Inside and Outside the White House

8th Day of Troops Home Fast

I moved to Arizona from Massachusetts to work with the architect Paolo Soleri in 1991. As a graduate student in utopian thought, I thought that his design represented the best alternative to urban sprawl that I could discover. His idea of arcology excited my soul with the possibility of living in an entirely new way with nature. Through his ecological city design, what he calls arcology, I could see how the human species could not only live in balance with the ecology on Earth, but expand throughout the galaxy. I fell in love with his idea. When the opportunity arose for me to work at his urban experiment in the Arizona Desert, I packed up my things and moved out West.

Since that time, I have been working to bring together several very important movements and ideas, the arcology idea, the peace and environmental movements, and the movement towards conscious evolution and global democracy. Gaian (planetary) science and spirituality are also integral to this holistic approach. These ingredients make up the bases of lovolutionary change. The peace movement needs a well thought out plan for moving us away from a militaristic economy. Arcology could provide us with such a blueprint of action.

The problem I found with Soleri is that he doesn’t want to look at the social architecture within an arcology. Women’s and children’s issues are not important to him. He isn’t interested in incorporating his designs with solar energy except for passive solar energy design principles. Soleri also doesn’t want to look at community issues. For him, it isn’t part of the construction process. Neither is democracy.

So Soleri has a few big blind spots that block real progress in making his model more complete. Arcology isn’t just a City in the Image of Man, the title of his famous book because women hold up at least half of the arcology solution. Perhaps, then, he is only half a genius!

What I came to realize is that to build arcology requires a social movement of many different minds coming together from different angles or spokes of a wheel. Barbara Marx Hubbard calls it the wheel of cocreation. At the center of it, I see arcology for it would be the greatest cocreative experience one could be engaged in. Soleri’s arcology provides us with a container in which a culture of human rights could be the bases of our Great Work.

Today Soleri was recognized at the White House by Laura Bush because he won the 2006 Cooper-Hewitt Design Award. It is a Lifetime Achievement award that gives recognition to an individual “who has made a profound, long-term contribution to contemporary design practice.” As he ate lunch with Laura, Cindy Sheehan and the CODEPINK woman fast for peace.

Arcology is a dangerous idea in the hands of global corporations who could use it to build 21st century gated cities for the rich. But used in a people’s lovolution, the idea could build sustainable social palaces for the masses. How much I wish Soleri had the awareness to walk through the gates of the White House and give a lecture about arcology to the women in pink. If I was in DC, I could do it myself, except from a feminist point of view.

You can read the short speech gave on the Arcosanti web site.