Search for a Lean Alternative - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 519

30
Search for a Lean Alternative
Paolo Soleri
CONTENTS
30.1 Suburbia and Hyperconsumption ................................................................................... 521
30.2 Lean Alternative ................................................................................................................. 522
30.3 Arcology Concept .............................................................................................................. 523
30.4 Arcosanti: A Lean Alternative Laboratory..................................................................... 524
30.5 Lean Linear Arterial City ................................................................................................. 528
30.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 531
Acknowledgment ........................................................................................................................ 532
References ..................................................................................................................................... 532
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 532
30.1 Suburbia and Hyperconsumption
Industrial societies are demonstrating how powerful is the production-consumption
cycle is when sustained by self-interest and technology. The exponential growth of
industrialization is not matched by an exponential growth of intelligence and wisdom.
Trivialization of society is an evident consequence. Too much power, not enough wisdom
to use it, therefore misuse results from the use of this power. The strength of our virtues,
dignity, and equity are not measuring up to our opportunism, and so our proclaimed “free
enterprise” is emulating the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. In the developing
wealth of society, greed is iconized as a virtue. The nation asks us to be dedicated
consumers, which is “Americanese” for hyperconsumption.
Single-family homes, insulated and isolated, a patchwork of hermitages endlessly
extending into the desert, is what we want and what the market says we must have.
The ever-enlarging square footage of the single-family hermitage feeds the production-
consumption engine. With the Internet's magic, every living room, playroom, computer
room, guestroom, or garage is a personal marketing center on 24 h alert. That keeps the
engine humming—the desert be damned! The resultant equation is: exurbia = the demise
of nature.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as virtual logistics, so gridlock is real, paid for
in real dollars, time, frustration, land degradation, pollution, and social segregation. Nor
is there any virtue in the case of all the umbilical cords necessary to keep the personal
hermitage functioning: water, power, garbage, sewage systems, the road above, the utility
below, and then the household supplies, the array of appliances, furnishings, groceries,
and so on. We exhibit great cunning in improving the wrong things, exurbia being the
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