At its root economic inequality can be traced to the societal imperative of providing for the needs of species members. If economic equality leads to a shortage of necessities then it cannot be tolerated by a society which values necessities or a society which seeks to persist. On the other hand, if necessities are abundantly produced, then inequality becomes less important to the persistence of the social function. This is complicated by the fact that the nature of necessity is a feedback loop interaction of the function of providing for necessities and other social mechanisms.
Investing is a general term but it also connotes something more specific: a long term approach. The other approach is trading, and it is hardly unimportant.
First It Was Science Fiction, Then Fantasy, But Now It's Affirmation
I wanted to build a train line from Tempe to Arcosanti. The Tempe Depot was an open-work pyramid spanning 100 neighborhood blocks and two thousand feet tall, with platforms at great elevation in it, and then the line takes off to the north one thousand feet above the city, supported on more delicate superstructure. There's a Scottsdale Depot and a North Scottsdale Depot and then we head out over - far above - the hills ... New River Depot ... then up over the Agua Fria, then on top of the mesa, and coming in at ground level at Arco. Of course, from there the line goes to Prescott and Williams and Flag. And from Tempe it heads south.
Superstructure is a technology. That was how I wanted to look at it. We might be able to build these lines so cheaply that it would become inevitable to extend them ... Utah, New Mexico. And they would float like air above the sprawling Western landscape, above the Western town. And if we later wanted to we could remove them, an uncomplicated procedure, and there would be no trace in the wilderness they had ever been there. These would be slow trains, little locals, and there would be sky stations along the line, so people could make it an interesting multi-day trip ... or stop for lunch ... with a view.
Well, this was in the future. What I wanted to do more immediately was build a little tiny train to carry passengers and goods between Crafts Three, Pizza Piazza, and the fields. The old upper road had been taken over by nature, and the lower road was about to slide into the Valleta, and some alternative was needed. There was a collection of such necessities at that time. Much discussed was the road, and little discussed was the urgent need for additional housing. As regards the road, I wanted to elevate it - and we soon did - building a quirky causeway out across the meadows, just where the old road was, and making the turn, all a moderate distance above the mesa landscape. It was all concrete, and we kept it delicate, and put a scenic view point part way out, with a kind of grotto lab below it, accessed by a foot path from Mind Garden, and attached a complex tower to it where one left the site, and at its terminus was, one way, the old parking lot, not changed one bit, and, the other way, on a giant pillar out over the Valleta, the Fields Line depot.
There was always the question of Pizza Piazza and Teillard de Chardin, and La Logia, and then the giant apses, that Soleri had designed for the site. I wanted to build Pizza Piazza and Teillard de Chardin exactly as designed, and carefully revisit the designs for La Logia and the Apses, and the Energy Apron. In the case of the Apses, I wanted to propose a more piecemeal approach, which would leave a bit more to chance, but would also maximize complexity, while allowing us to build some vital infrastructure, housing in the urban core, in a short time. Soleri had already described the arcs of great vanes which comprise the essential structure of these apses, but, in those years, he was still exploring exactly what to do with them. I thought we should be very free-wheeling about it, go ahead and build a crescent of giant footings and their unbelievably soaring A slabs, connected together by oddly slanting beams, and I thought we could build a giant beam with housing integrated into its structure, like a giant concrete egg carton, and lift it into place up in the apse using superstructure. I had already invented the technology we used to make ultr-light ultra-complex post tensioned concrete.
I had also become obsessed with the idea of cellars, in the basalt, beneath the site. We needed to bring in hard rock drilling and excavate a giant rectangular shaft, or gallery, with Egyptian proportions, above Ceramics, and from its floor, precise, beautiful tunnels down which could be found the world's premier storehouses for every kind of comestible. And if you go down the tunnels one way, and there were shops down there, you would eventually come out at the Ogiva, or below the Foundry, and if you go the other way, it leads to a restaurant, on a terrace, in the cliffs overlooking the Agua Fria.
All of this was going to require a lot of work, by a lot of workers, and a lively atmosphere to sustain them. On the housing front, I wanted to develop the camping near the Mind Garden more, creating something like a Taliesen Shelter City there, and also more camping down the hill, with carefully detailed spots, trail shelters, and the like, organized around agricultural engineering experiments, and then I wanted to build a beautiful path through the rocks at the foot of the cliffs there, and put some towers, there, perched, like Crafts Three. I did feel that Soleri's thinking was too exclusively focused on the idea of density, and some more sprawl needed to be introduced into the Arcological Model. These satellite manifestations of habitat would provide a work force focused on the fields, and, at the bottom, where the Valleta spills into the Agua Fria, where the terrace is eroded by fascinating chasms, I wanted to install a dairy, on mushroom shaped platforms. By the main field I wanted to build a long house, rambling through the mesquites, and in the center of the field, a research station, and then I wanted to extend the olive groves down there, on the mesa side, with little olive parks, eternal architectural retaining walls around flat, clean floors, around an olive tree, and more of these across the river. There, a path would lead into the hills, and elevate, and there would be a complex out there, above the desert, interacting with the desert in quiet unobtrusiveness, and from there the ecotourists could explore the Vales of Ash Creek, the precious treasure, The Agua Fria National Monument. Eventually, this route will connect with parts north, the headwaters of Sycamore Creek, Pine Mountain ... and then the Verde rim, and ultimately Arcosanti would become a hub for walking tours into that vast, beautiful, inscrutable wilderness, and returning down the Agua Fria.
A final concern was the Agua Fria Canyon, and, I was particularly focused on Tent City, which had become very overgrown, and seemed neglected, and the need for a foot bridge, for which I presented a design, which I'm still proud of, a tapered blade, resting, at one end, on a massive foundation built into the spot where the road to the ranch was collapsing so dramatically, and, on the other side, resting without any foundation, like a leaf, on the sandy banks among the cottonwoods. And I wanted to investigate the possibility of gardens along the river, up there in the canyon, including reed gardens - I was interested in making reed mats - and, maybe, orchards. I mean, Paolo had done drawings of gardens up there. We had to dig them out.
Thinking about the road the remaining question was, where does it let out? I had envisioned a nice intersection by the new second bridge - I mean, I had been interested in signs for years, and this was not silly mysticism, I got it from the Arizona Republic, and they built a second bridge, at the junction ... for Arcosanti - but it felt vaguely incomplete, so I dreamt up the idea of one of Soleri's Double Flying Apses, straddling the highway. A Commerce Center. You would drive towards Prescott, and then there would be an exit, and you would loop back, and up, and then there would be lots of parking, and you could check into your room, have a bite, attend the conference, and dine, in the evening, high above the road, watching traffic head out up the hill to the south, and, northward, out across the surface of the planet. We debated whether to build it, or just keep thing quiet with a nice, small intersection.
