Gaiapolis is a hypothetical urban utopia. It is the imaginations of how truly sustainable cities could be formed. Although such dreams cannot be fully realized, - the visions could certainly pinpoint some dos and don’ts, when developing sustainable cities and communities (SDG11). Still, some communities could learn from some cities – and most cities planners could re-learn about sound communities. Hence, this blog is dedicated some reflections on how-to develop more sustainable cities and communities – by using ideal visions of the hypothetical utopian Gaiapolis as a model.
No one can truly grasp any idea, or ideals. Our perception of anything is merely personal sensing and interpretations of matter and energy. Hence no one can even understand the true form of any object. Yet, we humans do certainly define ideals. – regardless how faulty in reality. For example, Plato’s ‘cavemen’ were no different than the caged ‘Matrix’ humans in their delusion of their own reality. Still, Plato is the godfather to the ideal State and institutions.
Gaia, as in the ancient philosophy, is one of the primordial deities and the mother of all lives. The primordial represented the fundamental forces physics of the world. They were not actively worshipped, as they have no human characteristics, but rather are personifications of places or abstract concepts. Therefore, any Gaiapolis is not an issue of psychosocial GoT (Game of Temples), but rather visionary concepts of metropolises with natural properties.
Moreover, the biosphere is the self-sustainable surface zone of life on Earth. Thus, the geochemical model, the Ecosphere, embraces the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is a closed system for matter, - yet an open system for energy, like the photosynthesis harvests solar energy of 130 Terawatt a year. The definition also includes human-centered biospheres, like any closed artificial-, space-, and planetary- biospheres - as well as any ‘Gaiapolis’.
Anyways the philosophy, Humanity has certainly prioritized and stated some qualitative properties of ‘polises’ by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 ‘cities and communities. There are lots of documentaries and statistics that suggests howto improve the cities. In this sense, concepts for city designs should probably be based on living organic systems as well as materialistic lifeless ones. Someone might also find interest in the 3 blogs reflecting about the Humanity as a living being (UU20211204- UU20220205).
Quite alarming though, - the previous blogs about cities and megacities stressed some major crises due to dysfunctionalities like; slums, crime, homelessness, traffic crowding, urban sprawl, redevelopment, distribution, pollution, energy and material resources, - in addition to issues of the fundamental Human Rights related to the SDGs. However, this decade of industrial and social reforms (IR4/SR4) do certainly provide innovating solutions for most of the challenges. (See blogs like UU20220703, UU20220710)
The previous blogs do also present several suggestions for self-sustainable cities, communities and institutions. Here are some elaborations:
- The cycle ecology is as important as cycle economy, - like plants and mammals’ symbiotic and mutual waste/nutrition handling. Cities should produce its own flora by vertical farming, - which requires CO2 as well as energy, water and sanitary waste. Additionally, organized insects farming is vital for any biosphere Gaiapolis.
- Energy production by natural gas will provides the needed CO2 to the urban vertical farms. Other energy sources to harvest are solar, wind. Ways to Store potential energy are far more than chemical. The electromagnetic turbines for el-production can be reversed to store potential energy.
- Transport infrastructures (IS) in cities are as important as the veins for organisms. Most cities have electric transport IS by metro, subways, intercity express etc. Yet most peculiar, these vital IS are merely for persons and not products. However, there are no legal, economical, rational or practical reason to prevent utilize these IS for transport of goods into the city and the waste out of the cities. Such utilization would reduce the pollution, traffic jams, noise, manhours and costs dramatically. Issues of, MaaS and TaaS are talked though in blogs like UU20170630.
- The tele IS is like the neural network of societies. Mobile phones could even be considered ‘telepathic organs’ of wireless communication. Two major categories of networks are called WAN (Wide (World) Area Network), LAN (Local). Yet, the overlooked term MAN (Metropolitan) should be used since cities do needs and provides net- properties and qualities different from LAN and WAN. The MAN could be dedicated to the subnets for the metropolitan motoric functions and automation - for servers, IoT and other ‘machine to machine’ communications.
- Societies and cities do have ‘Central Neural Units’, which is analog to the computers’ CPU - and an organism’s brain. Such issues are talked through in blogs like UU20211204. Besides, issues of public virtual services, XaaS (anything as a Service), is potentially as huge as vital – and talked through in blogs like UU20201203.
- Finally, Humanity itself, as a single organism, is a fundamental issue that is philosophized in the four blogs UU20211204 to UU20220305.
Finally, there seems to be a lot to rethink and do when considering cities as living Gaiapolis as well as lifeless Metropolis.
Links:
Cities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_city
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City
Smart city chart: https://global-uploads.webflow.com/5d84fed445baf42353e81430/5e138b316b2f0387bf12eb35_gabrys_epd_fig3_libellium.png
UN Sustainable Development Goals https://sdgs.un.org/goals
SDG11:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_11
See all UU blogs at: http://bloguu.azurewebsites.net/
Music:
World's Most Stunning & Beautiful Instrumental Music
https://www.youtube.com/embed/l7uuTnk69Eo
https://youtu.be/l7uuTnk69Eo
Here are some inspirational videos about sustainable cities – and potential Gaiapolises.
Explore 10 of the world's most SUSTAINABLE cities
https://youtu.be/qf_cW77VjRA
7 principles for building better cities | Peter Calthorpe
https://youtu.be/IFjD3NMv6Kw
How Arizonas Cities are Becoming a Sustainable Green Oasis in the Desert
https://youtu.be/UHyrVKUEirY
Cities of the Future | The World in 2050
https://youtu.be/T6mK-Ukr_ts
Creating Sustainable Cities
https://youtu.be/ViJIJh-BNq8
Smart Cities - Building for the Cities of Tomorrow (Documentary, 2015)
https://youtu.be/svvIHxwgmDY
Energy Efficient Buildings | Clean Power | Changemakers | ENDEVR Documentary https://youtu.be/ys07tEScaSo
'Singapore: biophilic city'
https://youtu.be/XMWOu9xIM_k
Sustainable City | Fully Charged
https://youtu.be/WCKz8ykyI2E
Living the Change: Inspiring Stories for a Sustainable Future (2018)
https://youtu.be/gq9sg397ee8