A city with a view

I maintain that cities ought to be designed around people. That means to me, that since the human brain is wired, they say, for about 500 close "people recognition" connections, cities ought use units of + or - 450 people as an organizational basis. This means that a city could be built of "blocks" that precisely house that number of diverse occupants, with perhaps "blocks" that house specialty cultural components, such as artisans or bachelors, or whatever. Each of these "blocks, would have upper and lower story buildings that house a family on one level and a business on the lower level. This eliminates needs for both community stretching and travel for basic goods.

Then we could add Paulo Solari's verticalization ides and have these units stacked in buildings that would have internal transportation built in, as well as an energy producing skin incorporating the energies of sun, wind, and falling water. Any idea how much energy a 50 story rain downspout can produce and cache as drinking, etc., water? This concept also frees up land for agriculture, perhaps recapturing some of the field and orchards acreage we have paved over to provide insularity for our overblown sense of consumerism and artificial false privacy. Our "current" society is geared to make money for everything that depends on oil, and we have forsaken the treasure of ourselves so that we can commute an hour or more to get a home with a view.

I'd personally be happy with a home having a large deck 25 stories up that overlooked farmland or ranches that provide my food, and from which I could commute to work by elevator and slidewalk. I could even have neighbors to talk with and go shopping on foot on the way home. Heck, Bucky Fuller even designed self sustaining cities for 10,000 that could float not only in water, but also in the air, freeing even more land. The problems really are in our greed and in commercial favoritism, and that means, again, that we do not think for ourselves and vote with our money and our voice at crucial times. Who said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think?" It was Adolph Hitler. Anybody remember him?

Consciously or not, haven't we cooperated with corporations who, consciously or not, have cooperated with this observation by one of the most adept mobilizers of these last so many decades? How can we more quickly mobilize the same amount of energy and organizational ability to do good, even to the point of saving ourselves from an ignominious end? Was Walt Kelly right when one of his characters misquoted and said "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" Or was it a misquote? Either way, wouldn't our own defeat of our own squanderous ways be our most glorious victory?