I’m going to place my neck on the block of ridicule by predicting that Unitary Cities similar in concept to Deltapolis will be THE NEXT BIG THING and will come to be seen as a much more far-reaching technological or social revolution than even the Internet – and thats saying something..!
SO THERE, I SAID IT..!!!
I have been thinking deeply about this idea since at least 1991 but I didn’t know then (or now) how to go about promoting it to the worldwide audience it deserves. Originally I intended to write a book but I soon came to realise that without a well-known “eco-warrior” or similarly famous collaborator, to put his name to it, it is unlikely that an unknown like I would have found a publisher. And, even if I had, what level of publicity would it have got without the endorsement of an eco-celebrity such as Al Gore, or an architect-celebrity like Lord Foster? Even Prince Charles, who otherwise hates most modern buildings, I suspect would like my idea once he realised it would save and enhance the countryside. And there was other more selfish reason – I didn’t want to give the idea away without at least getting some degree of recognition. Laziness and recurrent bouts of self-doubt also crept into my thinking. I rationalised to myself that someone famous and influential would surely come to the same conclusion and get the ball rolling much faster then I could ever hop to. “this is such a bleedingly obvious simple and comprehensive solution to the environmental crisis and, given all the anguished hand-wringing about Global Warming, Climate Change, Excessive energy and resource demands and consumption etc ., and with many of the worlds best thinkers racking their brains for a solution – I felt sure that someone with influence was bound to come up with a very similar idea. I am astonished that they have not..!
Back in 1906 Britain dominated the seas with its enormous Royal Navy, the biggest and most powerful in the world. Yet the launching a single ship – the Dreadnought – rendered all their capital ships obsolete overnight. Nobody foresaw the significance this ship would have on naval design, but once it became a reality all the major naval powers realised they had to build entirely new fleets of warships from scratch. The old ones continued to be used for a while but they immediately became obsolete and irrelevant. I predict that, just as President Teddy Roosevelt dismissed opponents of his Panama Canal project with the famous line – “build it, and they will come..!” – once DeltaPolis becomes a reality, all opposition to the concept will disappear and its myopic critics will be silenced forever as they sheepishly acknowledge its overwhelming superiority to the existing outmoded city paradigm.
Yes, once it is built, THEY WILL SURELY COME..!
The adjective “civilised” originally applied specifically to people living in cities, who were once a small minority. More than 50% of the worlds population (i.e., over 3.5 billion people) now live in “cities” (or urban areas), and nothing dominates our economy and our lifestyles, and civilisation in general, more than our great cities do. Cities have defined and shaped our civilisation and our culture for over 2000 years but, whereas virtually every other facet of civilised life has been changed out of all recognition in the last 100 years – cars, planes, computers, you name it – cities themselves haven’t really changed so much at all have they? And the changes that have taken place are not something to celebrate – a monstrous increase in noisy polluting and dangerous motor transport together with a relentless and apparently never-ending expansion of the road system.
Imagine if a man had fallen asleep for 100 years and was woken up today – he would be totally blown away by everyday household things like fridges, microwaves, TV’s, and (especially) mobile phones, computers and the internet – none of which were imagined back then. In fact he would be astonished by electrical power itself which barely existed in his time. But, by comparison with all that, once he stepped outside most things would be relatively familiar. Yes, the horse-drawn traffic has been replaced with motor traffic but that is a change which had already begun in his day and could have been anticipated. But the streets and the buildings he would not find so very different, even the very tall ones, because all that could also have been predicted. And, albeit of a different kind, the streets are just as noisy, and he would still have to be careful about looking both ways before crossing the street.
Whilst so many other facets of our life have become so much more efficient, Cities have not evolved in any positive sense but have just grown bigger – and the bigger they grow the more inefficient they become. Cities have sprawled and become fat and ugly and unhealthy. They have become Obese Cities – ObeCities in fact. It is imperative that our cities now adapt to a less energy intensive “3rd Millennium” by changing their shape from 2-dimensional wastefulness to 3-dimensional efficiency.
because we have grown up with them and seen them grow with us, we have become so blind to their disadvantages and inconveniences that we don’t notice them or, if we do, we tolerate it because city life is “so vibrant”, isn’t it? Most of us cannot see how truly bad and outmoded our (Obese)Cities actually are.
Cities have been around for a long, long time – but whereas once their physical size was limited by practical walking distance, with the advent of (first) railways and (later) motor vehicles, it is only in the past 150 years or so
, and so, to render obsolete our existing city paradigm is a truly revolutionary idea.
As a boy I lived on the edge of a large seaside town where the houses met the countryside, and where I enjoyed playing or wandering in the nearby meadows, fields, and copses. But, as I watched in dismay, the meadows fields and copses were bulldozed for a new housing estate comprising little single-storey brick boxes (bungalows) and a network of new service roads. The ancient little church which, built to administer to little more than a few farm workers, had stood isolated for centuries on the top of its hill, was soon surrounded by low-density housing estates. The farms of course had been sold off for “development”, a word implying positive change like developing one’s body. Low-density housing developments such as the one near my home was happening on a much larger scale in other parts of the country and, in the name of progress and profit, has continued ever since. If anything the process of transforming countryside into concrete has accelerated with the construction of ever more “out of town” retail and light industrial parks with their vast acreages of tarmac parking and the relentless expansion of the road network – more and wider and bigger and ever more complex conduits for cars.
I often asked myself back then, as I still do now, why would a small and over-populated island that imports 50% of its food build low-density housing over (and thus forever destroying) much of its best agricultural land, not to mention scarring the countryside. If there has to be more housing why don’t they build more high-rise apartments just like (as I later discovered) they do in Europe? Indeed, whenever I did see blocks of flats going up, usually on or near the seafront, I felt thrilled that the future was arriving albeit slowly and not high enough since the council fuddy-duddies had set a maximum height of 11 storeys. The taller the better I thought, why waste land? The answer “people want to live in single houses not flats” would perhaps be more understandable if the country had either – 1) a lot more land or – 2) a lot fewer people.
Although I understand the reason why some people might prefer houses, I don’t understand why anyone would want to trade the convenience of living within easy walking distance of
Even though Deltapolis will be one of the largest buildings in the world, compared to other proposed Arcologies (none of which has ever been built) it is almost tiny.
For who or where is it intended? Everywhere, but for now Asia would be the best market. A high degree of Earthquake and other natural disaster resistance is just one of its myriad advantages over conventional sprawl cities.
The advantages of such a city concept number in the scores, the disadvantages can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
But low-energy consumption and almost zero waste is just a small part of the story – this is much more than just a pretty building – it is or will be a completely new way of life.
People have become so familiar with the inconveniences of our present city paradigm and – not having an alternative to compare with – they think OBeCities are just fine
So not everyone will easily agree with me now, but once they see and experience it in the flesh
As cities go, DP is very small, just 330m square (11 hectare footprint) of perhaps 8,000 residents, so its not so much a “city” more like a community. A city would comprise a cluster of such communities in the same way that any conventional city is comprised of a number of localities. One square kilometre might contain 4 or 5 such units with 50% of the land in between reserved for recreational use – gardens, woodland, water features, sports, etc. This translates to a density of 30,000+ per km2 which is high by the standards of advanced Asian countries like Singapore, and very high by European norms.
If London were razed – as most of it deserves to be – and its inhabitants rehoused in DP, 90% of the land could revert to agriculture as it was 200 years ago. Or golf-courses if that’s your preference..! Our sprawl cities often sit on the best agricultural land, eg, in Londons case a vast highly fertile alluvial river basin.
INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES with a SHARED ETHOS
Each unit could be individually themed – with its own mini-constitution, eg, vegetarian, non-smokers, non-drinkers, religion, gay, nude, you name it..!