On the way to Prescott to not go to Sedona and not hike, we stopped at Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti.

You may have heard of
Arcosanti - some folks have. Most folks, when they think that they've heard of it, are actually thinking about the
Biosphere, which is north of Tucson; and most folks who think that they've heard of the Biosphere north of Tucson are actually thinking about
Biodome, which is a movie with Pauly Shore. I don't know what most folks are thinking when they think about
Pauly Shore - I'm not sure that they are thinking at all. I would assume that spending much time with Pauly Shore in one's forebrain might shut down all neurological activity, except for a random twitch.
An "arcology" is a combination of architecture and ecology; I understand that the idea is that cities could be built into single large building, or group of buildings, as an alternative to "urban sprawl". Those of us who
like urban sprawl seem to be in the majority (although there's definitely a minority who will
admit to liking urban sprawl. It's sort of like those folks who watch
Desperate Housewives, or folks in Alabama who voted for Clinton; you know that they are out there, and the results of their choices tell you that they must be in the majority, but not too many of them will admit to it).
Of course, just because I like urban sprawl (you know - huge areas filled with large numbers of people who have bought their own homes; neighborhoods for miles on end) doesn't mean that I wouldn't like arcologies, too. I can imagine a benefit to a lifestyle that doesn't involve commuting - or even getting into a vehicle at all. I like people, so I don't mind spending a lot of time pressed in close with a bunch of 'em.
But I suspect that the folks that I met at the Arcosanti wouldn't want to spend a lotf time pressed in close with
me; as I said the other day, most of them seemed to be wearing Tevas and
patchouli. Now, I wear Tevas (or I did, until my Tevas finally died, and I replaced them with a pair of Keenes) but for me, water sandals are a footwear choice that indicates that my feet are hot, or that I am going to get them wet.
The folks that I saw hanging around the Arcosanti weren't going kayaking any time soon; there's no way that they could do that, as then they would have to re-apply all of that patchouli. I saw a lot of these plants around, and wondered if maybe they were patchouli plants -

- but I see in Wikipedia that, no, that's not what they look like at all. (I have to admit - the little yellow berries looked sorta suspect).
Here was an interesting bit that they did with the cypress trees out back, running them straight through the roof:

and this common area:

...but the whole place left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied; as though there should be a great deal more that they had built, being out here in the desert for thirty years.
And that feeling hasn't left me; but I'm aware that it's certainly borne of ignorance. Let's face it - if somebody were to look at (say) ten pages of code that it took me a month to write, they woudl say "Gee, that's not so much - I could type a lot more than that in a month", not understanding that I'm actually building a structure of thought and process that's never been done before, and that many of the lines of code had been written, tested, rewritten, retested - and then completly thrown away and something else put into it's place.
I'm using the same character set - letters, numbers, punctuation - ust like these builders are using concrete, wood and steel; there's no telling how many times they've torn a section back down and said "Nah, that's not what we want. It didn't work the way that we thought it would".
So I'm sort of an oaf, wandering around and seeing not too much in the way of walls, windows and doors, while somebody who knew what they were looking at might be saying "Gee, how did they think of
that? - whatever made them make
that choice?" and be completely amazed.
Well, I'm 49 & 3/4 years old, and I've already used up most of my brain, so I'm probably not going to go study architecture just so that I can understand what Arcosaniti is.
Instead, I just said "Gee, that's interesting", and went home, and scrubbed off the residual patchouli :)