegality of Frogs. Her humorously intended remark caught me square on the cheek so hard that I had to stop down to think on it.

It seemed important  for a number of reasons although I wasn't clear when she said it exactly how "clock time" was unaccommodating as a personal perceptual issue. But I'd some idea about where Jane was coming from because our mutual friend Eloise Charet, who once personally swept into Cambodia to rescue kids trapped between militants who cared not a whit for the lives of children, back in the hostile days of Southeast Asia's opium-driven military conflagrations <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/khmer-rouge-victims-reunited-40-years-after-daring-rescue-1.300219>, stands verra, verra tall in her passionate defense of the local habitat of a gravely endangered species of toad.

As I pondered on wondering how a Universe that hypothetically can bar Frogs from entering or ban them from remaining could co-exist with the one I thought humanity is supposed to be striving to create - (Peace, Love, Kindness: like that) - I came across a Guardian article about Arcosanti <http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/04/story-cities-35-arcosanti-paolo-soleri-desert?> that reinforced my conviction about the necessity for a critique that can and must be crafted to successfully question the hypocrisy of quick-fix answers.

Yes, I recognize that our own Universe seems to have been jury-rigged with them. For eons, in fact. And the outcome of all that pondering led to my resolving myself to challenge, whenever I spot one of those Quick-Fix jobbies being offered, its irrational bloody taint. In fact I felt like I'd better be OK with how I'm gonna hafta do that every time I encounter one.

Even though I recognize it might not be universally immediately appreciated. Even if I cannot please all the world, all at once, I don't recognize any reason to apologize for wanting whatever actions I determine to take to be of benefit.

The conclusion I came to is that it is, quite simply, not a sin, not a crime to prefer that Frogs survive along with humanity, with us humans. I challenge anyone who disagrees with the presence of Frogs on the planet to prove to me why their survival does not matter.

In any case, if any sort of material matter on this earth remains unchallenged or unquestioned, I have little doubt it will remain misunderstood. (That was a rabbinical teaching I took to heart in my childhood, and in all my years thus far, I have yet to find a reason to doubt the essential importance of doubt.)

Reading Canadian-American novelist, poet and journalist Paulette Jiles, who some decades ago opened my eyes to the cute and clever literary convention of the picaresque character, put me in mind of how - if/whenever what is outside our own sphere becomes a mucky, murky space - our moral imperatives still remain imperatives. 

They especially remain moral imperatives for all humans who are intent upon expanding (or even just retaining) a sense of connection in community, even if it is a sticky problem that moral imperatives must be managed.

Even in mucky, murky places. In fact, managed wherever and whenever they are encountered. Moreover, I suspect it likely that positive benefits manifest most easily when we demonstrate willingness to accept change, undertake and abet the project of making changes in ourselves. in our own culture, in our appreciation of others. Even in instances when self-scrutiny does not come naturally, IMO a taste for some modest sort of introspection can/should be sought after and acquired. If the "unexamined life" is not worth living, how will someone who does not or cannot self-examine learn to appreciate how absurd such a lack of self-scrutiny is going to appear to others? 

​Isn't arcology, practically by definition, a concern about the survival of the entire planet,  not just one's own individual survival?

Poking the topic of frogs' illegality in order to examine beliefs to take a stab at analyzing the basis of a culture's belief system, it seems to me it's necessary to assume that objectivity is possible but I can't see how that makes objectivity certain. What many people take for granted can/will get in the way. 

Preserving the habitats of frogs (or tigers) in the universe allows for the equity of frogs (and tigers) but does preserving the habitats of any creature privilege the creature? Or privileging the 'right' of the habitat to preservation?

Why would anyone take as an article of faith  - separate or distinct from science (information based on proofs derived from exhaustive patient analysis of determinable, incontrovertible evidence) that habitats have no natural rights? Is the planet of such little importance that it can be destroyed without consequence?

Safe to say that's not likely.  Yet what is believed by individuals (or the collective conglomerate called "society") clearly clouds perception, affects what is distinguished as personal, affects what is processed, affects what's deemed a matter that should be subjected to public scrutiny. Affects what is accepted as acceptable procedure..

Take, for example, Achievement. What is called "achievement" almost inevitably will be subjectively appreciated as a distinct and positive experience if and only if (ironically) you have already achieved a sense of self-worth. If or when personal beliefs allow self-praise, subjective acknowledgement of an outcome can be identified as an "achievement" - but when the perceived accomplishment is understood as an indication of capability, that is because it has been recognized as an achievement by a reliable witness who happens to perceive that action as worthy of recognition.

People can blow their own horns as much as they like but if there are no listeners, they are playing only for themselves. All very well and good for a practice session, perhaps. No guarantee of passing muster in mainline performance.

One "accomplishment" of Paolo Soleri was his conviction, decades before Common Cause or GreenPeace, that automobiles are an indication (taken one step further, a symbol) of social malaise; indeed, of social disease. My very personal experience of how that has come to pass reinforces my strong feeling that examining the cultural construction of anyone's individual belief-system - Paolo Soleri's included - is a useful undertaking, can help to sharpen and improve perception of how to understand a vital individual belief system as well as a collective one.

If "The personal is the political," the personal may also come to be the professional, as well. I therefore continue to hope that all questioning energy will be of benefit; and with respect to the propositional question of this entry, if your first reaction to the idea of a "Universe Without Frogs"​ is: It ain't possible to imagine such a Universe, I gotta tell ya; Alas, You're Wrong.

Matter of fact, the contrary is true. Extermination of whole races of animals is commonplace, still happens. You don't have to be a perpetrator or a consumer of road-kill to know this, either. Measured on an evolutionary scale, languages and whole cultures are disappearing EVERY DAY, as anthropologist Wade Davis has been eloquently documenting.

When is it too late to put the brakes on a skid? How will we mourn Cambodia's last tiger? Who will maintain lexicons of all the disappearing languages? How do humans survive if those who know how to grow food disappear?

Cultures disappear through erosion as well as by annihilation. Alarming as it is to me personally, basic understanding of what grammar makes possible is no longer a normal and integral requirement in the English language classes of many schools, is not included in the curriculum. If there is no time (or bless, us, Money) for communication, the list of threats to cultural continuity continues to increase, the way small mounds of garbage collected incrementally turn into 3-story high mountains of garbage, 

Pondering mountains of garbage came about when I got to thinking about the art of parody. I was watching ventriloquist Terry Fader's brilliant performance (see YouTube below) and it struck me that in the dumbed-down, media-dependent, over-glutted material culture of North America, parody is essential, Its construction as a material culture artifact struck me dumb. How what is made fun of,  whatever is the subject of parody, whatever makes us laugh, can enable us to better see ourselves.

That is, if we take time to think about why we are laughing as we are...

Which moved me to re-investigate parody as an art form, along with ventriloquism and its related theatrical crafts, vaudeville and minstrel show. What I discovered shocked me even if I ought to have known it was there.

Historical dissolution of the minstrel show as a popular art form was tied to the mulcting of American blacks, a vicious social condition re-creating the institutionalized racism that had been the cornerstone of American culture, which has been allowed perpetuation in that culture. Mulcting, you see, means to deprive someone of something by fraud, extortion, etc.; to swindle; to obtain money or the like by fraud, extortion, etc.; to punish a person by fine, especially for a misdemeanor. And this is how, 
despite the gains made as a result of the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the USA, that country remains obdurately non-egalitarian in practice. Its discriminatory practices still remain. Why is that? What about "we are all equal" is so hard to accept? 

Garbage in, no garbage out - makes for severely impacted internal movement, unfortunately.

I've written about this before but I've been thinking about it some more and want to revisit the way that Arcosanti was labeled thus by my neighbor, 83 years old, British-born. In his youth, before he took up photography, he was an award-winning auto mechanic and I felt his perfectionist eye was neatly matched by his sharp tongue with that verbal reaction to some photos and a line drawing of Arcosanti that I showed him upon my return to our apartment block in the village of New Denver on Slocan Lake in the Regional District of the Central Kootenays (RDCK), situated in - as the license plates say - "Beautiful British Columbia."

Fred may be a naive observer in that he has no direct experience of Arcosanti, the place. But there is common ground between him and Arcosanti insofar as he, like Paolo before him, professes little respect for organized religious observance.

I could not help but wonder if that has any bearing on how Fred's pithy epithet, an oddly apt riff about what he saw in the visual images of Arcosanti I'd brought back with me, was a take that is right "on the money" - as some moguls say. My suspicion is, Fred's impression will have relative meaning for quite a few people: "Right on" because it echoes an impression of Arcosanti that at least a few people have taken away with them,

Me, I imagine if people go away with such an impression, it's because they came with preconceptions or expectations about what they would find. Perhaps they believed Arcosanti would simply, neatly demonstrate a contextualized economy of scale that cogently incorporates a vision of sustainability concomitant with profitability. After all, wasn't that the model for arcology envisioned by the late Paolo Soleri?

Perhaps they presumed they would encounter a fully realized complementary physical habitat that illustrates how arcology has a unique economy of scale, the realization of which demonstrates it conceptually as a realizable construction. After all, surely that is how Arcosanti is meant to function as an "urban laboratory" and "prototyype for arcology" - yes?

Likely they could be quite bewildered by the absence of Edible Landscape @ a Macro Scale. How awful not to be growing a garden when you could do so!

I myself see Arcosanti as a kind of naturally whimsical undertaking, one that is always underway since evolution - which naturally is ongoing - is fundamental to the core idea of arcology. This may be why it happened that in a recent chat on the phone with a friend who was working in the Crafts III Gallery, I was reminded of the January 2016 Textile Retreat, a group of Phoenix-based artisans who work with natural fibers and dyes.

In the course of that conversation - Wow! - I had a stone-flash image of Arcosanti's disabled old antique automobile collection, most of which are now scattered up on the hill, serving as planters!

Arrive at the Old Town, elevated above the Camp (center for farm-to-table enterprises including food grown year-round for all who will thereby survive and thrive) ... and most everything you see that's planted is edible except for what is in all those OLD CARS!

In that stone flash, there they were, all those old heaps, unique planters containing samplings of textile-production food plants: flax, hemp, jute; as well as a rainbow of dye-producing plants: marigold, yarrow, wild indigo, prairie bluets, stinging nettle, canaigre dock - Rumex hymenosepalus, a Southwest desert native plant containing toxic oxalate, used to make yellow, gray, or green dye, noted for its medicinal, and edible, and social uses. (Warning: Its needlelike crystals will produce pain and edema when touched by lips, tongue or skin!)

The signage appearing in my stone flash was in the form of a slogan: "People who cook together, stay together" plastered on signs hanging above the heads of the cashiers in charge of all the hands-on handling required for representational involvement with all those services (and goods) needed to deliver arcology-mindedness as a lifestyle. ("Meals On Legs," for example - thank you, Laura Banks Bochinski!)

All of which got me to the point of asking: What lasting impressions must Arcosanti leave with people if it is to demonstrate just what it means to be a model of urban-oriented delineated difference? How will it show its bark as well as its bite?

Can orchards replenish themselves overnight? "Start where you are" (as Buddhist teacher Ani Pema Chodron put it) means - what? What makes transformation possible?

IMO: Ya gotta synchronize how ya move.

That said, the world, she can move oddly. Sometimes she even does it "Backwards and in high heels," as was notably stated by that noble lady Ginger Rogers when asked about her partner Fred Astaire: Everything he did, she did; but only ... 

Vive la difference!

Pondering the challenge of "disability consciousness-raising" with respect to the future of Arcosanti (see this blog's December 2015 entry), I remain convinced Arcosanti will be able to fulfill many more of its architectural intentions within a relatively short time by focusing its attention on addressing universal accessibility.  

Safety, of course, is paramount, because arcology must be socially as well as physically constructed. Once universal accessibility and assured safety are prioritized as common sense dictates, ideas for development can be readily assessed for inclusiveness.

A social community model that could be included in such a strategic plan is one based on Rudolf Steiner's Waldorf School pedagogy called Camphill. I'd like to see one happen in the Slocan Lake area of the Kootenays; I see it also making sense for Arcosanti to have a Camphill, as well. 

This notion is an expansion of an idea I had for a disability-friendly arts-based program that could be located on The Ranch that's beyond Arcosanti's Camp. (Camp is historically the gateway to its farm/gardens/apiaries/orchards.) Even though The Ranch no longer has either Charolais cattle or horses, it still does have strong potential as a child-friendly place.
  
The Philadelphia-based dance troupe, Group Motion <http://groupmotion.org> was the inspiration for that idea, which I put on hold to think about what other social models might contribute to developing arcology as a viable alternative to sprawl, asking myself:

How high can Arconauts collectively raise the bar for what arcology is good for, interactively and potentially? What about some type of workers co-op? Co-housing group? Refugee settlement complex? International Hostel?  Conference Center? Arts and Crafts Studios? A Center for Spiritual Studies, including but not limited to Paolo's design for a "Teilhard de Chardin Cloister"?

Aren't all those "grist for the arcology mill?" How might Arconauts seek to manifest them? As neighborhoods of a single urbanesque entity? Or each as a distinct village, each with its own form of self-governance?

Ideas, whether grand or simple, need the incubation of of collective imagination. To harness the energies of three generations of energetic Arconauts is the beginning-point of all arcological endeavors, of ideas that can manifest in good deeds. Arconauts can all move forward by 'starting where we are' - and that, to me, means: What can we do with what we have on hand now, what is there at our fingertips? What is available? What resources are we willing/able to liberate from their strangleholds? How can we allow and encourage common sense to dictate where we can go, where we need/want to go?

Consider this comic book example: Could Superman have survived the loss of his true home on a faraway planet if the couple who adopted him had not been common-sense earthlings, folks who were able to divine a foundling's need to be treated as if he were just like any other kid? How could he have learned to manage his super powers without that guidance?

Mom and Pop believed he had good potential. Which he did. They respected him. Patiently, with patience. Hands- on, they led a simple life, let him experience himself and the world. Rather the way Paolo Soleri imagined Arcosanti would do, yes?

Time need not be our enemy but it is, I feel, important to remember how precious, how impermanent, is our human sojourn on our Planet Earth. The bottom line for all of us, for each and every one of us - for all of Humanity, in fact - is that all life on this planet is wear-dated. Each and every one of us gets to die.

This universal truth is one that Arcosanti has just been confronted with, by Ed Wurman's passing. Those of us who knew Ed as a friend can't help but mourn, not because anyone could have prevented his death but because despite ourselves, no matter where we were, no matter what we were doing, we somehow did not quite see it coming. 

Putting any friend in the past tense is a challenge: Ed will be no exception to that rule. For my part, now that it's too late for me to tell him in person how important his gifts were, still are and always will be, now that it's too late for him to hear me say once again how important he was to me, how grateful I am - was - for his friendship, I will simply observe tradition: I will sit shiva, light a yahrzeit candle, say Kaddish as if he had been a member of my family. ​I will do this not because we were actually blood-related, not because either of us adhered to ritual performances common to our individual childhood communities. Neither of us was given to demonstrating consistently the connective force exerted by our common ancestry in traditional Judaism. But I will recite and pray simply because that is a gentle, meaningful way I can acknowledge all the gifts Ed proffered..

Reckoning with grief is a challenge under any circumstances. Creatures of habit that we are, change is rarely easy, no matter what form it takes - even if and/or when it's somehow possible that it's change for the better.

I've argued with Death often enough know that so long as I myself keep going, however long that turns out to be, Death will still be visiting someone who matters to me. Somewhere. Some time....

Hardly anyone is well-prepared for Death, ever-present though she is, breathing with us and through us. The raw fact - bitter as it may be - is that she is just as essential to all of us, as necessary to all humanity, as the precious gift of Life itself.

None of us may have life without her, none of us may live without knowledge of her mission. She has no choice in any matter.
With the greed of all the hungry ghosts that serve her, her vast legions of echoing pawns enthralled with her appetite, what she craves is - completion.

Therefore, remember this truth: Death, she plays for keeps.

The research I'm undertaking as a pilot study, seeded by a grant in 2015 from the Brunner Foundation through the NY Center for Architecture, began with my asking Arcosanti Builders whose training and work experience has been focused on architecture if their encounter with the architectural design and constructions of Paolo Soleri has had an impact on their professional and/or personal lives.

That query is not a trick question. There's no such thing as a "right" or "wrong" answer. It's asked simply because I am curious and want to know whether the encounter affects people, and if it does, how it does, in what way or ways. Oddly enough, though, so far, as questions go it's turned out to be one that's somehow tricky or at least fairly complex.

This may be due the under-appreciated fact that architecture as a phenomenon doesn't materialize without the application of human energy. Self-evident as that fact may be, It appears that the built environment is very much taken for granted even though it clearly does not/can not happen in a vacuum. The material environment takes the involvement of a broad spectrum of cultural mechanisms.

Underlying related, relevant questions such as: "What is architecture?" "What is the relevance of architecture?" were not immediately or simultaneously asked by me at the onset of the pilot study, an omission that has taken on a somewhat fateful character although omitting them initially was in part a consequence of my own experience as an architecture student. I'll explain:

Day One began with a statement by a professor who stood before the entire first year class to proclaim: "Architecture is your mistress." The four women in the class of twenty-odd mostly youngish folk spontaneously, almost inadvertently glanced at one another. I think we could not help but signal an individual consternation we collectively felt: How on earth are we to respond to that assertion? Is it lack of insight or lack of oversight that we have to address? Which comes first? 

What I eventually decided was: lacking either one or the other or both cannot help but be consequential. It took a while but I can take full responsibility now for my omission and begin to address and redress my having overlooked those questions.

​Because it will take some doing, I will start by flexing the discussion to include some provocative challenge to Paolo Soleri's idea of arcology,  I'll start with a critique from MIT grad, 1963 Silt-Pile attendee Ben Rosenbloom, who cited that iconic and effective urban economist, Jane Jacobs.

"A City is Not a Work of Art," said Jane, a statement which Ben avowed sums up the problematic side of Paolo Soleri's urban design ideas as envisioned in the singular arcology drawings in his 1970 exhibition book, City In the Image of Man. Each one of those designs appears to be a work of art. But can they "work" as designs for city-minded people?

A timely critique, I thought: Jane Jacobs had been on my mind for several reasons. For one, I've the pleasure of a long-standing friendship with her Slocan Valley-savvy daughter, who accorded me the pleasant privilege of  visiting with her family in Toronto, where Jane autographed a copy of her then-recent book,  The Economy of Cities, for me to give to Paolo; I was captivated to see that Jane's architect-husband Bob had cleverly insinuated a "tight as a ship" soundproofed place for their house telephone in the usually wasted triangulated space under the staircase. I felt warmly welcomed into an impeccable space-conserving retrofit. What was not to like? Jane was also on my mind because I'm intrigued by contemporary opera and there's a new opera about Jane and Robert Moses in the works, that looks like a must-not-miss: <http://mosesjacobsopera.com/>. Plus a "Jane's Walk" celebration will be held in Toronto at the beginning of May <http://janeswalk.org/canada/toronto> and I'd like to attend. I'd also like to see one held at Arcosanti, in part because Jane's pithy assertion about cities is surely relevant to any discussion about developing arcology as a concept.

Jane's idea is also subject to a broad range of interpretations, all of which entail an equally broad range of contradictions. A focused scholarly discussion on YouTube shows (see link below) suggest that the sociology of city planning, as well as the economics of cities historically, demonstrate how it happens that Jane came to make that pragmatic assertion, Me, I doubt that Paolo Soleri would have disagreed with it, in fact or in principle. Despite his lifelong preoccupation with singular city design, what he said about cities is equally pithy:

"The city is an organism of 10,000 minds," said Paolo Soleri. Even if he could not account personally for how the energies of 10,000 minds would coordinate construction of "architectural ecology" as a model for eco-friendly urbanism, he left a wealth of design ideas for others to draw upon. There is no reason for anyone to conclude that he expected to build any of them exactly as his gifted, prolific pen imaged them. To think otherwise is a misconception, an assertion I can make emphatically in light of a conversation I had with him in August, 2003.

Paolo (standing in the area between his SOD apartment and its mother-in-law guest suite, a bridge that served as my office, holding a small sheaf of papers, hard copy of a section of his hand-written journal that had been given to me by Mary Hoadley after she had typed it for me to edit for publication): But this isn't what I wrote.

RC (standing, stolidly facing him, big grin on my face: I can't resist): Paolo! You know how with a building, the finished building isn't identical to your first drawing of it? How you do lots of drawings for it, even before you start to build?

Paolo (catching my eye, assenting, nodding, mumbles agreement ): Um hum.

RC (holding his attention, continuing, inexorable): Writing is like that! What comes out of your pen the first time isn't the final building, it isn't even the final drawing!

Paolo (almost dumbfounded. It has not occurred to him until this moment that all the words flowing from his ever- ready prolific pen, out of his head and onto his paper, are not cast in stone): Oh!

After this encounter, we went to work on his writing. He resisted my attempts to coax him into letting me parse his writing so we could publish it in poetic form, as free verse, which I was given permission to do posthumously on the Quaderni page of this website; but he did learn to cope with having his writing tweaked. At least a little bit.

That conversation took place some 50 years after he'd declared that The City is an Organism of 10,000 Minds. I see no conflict between his uttering that and Jane's averring that A City is Not a Work of Art.  For me, those two statements are practically flip sides of the same coin.

Conflating a notion of idealism with the idea of arcology has led some people, even in the fields of architecture and planning, to describe Paolo Soleri as a "visionary." That may have led to the Wikipedia description of arcology as "science fiction," a sort of wild fantasy about the future, a definition that serves to perpetuate the larger myth that our presently habituated patterns of reckless consumerism are justifiable; can be sustained environmentally; that they are economically feasible, that our systemic collective social dependency on the culture of the automobile cannot be addressed, cannot be shifted or redressed; that our dependence has not engendered long-term negative environmental damage or had economic consequences; that it produces no suffering; that it entails no short-term moral or ethical dilemmas.

It is stunningly dangerous to believe that what we have is what must be, that what we have we cannot change; that what we are depending upon cannot fail. To exchange one myth for another does not make mystical belief less consequential. If we choose to remain a civilization rich in blindsight but not in hindsight, we can continue to ignore the truth poignantly encapsulated by the great Chief Sitting Bull, who observed the following about the colonists who invaded his country, stole his land, pillaged its resources, murdered its people, dispossessed its women, raped them and their children: "Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them."

When we first face disease, choice is possible: What shall we choose? How shall we decide what to become?

If there is integrity to arcology as a practical idea, as an artful science, how will we proceed, what measures shall we take, what actions shall we perform to manifest its potential?