Solar City, a Sustainable idea.
Brian O Brien-1996

As we approach the end of the millenium a quiet change is taking place in our understanding and vision of the world and in how how we see urban life. We are beginning to understand the city as as an almost organic living phenomeon, whose existence should be based on a partnership between planet, people and place and organized in the way nature organises itself; in harmony with its surroundings Future city a renewable, solar one will be organised around creativity and participation in management and decision making and on a visionary approach to solving our transport, infrastructure and social problems. It will be a collage of the practises and ideas being tried in Curitiba, in Berkeley and elsewhere in the world. It will be a city where the minority world learns from the majority world and where the cities of the south learn from themselves.

Curitiba
Curitiba in Brazil is a city of some 1.6 M and it is an example for the whole world; smooth public transport, clean environment, pedestrianised historic centre etc. It is the first example of what we now call a sustainable city, a solar city. Curitiba is a vision of the future.

Solar-City will be a busy clean and beautiful place to be. Transport is the lifeblood of any city, in Solar-city public transport and traffic will be designed to give equal consideration to driver, bus passenger and pedestrian. Oasis like parks irrigate the cities dryness and bring nature and greeness to everybody. Solar-city is designed around a philosophy of wholistic thinking taking the view that the city is an organic being and not a mechanical one, recognising that it grows and decays consumes energy and food and produces waste, that it has sick parts and healthy parts and above all that it has its own personality.

A Solar Architecture
Buildings in Solar-city are three to five floors in hieght preserving peoples contact with the ground, they are orientated to make maximum use of the sun; shaded in hot climates, maximising sunlight in the cold. Buildings are organic in their appearance and functioning. A new style of architecture which combines traditional building and sustainable modern technologies will emerge. Solar buildings will be formed of towers to force the warm air out and the cool air in, of wells to pre heat and precool air as it enters (naturally air conditioning our homes), of sun scoops and wind-gutters. Building facades will be green, incorporating plants, vines and crops, shading us and cleaning the air, water will cascade down the sides encouraging birds and butterflies to come closer. Buildings outlines will seem to follow the views, the suns movement, their edges will be rounded and sculpted coaxing the winds to cool them, the rains to fill their tanks..Solar buildings are heated and cooled without energy using the natural flows of heat and humidity, of wind and rain. Roofs will be gardens, for play and food cultivation, for collecting rainwater and feeding it to our gardens and bathrooms. Walls will be skins that control light, absorbing and deflecting heat as necesssary. Solar-buildings will be underground and in the air, will form sheltering walls and bridges, flexed and floating, in harmony with the earth and suns processes to get hot water from the roof, electricity from solar cells.

Today, even in cold climates, solar cells can provide enough electricity for most needs. Most likely though the future will see us powering our homes and cities from shared systems combining solar power, wind power and power generated by processing our wastes by reusing the heat from industry. All this will be done on a local, even community scale. In Denmark groups of households often buy wind turbiness between them as a co-op and sell surplus electricity to the national grid.

Recycling Water and Community Agriculture
In shared backyards neighbours will play and grow food together. In the US there are 750 community gardens in inner cities where commmunities grow their own food and enjoy a sense of social connection while making their city more sustainable and efficient. Plants in the gardens and in the city in general will be selected to give fruit and aroma and not just for their appearance.

Wetlands which are carefully designed to clean our sink, bath, and kitchen water, (in the solar city everyone uses compost toilets, there are no black waters) using reeds and gravels will be an everyday element in the cityscape. Thousands of such schemes are in use to clean household waters in homes, in apartment blocks in Copenhagen and towns in germany and the US. The city of Arcata in California has a municipal scheme. In Kuala Luampar and Japan some skyscrapers and housing blocks have such systems on their roofs and facades.

In Curitiba industry is organised around the idea of 'industrial ecology' the planning of industries so that their activities complement each other, sharing heat or transport and forming a flow of materials, the waste of one industry being the raw material for another, is another key to the success of Solar-city.

Public Bicycles
Public transport in the city of the future will be the preffered option for most citizens, vehicles that run on gas and electricity with seats designed to encourage conversation will enliven the streets. Buses, bicycles, and pedestrians will all have an integrated relationship. A typical commute may take a form combining cycling, bussing, water travel, etc. buses in many North-american cities already carry bicycles on racks provided on the outside of the bus. Public bicycle schemes have been introduced in Amsterdam and Portlant and we can learn from these experiments. In Solar-city there will be countless public bicycles waiting on the corners for any one to use.

Like any living system, a forest or river delta, an holistic and inclusive way of making decisions and exercising power is crucial to a city for its healthiness. In Solar-city an almost anarchic system of local decision making and consensus building will be the norm. Local politics will be the stuff of parties, meetings and festivals, decision taking will be everyones duty, part of everyones life.. Social services will be designed to respond to citizens needs and all citizens will be involved as stakeholders in the city. In Curtiba on many street corners old buses, made redundant by the new surface metro system, are permanently parked and serve as free childcare facilities, first aid centres and information points.

Solar Spires
Solar-city will be a city dotted with a new element, the solar spire. These tall slender towers will resemble antennae of foilage, green straws, slender on the skyline, swaying in the breeze. The spires will contain foilage and greenery, solar panels and water cleaning circuits, they will trap rain. The city will be protected by a haze of these spires as hair protects our skin and grass, our soil, from erosion and damage.

Oasis Parks
Solar-city will be sprinkled with oasis parks; public gardens that are havens of nature and repose. A new wholistic approach will see us build more parks that are smaller and more used, filled with elements which combine many functions, resevoirs that are also fishponds and aviaries, sports pitches that are used as parking after play, childrens areas that encourage learning with trees, water and animals, and everywhere plants and crops that produce food for the people. All the organic wastes of the inhabitants will be processed in shared clean compost facilities to feed the parks and community gardens. Bridges, rooftops and traffic islands will all be designed as urban farms and parks, varying in their size and personality. Cosmetic landscapes will be a thing of the past, productive landscape the present

A City of Senses
The city will evolve to be a pallete of the senses., it satisfies all our senses not just the visual, there are be pleasant smells, harmonic sounds, and pleasing textures.
Solar-city knows that people have emotions as well as intelligence and has places to cry and remember, places to jump for joy, there are benches that are designed for people to sit down for as long as they want. In the future city clean water flows through the streets cooling the air and cleaning the surfaces

The streets of a sustainable city have a different menu of furniture, animal sculptures that accept wastes for recycling, public information points where citizen suggestion and referendum occur, city streets will feature gymnastic equipment beside fountains, pissoirs and toilets where the waste is recycled to nourish trees and shrubs, elevated places for musicians beside benches for public massage and communal exercise. In Beijing thousands of citizens start their days by sharing Tai Chi exercises together in city squares and courtyards. Solar-city is made of walls and railings which double as art surfaces, grafitti boards and sales surfaces. Each brick and seat, each tile, is given a name, named after its inhabitants, its people.

Todays city, mechanical-city sees itself as being a machine, its main duty to be efficient and profitable, Solar-city is like a living creature, spontaneous and flexible, restrained and sustainable. Its surfaces are textured in multicoloured mosaic, its activities a rainbow of variety, its citizens are as individual and cohesive as a peacock plume. Solar-city is the colour and warmth of the sun, of optimism and hope, of a bright equitable future.