The Ziggurat, a design of Timelinks, based in Dubai, would have made Buckminster Fuller proud. The striking images describe a self-contained city, powered by solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy, 2.3 square kilometers and able to house up to 1 million people. According to World Architecture News, the designers emphasize the city's limited use of land space, and discuss a public transportation system moving both horizontally and vertically "so cars would be redundant."
For more about the concept of a carbon neutral city, and other major projects in Dubai, read this article from ihabitat.com.
From a distance, these utopian plans strike me as science fictional: positive dreams of what may be. I am taken by the whole-system thinking and radical visions that are being propounded here, which aim to alter and improve land and cityscapes to meet the current needs of humanity. At the same time, I'm reminded of the gap between "cities of the future" presented during the early and mid-20th century and the realities of urban life today. And I wonder what it would be like to live in such a manufactured, albeit environmentally-oriented, city.
We are living in a moment that calls for radical new visions of human life and our relationship with the earth. A large array of ideas will be tried, and we'll see what shakes down.
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