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we need arcologies if we want to protect the environment from ourselves.
There is the critical misunderstanding of human life as district and removed from all other terrestrial life, and that's what will kill us all.
You can't take people out of nature. Not in any practical sense. Arcologies are a neat sci-fi concept, but they are still just "how do we remake Earth independent of Earth?" And - by and large - you can't.
If we could put all of humanity into a box, put everything humans want and need into that box, and this box doesn’t negatively affect the environment in any way, would that not be good for Earth?
It would literally be Earth. We are as much a part of the environment as anything else.
If we can't do it across the existing planet, how the hell do we expect to do it in an artificial subset of the planet?
Humans could live on the land in tune with nature but where would be the advance medical care, where would be the education, where would be the systems in place that stop idiots from starting massive forest fires or flooding valleys by diverting water?
Humans are nature. We are not living sustainably, but nothing ever truly does. The natural balance of a given region is routinely thrown off by environmental, population, and evolutionary changes.
We're not striving for global preservation. Life will still be here when we're gone. We're striving for self preservation. And an arcology doesn't get us there any more than a space ship to Mars.
A group of living things banding together into a mega organism is an evolutionary strategy that usually occurs in response to sustained predation by other species. That’s true all the way up from single-cell lifeforms to human beings. I’m not sure there’s a reason to repeat that pattern at one more level of abstraction. You don’t have to go full anprim to have urban design which is ecologically aware or to avoid chopping down the lungs of our planet for extra space to put caged animals.
I’m confused by your assertion that we would have access to nature, but wouldn’t touch it. What does that mean? We would breathe the air. We would drink the water. It’s all connected.
If we could put all of humanity into a box, put everything humans want and need into that box, and this box doesn’t negatively affect the environment in any way
That's a whole lot of currently implausible "ifs" that in the meantime don't quite seem to justify "what if society, but things in cool compact boxes that aren't viable without speculative tech?"
True, though seeking to create something (almost) self-sufficient will at least get part of the equation right, which is building a circular economy around more local production and longer-lasting, indefinitely maintainable infrastructure. Going to the extreme is less efficient and more wasteful (short of having Star Trek replicators), of course.
I'd argue that building an Elysium only incentives exploitation of the exterior.
Under capitalism, sure, though that also applies to non-Elysium. It's happening right now, where our system creates an exterior that's right in the back yard of the upper classes, but can still be sufficiently isolated via propaganda and dreams and, eventually, moving to a less destroyed place. The fundamental driver is the material conditions created by the economic system, and capitalism will create an exterior regardless of whether production occurs in theoretically self-sufficient eco pods or wholesale clearing of jungle to build a railroad through appropriated land in Chiapas.
The fundamental driver is the material conditions created by the economic system
No argument there.
capitalism will create an exterior regardless of whether production occurs in theoretically self-sufficient eco pods or wholesale clearing of jungle to build a railroad through appropriated land in Chiapas.
True. But even the old Soviets weren't above externalizing their waste. Hell, until fairly recently breathing in Beijing was like smoking two packs a day.
Capitalism isn't the only incentive to externalize. And arcologies don't stop people from externalizing. They just create an (ideally) impermeable barrier between regions.
No argument here! I'm curious about what you're thinking about at standing out for arcologies. I'm sympathetic but am not sure what is really all that different from the status quo.
I think the only arcology we can create, in any practical sense, is Earth itself. Anything less just means creating a barrier beyond which we dump all our excess waste
"What if society, but crammed into something and physically isolated from the rest of the world? It'll be great, guys. Eventually. Somehow people won't be miserable and alienated in there!" :sus:
Quoting the writer of the OP in the comment replies, "If we could put all of humanity into a box, put everything humans want and need into that box, and this box doesn’t negatively affect the environment in any way" hopium handwaves abound, and somehow people are assumed to be totally fine with being crammed into those boxes with no other considerations but "OP saw this on a movie and maybe some books and now wants everyone to be in the boxes." :why-angel:
I knew it was a book too.
Another book (as a joke, anyway) is Please Don't Build the Torment Nexus. Some people might find the Torment Nexus cool aesthetically and want to build the Torment Nexus, finding reasons after the fact to build the Torment Nexus and then assume that everyone would also enjoy the Torment Nexus.
The Soviet's tried this in the early 1920s, cramming 5 person families into 1 person studio apartments (by 19th century European standards), with cramped communal kitchens and all amenities shared. The purpose being to enhance the experience of communalist life and encourage people to only use private spaces for the minimum of time. It failed, spectacularly. Everyone hated it, everyone immediately tried to move back to their unheated slums.
This is how you get entire suburbs to declare counter revolution.
I love clear counterexamples like this. Reminds me of the group that tried to “collectivize” parenting because they saw the family unit as inherently patriarchal. Turns out kids need to make a strong bond with a small number of caregivers if we don’t want them to develop attachment disorders. That’s not to say the nuclear family doesn’t have other toxic baggage from patriarchy and capitalism, but the fundamental concept is there for a reason
Cyberpunk arcologies are supposed to be bad because of the *punk* part of cyberpunk - they are supposed to be imposing, alienating, totally dependent on the hyper capitalist techno dystopia the world might still become.
Snowpiercer was still cool. And I also hope that future arcologies - if we need them - are more humanistic in scale and more compatible with the environment. I think it's totally possible to live in harmony with the environment without maximizing square footage efficiency, but we still need to reduce how much land is needed to support western standards of living - honestly, veganism would help way more than reducing the urban environment to absolute minimum footprint. If space colonization is something future communist people want they'll still need those principles of arcology just so they don't have to launch much material into space so it's still important to study that kind of stuff and try it out in a safe environment (earth) where you don't die if a system fails and can just open airlocks and ship in food and water if absolutely needed.
Cyberpunk arcologies are supposed to be bad because of the punk part of cyberpunk - they are supposed to be imposing, alienating, totally dependent on the hyper capitalist techno dystopia the world might still become.
I think some folks really, really want to build the Torment Nexus because they have an unexamined fondness of their fiction without thinking about what it'd be like to live in it.
I thought that truck was full of water.
If it was full of breast milk, that makes that shower in the desert scene very :volcel-judge:
The "humans must become an interplanetary species!" :so-true: brainworms are just so-called arcology thinking with even less viability and far more expense, with any technology available in the forseeable future.
Edit: I may have went a little too hard too. Acrologies are not inherently bad ideas as much as they have been mostly hijacked by people with bad ideas.
:what-the-hell: Self-contained biodome experiments, on Earth have been consistent failures. Especially with the environmental and resources crises of the present and forseeable future, repeating the same failures in space, where it's even harder to resupply and to correct errors, all for some "LE SCIENCE VICTORY" futuristic Manifest Destiny delusions, is pure bazinga brain. I'm glad you edited your message before I finished editing my reply in a more longhand form.
Self-contained biodome experiments, on Earth have been consistent failures.
I 100% blame Pauly Shore for this.
I just don't get the "arc" part of it
we've already had established human ecologies lasting tens of thousands of years. Many with earthen architecture (mound builders, etc)
At what point do you draw the line between "ecology" and "arcology"? It seems kinda pointless
It’s about building a structure specifically for humans thats capable of supporting itself.
That's great. I was talking about the specific projects that, so far, have come up short, and worse, the techbro-driven desire to take the ideas that came up short and to outright launch them into space with no viable reason except their own escapist power fantasies.
Viable arcologies would definitely have to be developed on Earth first way, way, way before anything viable could happen on Mars. :billionaire-tears:
If your goal is to have a city intertwined with nature then you aren’t going to build an arcology.
You're not making arcologies sound very appealing so far. Also, so far, contemporary pretenses of the idea that I have seen and heard of, accurate to your exact definitions or not, have been techbro status-aesthetic blights.
There’s another word for systems which continue internal functions independent of their environment: perpetual motion machines. In a very fundamental way, the human project is one which fights entropy. I think the best we can really do is to make entropy more of a conscious choice. Like a library throwing away books that no one ever checks out. Energy and information will be lost. If we can choose which information is important and let the rest fall away, good. If we can make our energy systems more stable by mimicking how ecosystems reach homeostasis, but even that is not the same thing as preventing change. This is one reason why capitalist firms are fundamentally cancerous. They put their continued existence above the continued existence of their environment, attempting to remove themselves from it.
So if you’re not talking about an idealized system, you’re just talking about putting abstractions around a system and trying to maximize efficiency? Is there a particular reason that localizing life into a single building is any more efficient than allowing people to travel between them? The human body has arteries and veins. We could have bullet trains. Basically, what separates what you’re advocating for from some variant of solarpunk urbanism?
I think it's aesthetics first and practicality second. The Torment Nexus might sound cool, then after the fact justifications could be thought of for why the Torment Nexus should be built.
travel is probably an incredibly important thing to keep the various city-states from not only becoming political echo chambers, but also dying of new diseases they grew up isolated from.
You talk elsewhere about how you don’t want to give up modern medical advancements. An MRI machine, even a really outdated one, has an inherently global supply chain. There is no single area that has all the required materials. You give up energy-efficient freight transport, you give up modern medicine. Our technology is hundreds if not thousands of years away from mitigating that tradeoff.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that we shouldn’t be doing ecologically-minded architecture or that we shouldn’t strive for energy efficiency. I think the question is whether an arcology is indeed he most efficient and ecologically-minded design. If I end up living under a socialist state who attempts to build them and has engineers and ecologists claiming they’re theoretically sound, I’d be happy to live in one. Maybe this is just more technical a conversation than I’m prepared for and I’m not understanding why. But for right now, I appreciate you sharing this interest and arguing your case.
They put their continued existence above the continued existence of their environment, attempting to remove themselves from it.
They can afford to though. The only wildcard is whether the raw level of CO2 might become so high that humans are unable to survive, including the rich ones
everything else is fine for them though, it doesn't matter if half the world becomes deserts, if 95% of the world population (poors and "middle class") dies off. They can just buy and squat indefinitely on the land in Quebec/Alaska/etc
The continued existence of a firm isn’t solely dependent on the lives of its owners, though. Climate change is arguable already hurting capital. They just don’t see all these pains as part of a single issue yet and will continue to attempt to ignore them until they absolutely can’t.
Every time I hear the word "Arcology" I think of that one ancap nonce game. Whoever exposed the fact that thing exists here on the site, just want to say you suck. :cowboy-cri:
