Location for Medicinal

Shifting Location for Medicinal Ends (Fourth in housing series)

We fashion wood for a house,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes it livable.
We work with the substantial,
but the emptiness is what we use.
(Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu, J. H. McDonald, tr., 11)

The world was shocked this fall of 2005 at the tremendous loss of life
from the earthquake in Kashmir, followed by millions of homeless
exposed to the elements just as winter set in. How can we avoid such
disasters in future? In three essays so far I have been speculating
about how a radical redesign of our built environment to allow a more
robust response to nature's fury. Today I want to look at how the
three design factors mentioned so far in these essays, one, structure,
two, transport and three, services, might be made to interact with one
another for a safer, healthier, more robust and disaster-resistant
lifestyle for surface dwellers on this tempestuous planet.

The first in this series, "Mound Architecture in an Open World,"
proposed an alternative to separate, "freehold" buildings, that work
and living space be enclosed in long furrowed mounds built over and
around our present publicly-owned road system. In urban and suburban
settings, mound structures seen from an airplane might resemble the
furrows in a freshly plowed farmer's field. The second essay in this
series, "Capsulated Tube Transit," looked at the transport
infrastructure built into mound structures, an integral, containerized
cargo and transit system that would displace legacy technologies such
as airplanes, roads and automobiles with more efficient alternatives,
such as pneumatic tubes for local, short runs and trains running in
evacuated tubes for express, long distance transport.

"The Full Service House," our third essay, suggested that the full
range of services presently available only to a small wealthy elite in
North America who can afford to live in luxury apartments be made
universal for dwellers in mounds. Our model was the full service
"Kollektivhus" housing development, a partly-communal, semi-private
arrangement of apartments relying partly on volunteer labor for its
full complement of services. This has been tried and proven popular in
over a hundred housing developments in Denmark and other Scandinavian
countries over several decades. In mound developments an amorphous
combination of organizations would use rented facilities to cook,
clean, launder, provide daycare and other services to both rich and
poor, singles and families on an equal, universal basis.

All three of these factors, structure, transport and services, would
be part of an effort to design everything from the ground up for the
welfare of residents. The shared use of constantly updated high
technology facilities alone would attract large numbers of people to
live there and access them regularly. By gradually reducing subsidies
and allowing the property tax structure to reflect the real costs of
our present isolated existence in dangerous, inefficient,
non-sustainable free-hold buildings, it should not be difficult to
induce widespread adoption of mound architecture without a hint of
coercion.

It should be possible to persuade many to come live in mounds by
emphasizing and organizing basic health needs alone. Studies over many
decades have found tremendous benefits in health, both physical and
psychological, from living in a neighborhood of mixed residential,
industrial, educational and commercial zoning. The diversity of
activities in such areas encourages people to use their legs often, to
get out participate in a panoply of activities, or just to relax and
walk around observing the vital drama of human endeavor. Life in
automobile dependent suburb, on the other hand, takes away on average
two productive years from resident's lives just by offering nowhere to
go on foot.

Let us get a sense of what it might be like to stroll around a mound
structured neighborhood, first by taking a walk along the laneway
between mounds.

Walking eastward down the path a pedestrian looking to the right would
see the north side of a mound, the northern, shady face (in the
Northern Hemisphere) that would be devoted to artificial building
facades, open air structures, balconies, windows and ivy covered
outside walls. Parts might resemble cliff dwellings or Montreal's
Habitat, other sections the outer face of an ordinary factory or
apartment building, albeit covered in ivy and other clinging plants.
Looking to the left-hand side, the sunny northern side of another
mound would look greener. Parts would be transparent glass or, at
times, a hillside parks and orchards interspersed with gardens, paths,
greenhouses and solar panels.

At its end the lane would enter into a neighborhood mound crossroads.
These corners where several mounds intersect would be domed over to
form a multi-use neighborhood square. This commons or public meeting
space would shelter a farmer's markets, stores, a park, play
structures, theatres, libraries and a variety of attractions forming a
single, large people space.

Should our pedestrian turn and enter a mound itself they would see
from the inside a hollow, often transparent shell with many shifting
mobile homes, shops, pods and other enclosures arrayed below. To left
and right would be strong dividers extending up to the ceiling made of
a mixture of structural foam, packed earth and perhaps grancrete -- a
newly developed spray material several times stronger than structural
concrete. In the event of an unpredicted earthquake the superstructure
above would flex and bend rather than collapse en masse. The shell
directly over residential sectors would have two layers of transparent
safety glass enclosing an insulating aero gel; should this point be
ground zero for the tremor the mobile housing units would be designed
to shift around to absorb the shock and the glass above would shatter
and shower the homes below with gel and glass, but little serious
damage would be done.

The space under the mound's roof would embrace a variety of activities
taking place at the same time in close propinquity. Judicious
placement of electronic sound deadening devices now allows busy, noisy
industrial operations to go on right next to hospitals, classrooms,
parks, residences and other places that thrive only in a quiet
atmosphere. This would enable work and leisure places to be located
more flexibly, to move to an optimum locale based upon different, more
dynamic formulae than in static built environments. What should these
formulae be?

Human needs and requirements have been understood and remain unchanged
since the ancient Greeks. Since we all have a body, mind and soul we
know that we can balance the three in shifting between work and
leisure. The problem is that a static environment puts the onus on the
individual to make every change, often with great expenditure of
energy. The broad variety of activities available in a small area in a
mound -- and the ability to shift one's place of residence closer and
further from our main places of work and leisure -- would allow
constant application of principles first laid out by Aristotle,

"...we should introduce amusements only at suitable times, and they
should be our medicines, for the emotion which they create in the soul
is a relaxation, and from the pleasure we obtain rest." (Politics,
Book III)

When biometric and statistical indicators hint that an resident is
swinging out of balance among body, mind and soul that person's
surroundings would subtly coax and push that person to do what it
takes to put themselves back in joint. One whose stress levels are
soaring or whose psychological health is compromised by a known life
change (birth, marriage, mourning) might have their mobile residence
shifted closer to a garden or place of worship. A person who is
working too long would find themselves located close to leisure spots
and further from the shop or office. As Aristotle says,

"...amusement is needed more amid serious occupations than at other
times (for he who is hard at work has need of relaxation, and
amusement gives relaxation, whereas occupation is always accompanied
with exertion and effort)" (Id.)

In a mound the study of psychology would go from theory to an applied
science. Psychological researchers have found measurable indicators
that give insights into the nature and needs of various personalities.
For example, a person tested out as an introvert might find living in
a mound that her bedroom is periodically moved into a dark, private
location to give tranquility and a chance to restore their psychic
resources; an extrovert on the other hand might find herself moved
into the center of a hubbub of stimulating activity. The lonely would
subtly and naturally be introduced to more human contacts, while the
bored might find themselves located close to entertainment. Persons
lacking intellectual stimulus would be moved into a university campus
or nearby the stoa or soapboxes where philosophers ply their
speculations.

As for physical well being, if indications are that a person's body is
getting less than its optimal amount of exercise, that person's
dwelling unit would automatically shift further away from the work and
play place, perhaps to a location accessed only by stairs or steep
paths. Such a shift would force them without realizing it to walk
further in their daily routine. Many small things like this in the
long term can be crucial in avoiding obesity, disease and other
threats to a long, full life. The services of the mound would be
designed to restore a person's physical balance without undue
distraction or expenditure of energy making resolutions or applying
will power.

Thus where a person lives, works and plays in a mound would not be
left to arbitrary whim, be it of individuals, planners or decision
makers at any level. It would be worked out precisely by computer so
that personal, state and other group interests would all be variables
in complex equations. Using "open systems" software techniques their
and the public's interests would calculated and negotiated over a
supercomputer network whose output would be displayed on a huge screen
in the neighborhood town hall's "war room."

While most people might be content to leave their physical environment
to work itself out automatically, anyone would still have the right to
enter the war room and plug in their handheld computer's interlocutor
to it and question its reasoning to their heart's content.
Understanding what went into the recent motions of their mobile
residence would allow them to influence future moves. An institutional
building or a family mansion under a mound would move slower than
dwellings of singles but would have greater strength, like an island
in a raging stream moving ineluctably to its ideal location.

All this is the application of the democratic principle, "one person,
one vote." Worked as an equation into a common computer network it
would give sway to united groups that would look on the display like
stable islands in whitewaters of change. The formulae, however, would
never allow one group or individual to dominate unjustly. If it gives
close genetic relations preference, this would tend to strengthen
family units as institutions and give an incentive to families to live
and consult together, thus presenting a forceful, united front to the
networked "apartment superintendent" computers in a neighborhood war
room.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com