Sizing

I found the concept of Micropolitian Statistical Area's (MSA) in my Texas government textbook last night: 10,000 people. Seems a good stretch goal for a Gia ship.

Can a single building support 10,000? What about a complex of interconnected & interdependent buildings?

Lets put this in context - Austin Metropolitan has a population of just under 1 million people. That's only 100 Micropolitian Statistical Area's. With a current population density of 2,396.3 per square mile (925.21/km²) an MSA could cover 5 square miles. That's really only about 2 -2.5 miles to a side.

The densest people packing that happens in Austin likely is in the Texas Stadium - which holds over 85,000 at one time. Obviously people can't live in the stadium and when it's that full it can be hell to get around. But it's a good example of how dense we can get. That thing is only .2 miles wide and long. Or - .04 square miles

How to condense 5 square miles of infrastructure, retail, living and working facilities into something dramatically smaller - and make it ecologically friendly? Well - lets look at other dense building environments in Texas:

The Domain
Others



The Domain is a phenomenal scaling up of standard city planning and development concepts. However - as nice as it's going to be - they didn't think about carbon footprint, self sustainability or any of those other "eco" friendly terms.

I'll revisit the Domain and other developments in further posts.

Sustainable Cities - China FTW

China takes the prize. In a place called Chongming Island, at the mouth of the Yangtze river, the Chinese are building the worlds first Eco City.

First a visit on what an Eco City is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocities

Note that it obvious that the writers of these Wikipedia sections are biased towards green building concepts and are more than a little negative towards the usual methods of city planning. Personally I agree with the slant but that's for you to make your own judge.

So, we now have an entire CITY - with an estimated population of 500,000 in an area the size of Austin slated to be 'Green' and to have a minimal carbon foot print. Excellent!

But - is it a lifestyle an American can adopt? Perhaps - there's lots of us out there and many who live in all sorts of what would be considered bizzare living arrangements. But - I still am trying to think of the masses.