Terrestrial Ship to Save the Earth

And now for something completely different. Architect Gene Zellmer proposes a vision for a new city that seems to come straight out of the world of fantasy and science fiction. It looks like a terrassed hill or an ancient Tell like Troy of Megiddo, or a stubbier, greener version of Minas Tirith, and is surrounded by countryside. The town mostly inside the hill.

In his web site and book "A Town Primarily for People", Zellmer advocates a planned village-sized city as an alternative to sprawl. Its cruciform disposition and placement in a rural setting is reminiscent of Le Corbusier's Contemporary City but not as high. The inside is hollow, with public space and civic buildings inside surrounded by many levels of attached buildings. In effect, like a (ahem) multi-level shopping concourse. However the effect is quite different. The proposed architecture is italianate, looking like the backdrop to the old BBC show "The Prisoner" or like a Dalmatian village nestled on a hillside near the Adriatic. All the buildings are stuck together in terraces, like the ancient cliff or cave dwellings of the american Mesa Verde, the Dogon in Mali, and the grottoes in northern China.

Cars are out of sight. The front of residences is on the inside facing the interior promenade and like Moshe Safdie's stacked modular Habitat 67, the back yard garden, full of trees and overlooking the golf course and farms, is on top of your downstairs neighbour's roof.

In theory, these are "grow houses", which residents can add on to when required. The town features agriculture and water recycling to make it more self-sufficient. The impression is of a self-contained residential space station, like Freeside, the space station in Neuromancer (hey, wasn't someone making a Neuromancer movie?), but one with underground parking.

A little radical. A little centrally planned. The trees in your back yard aren't yours to cut down. But no worse than condos that way or even Prince Charles' Poundbury project in Dorset. What Zellmer needs is a Duchy like Prince Charles, to test his theories.

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