A core concept of OA-Cities is NO COMMUTING..!  Everyone who lives in one should also work there, and those who work there should also live there.

One of the most important objectives of OA-Cities is to eliminate what Paolo Soleri called “time pollution” – the ridiculous amount of time that is wasted travelling to and from home to work, schools, shops, etc.   

Environmentalists rightly criticise waste – of energy, food, water, etc., – but they rarely say anything about the waste of time  caused by commuting, which should be considered an environmental issue since commuting is one of many undesirable by-products of sprawl.

In a “normal” city a “normal” salary forces most people to live in an area with “normal” housing costs and these, especially in big sprawling cities like London, with very high real estate values, tend to be quite far from their work-places.   Getting to and from home to workplace usually involves 2 hours or more of travelling every day.  

One of the core concepts of OA-Cities is that everyone who lives in one should also work there, and vice-versa.

But, since they will be extremely attractive places in which to live, this might seem to be unlikely, as the laws of supply and demand generally dictate that nice places also command “nice” (ie, high) prices.  If that were to be the case, people on modest salaries would be unable to afford the rents.    

Perhaps the only way to by-pass the big profit motive which governs speculative building is for OA-Cities to be financed and built by some form of non-profit organisation (NPO) – a trust, a foundation or a co-operative, or whichever is deemed best.  Such a NPO could ask its members or stake-holders – its future residents – to help build “their city” by working on the building site for minimal wages, plus food and temporary accommodation.   In 1st world countries where labour is expensive this could potentially achieve huge cost savings.