Here is my highly-abbreviated explanation of Archology. Coined by Paolo Soleri, radical architect and author of "Archology: A City in the Image of Man", it is a prescription for the suffocating effects of unchecked urban growth, urban-suburban sprawl, megalopoly and social disintegration brought about by population growth and fueled by the automobile. I can barely do justice to the subject here, but offer what I feel are the core elements.
Consider a small 16th century village, say of 1000 people. Lacking automobiles, everyone must remain somewhat "close" to avail themselves of social services, commerce, industry, schools, church, whatever. These community services are naturally "centered" in the area, and the "residential" sectors typically encircle this social hub. "Circumference" being larger than "diameter", this arrangement allows the greatest number of people to enjoy two simultaneous pleasures (1) They are all "close" to the community action - can easily avail themselves of its services, and "looking inward" they can view the industry and church spires and are thus reminded of their role and membership in a communal system. (2) they all border the undeveloped areas beyond the city limits, and looking outward, they can view nature largely un-despoiled, can imagine themselves "in retreat" and alone in the natural wilderness.
If the encircling residential "ring" were thin enough, each residence would be simultaneously "nearest" the city center, and "outermost" bordering the wilderness.
Think "Home is a Membrane" - the border between the "outward vectors" of travel, escape, wilderness, "individual freedom", and the "inward vectors" of collaboration, service, collective endeavor, collective security, social "roles and responsibilities". And this membrane is mitigated by the individuals themselves.
Indeed, living as we do "on a 2-dimensional plane", 1000 is pretty much the limit to such organization. As population grows to 10,000 and 100,000 and beyond, it is impossible to maintain such an arrangement. To maintain the "membrane" quality of the "residential circle", it would either be so large that it would be "many miles" to reach the city centers, or else it would be several hundreds of residences in "thickness" - meaning that only a small fraction would really enjoy the wilderness (outermost layer) or the proximity to social structures (the innermost layer), while the great majority end up being sandwiched between row after row of residences, as far as the eye can see, and enjoy neither. Even with this arrangement, the actual distances really preclude any "leisurely walk" either to wilderness or to the "city" per se.
We could hardly tolerate such an existence, "save" for the wondrous automobile. With this device, we can grow a city to much larger proportions, "tolerate" having to drive to get to the common city services, having to drive to find remnants of wilderness. Of course, even with that drive, the "urban services" become choked with populace trying to go about its business - traffic jams and huge parking lots - and so services become "replicated" (fragmented). Individuals who were once "fortunate enough" to live near the city center become blighted by the congestion. Meanwhile, those individuals who were once "fortunate enough" to live on the outskirts of the city, near the natural wilderness, find that wilderness recede from them as others (who also desire escape) develop that wilderness into ever more layers of residences. Finally, the residential sprawl becomes so great that it is no longer tolerable to navigate "into the city" to conduct ones social business, and what were once the "central" features of the social vectors, the "spires" unifying the society, become dispersed and dissociated as industry, commerce, and all other socially cohesive endeavors follow the population outward.
Growing thus without plan or functional structure, the "megalopolis" is akin to the growth of a mold or fungus. It has no real organs, no spine, no brain - merely cells replicating to cover the available acreage.
The result: we still feel "overly crowded", distant from the wilderness, yet socially purposeless, "distant from community", and (typically) know our co-workers far better than our own neighbors.
This is a natural outcome of unchecked growth in a 2-D plane.
Some would argue that "big tall buildings", such as seen in NY and other major cities, is "living 3-dimensionally", taking advantage of the three spacial dimensions. But this is a falsehood.
Someone in a 44th floor apartment might look out the window to see the 44th floor apartment of a "neighbor", only 30 meters distance. But in reality, they are more like a half-mile distant, for it is generally impossible to "visit" except to descend 44 floors to the ground-level, traverse streets that are (now) unimaginably crowded (due to all others having to share this common layer for transit) and then ascend 44 floors. Rather than really taking advantage of the "volume" afforded by three dimensions, a "tall city building" is really just a way to take a much larger 2-dimensional acreage and fold it up, accordion-like, to cover a single city block.
Archology (in its simplest structural sense) commits to developing structures that truly utilize 3-dimensional space, recovering the "Home is a Membrane" theme as the surface of a sphere or similar polyhedral object. Continuing the "living organism" analogy, an archology models more closely an advanced organism in which the functions of metabolism, respiration, and neural pathways operate optimally to maintain the integrity of the entire organism. Taken to its extremes, one could take 100,000 people currently crowded into a 16 square-mile urban nightmare and house them in a single square mile structure, perhaps a half mile tall, and by clever bifuractions of the outer boundary they would actually be less crowded! That is, there would be less people within a given distance of each person, each would be comfortably close to the "city center" (less than half-mile, a 10 minute walk) and yet each would live where they could look out on "undeveloped" nature, more than 90% being recovered from the original city-sprawl. The huge interior of the space would allow sunlight and air to flow easily throughout, and support inner parks as well as the many social venues people desire. Industry would inhabit the lower central areas, supporting commerce above it, with related services clustered around these.
Could this really work? I don't know. It is at least physically possible.
Question: Would there still be socio-economic strata - working-class people in "lesser accommodations" and the well-off in better? I suppose so, although both the physical and (importantly) psychological disparities would be greatly diminished from today's situation where whole peoples are housed in tenement-like slums divorced both from effective access to community involvement and from any semblance of the "natural" environment, while the uppermost classes "enjoy" living surrounded completely by the wilderness in their mountain retreats. Overall, it seems a much healthier formula for a social fabric. How to make it happen (particularly through "free-market" forces) is somewhat of a mystery...
That is my "short" description of archology. Hope that it helps serve to explain. See the book for details, and visit Arcosanti where people are (sloooowly) attempting to create a sample archology in the vicinity of Scottsdale, Arizona. See also Arcologies for some sample archological designs.
Below are two views (exterior and interior) of a "sample" (tiny) archology I built as a 3D demonstration in Alphaworld. It is really too small to do justice to the true archology concept, and imposes far too much mechanical regularity than would be evidenced in a real, large-scale archology. In a real archology, I tend to think of organization on three very different scales: On the smallest scale (individual/family/office scale) there is much freedom for individual style and architecture, as these variations do not impact the archological integrity, However, on the middle-scale (neighborhoods of a few hundred residences) the layout is constrained to just a few major "shapes", due to the fact that these neighborhoods form the structural members of the larger edifice, and their shapes are also responsible for conducting light, heat and air in best accord with the local geography and the seasons. Lastly, it is the arrangement of the collection of many neighborhoods that conform loosely to the "Home is a Membrane" theme on the largest scale.
