A hyper-dense city

I read about extinct animals and wildfires, about dwindling rainforests and heat waves, and I conclude that we have made too much of an impact. It's good to be a successful apex predator, but not at the expense of the planet and all the other species that could live here.

So, I was wondering, how can we make less of an impact? Yes, we can recycle our plastic containers, buy second-hand clothes, take the bus instead of a car. We can vote for responsible politicians and hold them to account. We can invent carbon credits and try to motivate businesses to change their ways, but none of it seems to be enough. I think we need to do more. Doing more starts with using less, and I mean a lot less, radically less.

So, I conducted a thought experiment. How small could we make our cities? I don't just mean 'tiny homes' ingeniously fitted with every mod con, including space for a shoe collection. I was trying to work out what is the minimum space I would be prepared to live in? What kind of space and society would have the least planetary impact while still enabling an interesting life?

I am a nerdy introvert who likes my own company, so I would want a private space; some closed volume that is mine alone, where I can escape to. It doesn't have to be big. I am writing this in a room which measures 2 x 3 x 2,5 meters or 15 cubic meters. That is big enough for a divan, two tables and two bookshelves. I don't sleep in this space, but I'd be happy to. When I first saw this room, I thought it was too small to be called a bedroom, but I've adapted my expectations and I now feel very comfortable here. So, my starting point was to design a city in which each person has 15 cubic meters of personal, private space.

What would make it feasible and comfortable to live in such a small space? Well, there would be no kitchen or living room or dining room, as we expect in our homes, but we could overcome these deprivations with changes to how we live. How many other activities of living can move outside of the private space? Food preparation and eating could happen in communal kitchens. Work already happens in co-work spaces. Shared laundry services already exist. We could entertain at restaurants or in parks. Entertainment is provided on small private screens or at public events. We could swim in public swimming pools, work out in public gyms, garden in public gardens. If we can move all activities other than sleeping, dressing and musing out of private space, we can radically reduce the amount of space we need to live well. (I admit I got stuck on shared bathrooms. No doubt my middle-class fastidiousness. I have shared bathrooms at campsites, so it is not impossible.)

One very desirable consequence would be owning a lot less. I would not need a kitchen or all the things that are used for food preparation. I would not need a washing machine, garden tools, living room furniture. If equipment for creative pursuits and cloud storage were ubiquitous, we could dispense with most of our private belongings. Imagine if we each owned nothing more than a few changes of clothing, perhaps a few treasured artefacts and some personal tools, like a computing device, a musical instrument, or some favourite paintbrushes. To live like this, with radically less, but still enjoying rich, enjoyable and creative lives, we'd need a city full of accessible shared services. Services are accessible if they exist nearby and are free to use.

This led me to think about a hyper-dense city where all these services are available in one space. Could we access everything on foot? No cars, no busses, no metros, no roads, no parking garages. Imagine how that would reduce the space needed. This gave me the idea of a city in which everything is within one kilometre. One thousand meters is easy for most healthy humans to walk. (And we could provide exoskeletons, for those with mobility issues.)

Just how dense could a city be? Here is the state of my thought experiment.

Imagine a cylinder, about as tall as it is wide. This cylinder is the entire city. Not a city of buildings, but a single building that is a city. If our cylinder is 1 kilometre high, with a diameter of 1 kilometre, it will contain a volume of 785 398 163 cubic meters. Let's try to fit a city into that.

Assuming some people will want to look out from their tiny private rooms, these could be around the edge of the city. Imagine a 'skin', some 20 meters thick, that surrounds the city from the first floor (one above ground) to the top. This skin has a volume of 74 141 587 cubic meters. If each person needs a 15 cubic meter interior and allowing 10% more for structural elements, we can accommodate 4 493 429 people in this skin. Somewhere between 4 and 5 million people sounds like a good size for a city of the future.

Clever folding of the exterior may provide more privacy and sunlight and we would want built-in platforms to support plants, because a plant-covered city will be cooler and more attractive. The sleep spaces would open onto walkways, protected with screens, that edge the inner side of the cylinder. The walkways would provide access to elevators, stairs between levels, as well as walkways out into the central volume. That central volume, all 1 056 831 769 cubic meters of it, would contain the shared public spaces and city services. So, what would that look like?

Our city will not need much retail or manufacturing space. Without as much stuff being produced, sold and transported, most people will work less and have more leisure. So, we will need a lot more space for eating and socialising. Bars, cafes, restaurants and canteens must abound. Also parks, sports facilities, libraries, reading rooms, clubs and, of course, holodecks. There will, of course, be offices, workshops, lecture rooms, laboratories, studios, and fabrication spaces.

The city will provide these spaces on platforms; some small enough to be a cosy café, some large enough to be a football stadium, and many sizes in between. All the platforms (and walkways) would have substantial walls, transparent or opaque, to remove any fear of falling. Some would be closed with a roof, while others might be open above (if we can figure out how to build an overall transparent roof at the top of the city).

Most platforms will be stacked, for structural purposes, but also to maximise natural light penetration. I imagine they would look like giant, snaking tree-trunks, some round in cross-section, others square or hexagonal, rising sinuously up the central volume of the city. Some platforms might float alone, or in small clusters. The platforms would connect with walkways, elevators and escalators, some wide and some narrow, forming the lanes, byways, footpaths and roads of the city. I imagine that the inside volume of the city will look like a giant, dense forest strung with vines.

We could, of course, excavate down too, providing additional levels to accommodate waste processing, water purification, power generation and server farms; all the background stuff that can operate in enclosed spaces. I've got some ideas about agriculture too which I'll address in another post.

I would surround my city with a giant park; a 10-kilometer-wide strip of lawns and gardens, rivers and lakes, with recreation facilities. Access to the park would be from any part of the ground floor of the building. I imagine that this level will be open on all sides, with concentric rows of pillars to hold up the outer wall of the city above. There would be one high-speed railway line running through this park to connect the city to neighbouring cities. With everything provided in the city, travel will be the exception rather than the norm. I plan to rewild all the land outside of the city. Since my reference city is Johannesburg (in South Africa) that would mean a very substantial game fence surrounding the whole.

It doesn't take long to realise that this kind of hyper-dense city would require not only changes to the physical space but also extensive social re-engineering. For example, we are doing away with family living units, and providing space only for individuals. How does that work? I have written a short story, set in this hyper-dense city, to explore the social consequences. I plan to write more. If you are interested, sign up to my newsletter to hear when those get published.

Many modern housing solutions which try to increase density, provide low-cost housing, reduce the use of cars, and to reconfigure personal space are interesting, but do not go far enough. Mostly, they only affect a few. We need to change the way vast numbers of people live. We can provide everyone with a decent living space, and reduce our planetary impact, if we all have small private spaces and share the things we need for a comfortable life. This is my 'far enough'; my extreme vision of how we can make a just world, putting an end to overconsumption and radically changing our society for a different future.

What do you think? Could humans reinvent their cities and their lifestyles like this?