Several schmucks have made comments about how this brilliant idea is not for them. (No insult intended- I just liked the sound of ’several schmucks’).

The first thing to to affirm is that this isn’t for everyone. I only hope to slow the blanketing ugliness of suburbs. I want to offer an alternative for those people who do find value in this type of living.

Courtyard or town center between buildings. (We could do much better design work).

There are those people who love to build their own houses by hand and maintain them. There are people who are actually farmers. There are people who don’t want to have to see large open spaces and wildlife. All of these folks need to look elsewhere.

My target is the people who are living in suburbs because they have the money to do so but, when looking honestly, admit that they would prefer not to mark the seasons by mowing, raking, snow shoveling and repairing.

The sales target is a person who might be interested in any of the following:

• Reduced time requirements of home ownership.
• Saving opportunities in all directions.
• Increased availability of amenities, such as people enjoy in the city.
• Higher quality services (faster mail, more secure environment, excellent public transportation, access to large garden plots, golf courses, etc)
• The opportunity to significantly improve our impact on land, water, wildlife, carbon emissions, consumption required and all natural systems.
• The availability of locally grown, affordably priced food.
• The ability to look from your window or walk 10 minutes from your house into a national park-like landscape.
• Enjoy a marked increase in community building opportunities through carefully designed buildings, courtyards and town centers.
• The opportunity for a sense of cohesion and “town pride” lost on many (but not all) sprawling suburbs.
• Income generating possibilities on your parcel of land.*

Stick the car under ground and drop your second vehicle for public bus.

Personally, any one of these factors above would sell me on this manner of living. However, several people have raised valid concerns.

• I don’t want to live up in the sky, it gives me a weird feeling.
• I want my own space and privacy.
• People don’t spontaneously walk outside, fewer children play on the streets, people don’t spontaneously meet the neighbors, people lead more sedentary life styles.
• Ideological resistance because the “American Dream” includes owning your own house.
• People partly move to the suburbs to manage their own property and have the opportunity to garden.

I grant that this would be a different way of living for those accustomed to the burbs. Several of these challenges can be answered by creative design, constructing the project (so that people can experience it) and re-teaching people’s expectations.

In existing condominium high rises, one finds that one’s own apartment does provide a quite adequate sense of privacy. The halls and outside “town centers” are certainly less private than a back yard. (Point for the burbs). There would be ample opportunity for gardening in private community garden plots as well as common spaces.

Except in the unusual case, I am picturing condominium’s which you buy and own. This, combined with your ownership of a parcel of farm/parkland/wilderness would have to replace the “American Dream” (nightmare) of suburban ownership.

By this point we have already whittled down our target market. To me the most challenging questions remain unanswered. Is the experience of living 12 stories in the sky intrinsically inferior to living on the ground?

I can’t speak to this from any direct experience. I find the American sedentary lifestyle arises from a number of factors working together and would not be solved by Vertical Villages. However, I do think that the combination of easy access to beautiful areas to walk and bike with the ability to walk to numerous retail stores rather than driving would balance out any negative impact on the couch potato problem.

Would fewer kids play outside? Would people venture outside more seldom? I can easily see either of these negative effects occurring.

Yet a community of 200 (5 buildings at 12-15 stories each) could easily employ a security guard and the residents would be able to recognize each other’s faces. There is the possibility that the local ball-field or skate park could be more safe than the suburban equivalent.

Also, though people might take fewer spontaneous trips to their backyard, they might make far more planned trips for a variety of outdoor activities. There could be more opportunities for activities within easy walking distance.

Typical sprawl.

Opportunity Abounds.

In the end, living in the Vertical Villages of the future is not for everyone but I’m convinced that it has an important role to fill. Aside from the satisfaction of more sustainable development and the beautiful surroundings it seems to me that the greatest opportunity presented is the chance to rebuild village community.

Sharing stores, coffee shops, garden areas, parks, hallways, village centers, parking garages hiking trails, economic endeavors (land lease) and so much more with your neighbors would be a dramatic shift from the little island of isolation which is modern suburbia. You would lose some sense of personal space and privacy but you would be physically brought into community and connection in a way that could offer immense satisfaction. I’m not suggesting an externally imposed, commune-style utopia, I’m just suggesting the naturally occurring joys of learning to interact with other humans.

The final post will deal with the challenges of bringing the idea to market.

Brian

* If you chose to use public transportation and rent cars occasionally you could lease your underground parking space. You could also work with other residents who each own sections of the surrounding land to lease your land for farming, wind-power generation, golf courses, school field’s, or any other function which could not be achieved using half-acre, fenced, suburban backyards.

Ethical Rebellion

(When to Light the Torches)

If we start from the concept of rebellion, we find that there must be an established order against which we rebel. The act of breaking the established order brings about a state of chaos before a new order is settled.

I contend that a state of order is inherently “heavenly” while a state of disorder is inherently “hellish.” Certainly this is a semantic distinction, but since this is my “book” I will stick to my definitions and simply illustrate what I mean.

Is a pride of lions tearing down a zebra orderly or disorderly? The coordination of the lions is incredibly orderly. The balance of the ecosystem displays an incredible pattern, in which the lions feed themselves while also strengthening the zebra herd by removing the weak. Knocking over a zebra, ripping open its throat and shredding and consuming its flesh is disorderly. The vultures, jackals, hyenas and maggots which cleanup the carcass are part of an orderly process of recycling. Flies burying their eggs in rotting flesh so that their young can hatch and eat their way out is gross. Therefore, disorderly.

It is difficult to apply the good/evil dichotomy to this world of nature – again, a semantic endeavor.

Let’s try another example.

Funny looking short guy with a mustache leading thousands of Germans to wear strange badges, explode French homes and businesses and systematically destroy millions of Jews. Disorderly. Offering the German people inspiration, hope and direction in a time of despair. Orderly. The impoverished German economy turning around and leaping into productivity is orderly. Dropping and ignoring debt obligations to France, England and the USA is disorderly. Organizing the tactics and coordination which allowed the German army to blow through the Maginot line involves incredible order. A bullet smashing through Hitler’s skull and brain in a bunker somewhere is disorderly.

Every element in each of these examples could be dissected a hundred more times to reveal a mixture of order and disorder – pattern and chaos – creation and destruction.

 Hopefully a couple things become clear from these examples.

A) We cannot possibly hope to understand and analyze every level of every situation.
B) Any event or occurrence in this world involves a conglomeration of order and disorder. All the more so with any institution or establishment.

C) Our own view of the matter is colored by the lens through which we observe and by the material we focus on. (However, this does not lead me to conclude that every situation’s intrinsic quality is defined by the beholder and relative to the beholder).

As this constant, cycling process unfolds around us, we find ourselves faced with two opportunities:

A) We can make an evaluation of a given process or state of being.

B) We can intentionally seek to effect this process.

In the broadest sense we can evaluate the whole panorama. Do we think that everything unfolding is held within an inherently orderly process or an inherently chaotic one? Does it all lead to a good end or all toward entropical deadness?

This broad evaluation effects and guides the way we seek to contribute to the whole, and also how we contribute in specific cases.

I assume that all change involves a breaking of a given order. Change is destructive of a status quo and is therefore also painful and full of conflict. It is a rebellion. However, growth relies on change. Change is obviously a very necessary part of existence.

And yet, growth also depends on factors of stability. Somalia’s protracted civil war may ultimately be part of a necessary and useful growth. But at the moment the disorder or chaos of situation prevents most viable business and communities from establishing themselves.

I suggest that something can be labeled as “evil” if it involves an effort to dominate and control for some personal gain. This comes from my evaluation that everything moves within an over-arching order and that everything moves towards a good purpose (Divine Providence, if you will). Hence, to set oneself up to rule over others in opposition to this order is bad.

Rebellion is a rejection of existing order and thus a lack of acceptance of what Is. The rebellious attitude is dangerous because overthrowing an existing scenario easily turns to a rejection of the overarching process. The danger comes when one turns to self as the arbiter of good and evil – (like eating from a certain forbidden tree).

 And yet, I do believe that there are times and places for ethical rebellion.

 Brian

 Perhaps the following quotation from Matthew is relevant:

“Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!” Matthew 18.7

Ethical Rebellion

(When to Light the Torches)

This is the working title of my next book. It is inspired by extensive historical research and the last 14 years I spent as a war correspondent in the Congo.

The reality is that I often wonder about rebellion. When does it become appropriate? When does it become imperative? What extent of rebellion is called for? What means are acceptable to use in rebellion?

These are questions I regularly wonder about. In my experience, rebels without cause are far more rare than causes without rebels. It seems to me that any tyranny or inappropriate dominance and control presents a possible case for rebellion. I don’t simply mean state governments. I mean all cases at all level of our lives.

• The passing comment made in a group which dismisses a person or their ideas.
• Advertising or spin which uses lies to gain control over the consumer’s mind.
• A charismatic or persuasive personality who leads a flock to serve his purposes.
• An organized group which forcibly extracts wealth from a certain set of 300 million people which it uses, in part, to destroy and manipulate foreign nations.

In short, any place in which evil has established itself in some form, resistance to it can be called a rebellion. It is a rejection of a given status quo.

My imaginary book will deal with at least two major themes – and possibly a third one for fun.

A) Since rebellion is a rejection of established order it necessarily brings with it an element of disorder or chaos. We need to explore the nature of order and chaos. Inherently, orderly things are heavenly and disorderly one’s are hellish. Thus the tool of rebellion and the resulting chaos have something of hell in them. To enter rebellion with integrity, one must have a clear grasp of these issues and also be able to identify criteria which make rebellion the superior choice.

B) Closely related to the first issue but far more important is the effort to understand the rebel. If ethical rebellion is possible, it is likely one of the most difficult endeavors. Since rebellion deposes an existing order, it automatically presents itself as the new order. The immediate and dire danger is that one will simply replace the old tyrant with oneself. Avoiding this danger requires self discipline – cultivating this discipline is far more difficult than successfully deposing a tyrant. Fight “the man” from the same love of dominion which we ostensibly fight and our rebellion will contain the seeds of the next tyranny. If love of dominion rules within, we will have no success in defeating it without. I think a good place to begin is Conjugial Love 365 by Emanuel Swedenborg which teaches about the difference between how good and evil loves fight.

C) “Strategies for winning” will be the bonus, third section of the book. Rebellions are a specific subcategory of conflict and hence must have special strategies which make them most successful. Why not aim to win?

I have to end with the tag line of Mises.org “Tu Ne Cede Malis sed contra audentior ito” (Do not yield to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it).

Brian

I recently had dinner with a couple who are shy of 80. They have a pretty good grasp of “old school.”

They told me, that as a pastor-to-be (or pastor-wanna-be) I should make a concerted effort to visit people. Connect with people.

“That’s how you can really serve people and it will promote/support any other work you’re hoping to do.”

Sounds like decent advice. I guess one of the reasons I got into this line of work is that I like people.

I already understand the desire and inclination to sit in my office and get stuff done rather than get out and hang-out.

I realize that I don’t really know what pastoral visiting means. Its getting to the point that taking Kai out in public reduces most situations to damage control. Some times, perhaps, we will be able to get a babysitter and Janine will be able to go with me on one of these semi-social visits. But what about the other times and occassions?

People upward of 70, especially those who have lost a spouse, often have flexible schedules and the desire to sit and chat. But everyone else seems pretty busy. I know some people don’t feel important enough to ask for the pastor’s time and need an invitation from the pastor. But other people have told me that it would be weird and a little intrusive if the pastor called up asking to chat.

Assuming I get an interview (over coffee, say) how much should I initiate a conversation about religion? Some people, I’m sure, have very few opportunities to talk openly about religion and would probably feel disappointed if the topic is missed. On the other hand, I feel like the title I carry is already in-your-face enough without me always pushing conversation toward spiritual life.

So I suppose I am wondering about the logistics of initiating regular, informal contact with parishioners and also about the tone. I welcome thoughts from pastors and laity reflecting your own experience in this area.

Brian

Here are several advantages to Vertical Villages (VV):

Vertical Village

Suburban Inefficiency

Who wins in a fight?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Savings: (materials, money, time, space)

- telephone wire

We could manage with far, far fewer telephone poles, sidewalks, curbs and hydrants.

- electric wire

- pipes

- pavement (roads and parking lots)

Strip mall parking lots. Often sit unused.

Road is as wide as the front yard. Yard is half taken by the driveway.

- building materials

- gasoline

- rakes, ladders, snowblowers, lawn mowers, pool cleaning equipment,

Mowing and mending. Unnecessary.

- yard maintenance and house maintenance – fertilizers and pesticides.

- time in traffic and/or driving

- 2^nd car

- Retailers would have fewer locations to service and could reduce their distribution costs.

- With more open land next door to high density living areas, many more people could have access to locally produced food.

Food from within 20 miles?

Sharing Possibilities:

- swimming pools

- Gym Equipment

- 2^nd car (recreational, pickup truck, bus)

Take your pick of second car, but don't bother owning.

- laundry and drier machine

- boat

- Concierge

- sports fields

We are used to sharing pools and gyms but often the travel required prompts us to purchase our own gym equipment and pools in addition. Living in high density would allow for many more creative sharing opportunities. (Most likely, these services would be provided by a company and offered to the residence).

2 examples:

- Several rooms in each building could be maintained as guest rooms. This would allow people to rent out extra guest space for the 8 nights each year that they needed it right in their own building. This would allow the family to use significantly less floor space (and save money).

- “Zipcar” and similar services are beginning to pop up in high density urban areas. The idea is that people can rent time in a car for short periods of time without the massive time and money costs of owning or leasing. These services are not viable in the suburbs, but could be viable in VV. Now, you can rent an SUV, Audi, Pick up truck, boat and trailer for the few occasions you need one each year without all the hassle and costs of owernership.

Amenities:

- Public transport more viable and quicker.

Bus leaving condominium complex.

- Easy walking distance to most shopping. Amenities of the city with views and access to the countryside in your back yard. The benefits of the city without the ugliness and clutter. The beauty of the country without the loneliness and lack of amenities.

Government:

Many shared uses are already heavily subsidized by the government with your own property taxes. If (I know its a big “if”) government would be willing to reduce taxes and let communities cover their own needs we could have massive savings in: schools, school busing services, postal services, security, water, sewage treatment, fire protection and electric.

- School bussing – in a world of VV, kids could attend elementary school one of the buildings in their vertical village. They could attend high school at a neighboring VV and could simply use the regular public busses without the ridiculous cost of special bussing services.

- Security guards could provide greater safety at much lower costs than police patrolling suburbs. They could get anywhere in the complex in 2 minutes, there could be a perimeter fence if necessary. They wouldn’t need multiple vehicles and they could easily keep 800 people in 5 buildings safe.

- Postmen could collect and distribute mail much more quickly at less financial cost and far less start-stop gasoline usage around the suburbs. (Assuming any physical mail is sent for much longer).

Improved Postal Possibilities.

- Many communities could generate their own electricity locally with windmills. This could dramatically increase efficiency (I believe) because DC could be used instead of the AC required to move electricity over greater distances.

Extras:

More exercise because you can walk to get groceries, socks, a spatula and a laté rather than needing to drive to the nearest strip mall.

Less ground covered with houses and pavement means better drainage, better soil preservation and natural water purification and space for greater numbers and varieties of wildlife.

There are likely many more advantages…feel free to add anything you think of. Also, feel free to raise objections.

Brian

Picture living in one of these Vertical Villages* (VV).

Your office is 40 miles away and on the days you don’t telecommute it is cheaper and faster to take the bus.  Sometimes for fun or when you have a client to see you’ll rent time on one of the Porsches but usually the bus can’t be beat. Even with its 5 stops at other VV’s it by-passes the usual traffic thanks to its designated high-speed bus lane. You come home the same way.

On your way up to your floor you grab your mail, stop in at the Giant for some groceries and ask the concierge to book you several 4 wheelers for 8pm. Then chat to your “five-floors-down neighbor” on your way up the elevator. You get to talking and decide to stop with him at the 6th floor Starbucks. You part company after a laté and quickly drop off your groceries so that you can get a little time in at the gym and pool before getting dressed up for dinner.

Since you’re in a good mood you drop down two floors to buy some flowers for your wife. Since she works in the neighboring building in the play school she has no real commute time and has been home for a while, sitting in your “inside porch” talking with one of the next door neighbors in a common lounge space.

After a brief hello you head inside to get ready for dinner and say hi to the boys. This evening you’ve planned to go to dinner at the family’s favorite Tai place on the roof of the fifth building over in celebration of your younger son’s birthday. Following this you plan to take the whole family out to see the sunset on the top of the mountain.

It was worth paying the little extra for a vertical village spot so close to a mountain. Your family loves the atv ride out past the ball field, beyond the community gardens to the base of the mountain. Tonight however, you plan to take a detour past the new windmill fields, pleased to be enjoying the income from your share of the leased land. Then on up through the forest trails to the mountain lookout. What a wonderful place to live! Cheaper, cleaner, prettier, more amenities, fewer maintenance headaches, better community opportunities. Life after Toll Brothers is so much better!

Brian

* see earlier posts.

This is a smoka dallarm:

Smoka Dallarm

Kai does not like the smoka dallarm when it goes beep.

Kai still plugging ears. (5 minutes after the alarm stopped).

Kai does like balls and treats:

Kai

 

Kai also likes roof top cows:

We found these roof top cows on a walk and Kai wanted to take a picture.

 

Brian

Since my readership has declined on brilliant and relevant environmental postings (which even include pictures!) I have turned to poetry in a a desperate attempt to retain readers.

Tramping Tigers is a response to Blake’s,  ”The Tiger” in Songs of Experience. (Hopefully my readership will pick up before I am forced to also respond to ”The Lamb“).

Tramping Tigers

Untamed Tigers tramping about.

Unsteady Toddlers, tantrum and shout.

Ungrateful Teens, prance and pout.

Unkept Youths, wander and doubt.

Untamed Tigers tramping about.

Unkept Adults, grumpy and stout.

Ungrateful Seniors with illness bout.

Unsteady Age-ed on their way out.

Untamed Tigers tramping about.

Brian

Pardon the layout because I don’t know how to use wordpress. Pardon the punctuation because I never learned.

Cooked up with the help of google maps, paint and some fast and loose mathematics I offer you the following visual representation of what kind of land savings we’re looking at if we were willing to build upwards rather than outwards.

The following pictures are based on several assumptions which I will not go through exhaustively. In short, my vertical villages are about 12-14 stories high. I think  my estimates are conservative and relatively accurate but you also have to remember that I was doing measurements by mouse on google maps. Despite being off by quite a bit, you will see that we have ample room for error while still coming out far ahead of housing developments.

Here’s what I’m looking at:

A. Suburbs. Houses, parking lots, roads and a little commercial

This picture shows about 208 single family houses, some commercial buildings and parking lots and a whole bunch of streets connecting it all together. Look like home? The image covers approximately 0.408 sq km.

 

B. Same area showing the approximate footprint of vertical villages.

Image B is the same area as A but with five blue squares representing the approximate footprint of 14 story buildings. These five buildings could provide the same amount of floor space as all of the residential and commercial needs in this area.

 

C. Larger image of suburban development

Don’t be deceived by figure C above. Those several, nicely wooded areas are older housing developments. Under the trees is a network of little roads and single family houses. The open spaces are almost all sports fields, golf courses and a couple parks. This area is about 15.583 sq km.

 

D. Space Required. Blue - 14 story, multi-use skyscrapers. Orange - private driveways. Red - public parking lots. Magenta - roads and sidewalks. Pink - Residential Housing

Figure D also shows about 15.583 sq km of open space with a little agriculture in the bottom right. On top of it are placed blocks representing the footprints of various functions. In a world of vertical villages the blue block is the majority of what is required. There would be a couple roads or rail also required. The four blocks on the right are what our current suburban development style demands. I have not included the footprint of commercial functions, the majority of which could be included within the skyscrapers. I have also not included the largest land requirement of suburban development – yards. The way we break up and divide yards and put them all to energy and water intensive mono-culture lawns dramatically reduces the land’s ability to support wildlife (other than geese, squirrels and a few others). In either the case of vertical villages or conventional suburbs, the buildings must be spaced from each other. Thus in either case the actual impact on the land would be larger than visually shown. However, the multiplying factor of spacing is far more significant with 7904 buildings than it is with 190. That is why we end up with landscapes like image C above rather than image E below.

 

E. Distributed Skyscraper groupings.

In figure E we have again taken a parcel of land about 15.5 sq km and this time distributed skyscrapers across it. The red line connecting them represents rail or road connecting them to each other and to other cities. The red line is far larger than scale – you can see the size of an actual road on the right of the map. (We’ve doubled the space required for the vertical villages to account for the spacing between buildings).

The purpose of this post has simply been to visually demonstrate the size of footprint required in these competing approaches to land use because this is the most dramatic argument in favor of vertical villagation. In future posts we will look at additional advantages (and disadvantages) to this type of settlement.

 

F. A section of Manhattan

Image F above is the same scale as all but A and B above.  Its shows an area where land is already intensely built upwards. Interestingly, however, there are still several (many?) areas of Manhattan where buildings are not above 12 stories. This vertical village proposal is really not aimed at cities. However, pressure could be taken off urban areas if surrounding areas were more efficient in housing and transportation. A goal of any vertical village is that the total footprint (the cluster of skyscrapers) not exceed a couple blocks…the distance one can easily walk in under 10 minutes. NYC does not meet this requirement by the long shot.

And finally, to help you visualize the type of 12-14 story building which could replace the suburbs without decreasing your floor space, I give you figure G:

 

G. Ashton Judiciary Square, Washington DC

Brian

P.S. – I’m just getting an obsession off my chest and I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

Where do we begin the project of rational land use?

foundation of the future. Maybe.

When will we stop paving and building over the best farmland in the area?

Top farm land in PA (Philadelphia)

How can we replace the most energy-ridiculous style of living?

pretty winding roads, terribly inefficient use of land

This is likely to be the first of several posts where I discuss one of my current leading obsessions.

I began thinking about the idea of building up rather than out when my brother Lincoln first described to me the concept of “vertical villages.” (I don’t know whether its his term or not). The idea has stuck with me over the years and been fueled by the thinking, writing and speaking of others since. (Tom Hylton is a particular favorite).

Recently, as I bike through the elegant and disastrous suburbs of Etobicoke, Toronto every day, the idea has captivated me. Most days I use the commute to make up numbers about houses and skyscrapers, then multiply them and attempt to do comparisons in my head. I’m sure the math is terrible but the obsession continues. Every other morning I wake up thinking about how much garage space and materials we could save if we cut our use of riding mowers by ¾.

much too much

My solution is blogtherapy.

The basic premise is that we drastically reduce our footprint on the land by replacing suburban homes with beautiful and efficient skyscrapers.

I know that you (just as the market has till now) are likely to reject this idea for one of several reason which pop to mind. Fine. Through pictures and facts (loosely related to reality) I will make the case anyway.

If I do succeed in selling you on vertical villages then you may assume, as most do, that the easiest and most efficient way to achieve the goal is through government intervention (coercion).

I don’t make that assumption, as you may know.

Certain countries have used government zoning to achieve results which I appreciate.

Amsterdam's development is contained, leaving room for agriculture.

However, my assumption is that the misguided efforts of government are as likely to do harm as good.

For example, our amazing highway system in the USA, has enabled (and, as it were, subsidized) the wide spread sprawl of suburbia.

Also, most areas use zoning laws to strictly separate commercial and residential. This leads to 2 and 3 car families and far less walking.

So are you hungering for more – wondering if you can be convinced to give up your indulgent suburban lifesyle?

The goal is to demonstrate that vertical villages do not only offer incredible environmental advantages but also offer greater desirability to the consumer and economic viability for the developer*.

A beautiful future? (Chrysler Building).

Brian

* I don’t really know if any of these claims are true. But we’ll find out.