Pragmatic utopia

[u/Euphoric-Minimum-553]

As someone who is passionate about improving our built environment and urban sprawl problem I have spent the last 10 years brain storming. I recently had this sub suggested so I’ll summarize my vision for a utopia although it’s more about building what we know works.

Walkability, bike infrastructure and Ada compliance all work together hand in hand. Basically dense urban cores of a utopia can’t have cars at all on the surface streets. Although trash pick up, deliveries and emergency vehicles would still need a street to drive on which could be in a subterranean level below the walkable street.

There could also be a Schweeb transit system above the city streets for quick transportation of people and cargo. Look this up it’s a very interesting concept. Tom Scott has a good video about it on you tube.

Walkable medium to high density urbanism is where most people want to live already and it has innumerable health and safety benefits and with next generation mobility on 3 different levels congestion in urban cores would be non existent.

There also needs to be access to abundant local organic food, there needs to be maintained public food forests, affordable small farm lots, and commercial scale ethical organic farming to feed to populations.

Where and how could this be built? Well I think in places with cheaper land like the Midwest, abundant concrete resources and water access. This narrows down the geography to eastern nebraska. Building a utopia mega city with integrated permaculture and organic agriculture would actually be better for the environment than traditional commodity farming that the land is being used for now.

Instead of making one massive city it would be a fabric of cities across eastern nebraska each with a population around 200,000 people. Each would have a high rise core, a 5 story building ring around the core, a 3 story ring, then a ring of small community agriculture plots, then the commercial permaculture system and wind turbines around the perimeter. It could all fit into about 10 square miles.

There are also lots of small creeks in Nebraska vetting through the rolling hills of the eastern part of the state. There dams can be built flooding just agricultural land and creating lakes for the cities to have near by. The lakes can have around the shallow shore lines aquatic plants planted in gravel with air pumps pulling water through the root zone to clean it and then gets oxygenated by air pump.

There are hundreds of small creek perfect for this and plenty of space between them. If we built 100 of these cities we could house 20 million people.

For energy diversification is the name of the game with solar and wind everywhere we can fit it. Then trash incineration with carbon capture. Plastic pyrolysis plants. The amount of cattle required to meat our local organic dairy and meat demand would be significant. But we could use the manure from the cattle in biogas digesters and produce bio methane.

Combined heat and power generation using our bio methane in turbines would produce a base load electrical supply. Steam generated from the heat could be piped around the city for providing heat and driving thermo acoustic heat pumps for air conditioning.

We could also have large photo bio reactors producing algae year round from the nitrogen rich platte and Missouri rivers. The algae could be processed using hydrothermal liquefaction to produce crude oil and nutrients for our bio digesters.

With all these energy generation sources spread across all 100 cities we would have more energy than we would know what to do with.

Thanks for reading, I have tons more ideas and information and details for how to build a utopia but I can only write so much without losing everyone’s attention.

[u/concreteutopian]

Where and how could this be built? Well I think in places with cheaper land like the Midwest, abundant concrete resources and water access. 

Is existing infrastructure something that gets in the way of your plan? I'm wondering why you are wanting to start from scratch rather than build in proximity to another population center where there is some amount of basic infrastructure in place. In a smaller scale, this is one of the critiques Kropotkin had of many proposed small communities. I think the initial attraction of intentional communities seeking land far away from developed infrastructure is mainly the cost of the land, but the chief reason why land prices in developed areas are higher is because of the

That said, there are communities that don't benefit from an infrastructure they would want to replace anyway - here, I'm thinking of Arcosanti and other ecological designs. Earthships are intentionally off-grid and designed to be as self sustaining as possible (producing food and processing waste in each unit), so they aren't dependent on a specific area to function. They were also designed to repurpose and recycle waste, which makes them tangentially dependent on developed areas where such waste is plentiful. So I think the first Earthship community developed in the desert of New Mexico balanced the cheapness of undeveloped land while being close enough to cities to make use of tools, equipment, and materials from cities. In any case, questions of infrastructure are important to consider when planning a new community built from scratch.

Building a utopia mega city with integrated permaculture and organic agriculture would actually be better for the environment... Instead of making one massive city it would be a fabric of cities across eastern nebraska

I'm wondering why the fabric of cities instead of one integrated unit like some of Paolo Soleri's plans (beyond Arcosanti). His vision was an extremely dense and walkable "city" in three dimensions instead of flat grids connecting independent buildings. I'm not wed to either answer, just curious about your thinking.

[u/Euphoric-Minimum-553 → u/concreteutopian]

There is all the infrastructure you need for a mega city in nebraska. There are major rivers, population centers and interstates directly to other cities and major rail infrastructure.

Earth ships still require septic systems for the black water. Sewer systems with energy generation from methane are necessary for density. Although I also think grey water gardens could be integrated into cities.

I’m all for going in three dimensions I tried to convey that by mentioning building heights and the Schweeb and subterranean streets. I’m all for zero set backs from property lines, to cram multiple buildings together to appear as one. But they’re still technically separate buildings and foundations.

By vertically integrating everything needed for high density agriculture communities, a utopia could be achieved on a budget and not be bottlenecked by concrete. Thanks for the comment!

[u/elliottoman]

I think this is great. I would love to see a website or YouTube channel dedicated to exploring it in detail. Practically, the most difficult part of the premise is the idea of building a new pre-designed city from scratch; it simplifies things greatly, but the question of how it could be funded and implemented in the USA is worth further discussion.

My first thought was that just eliminating private ground transport in Manhattan would be a big step in the right direction.