 
# Terrarium City 2050

## An ecologically sound civic centre: Pop 4.592 million

Published by Nicholas Sheffield at Smashwords

## Copyright 2017 Nicholas Sheffield

# Outline

This exposition presents the blueprint for a future city. Its detailed design is a complete overhaul of contemporary layouts and bestows numerous new benefits. Some of the highlights are: every residential property overlooks a park; pedestrians never cross the path of a vehicle; commuters travel from point to point without encountering an intersection; nobody walks from their car to their destination.

Like a glass walled terrarium, this city will be self-sustaining. All the required energy, food and water that is needed to sustain its millions of urbanites will be generated within the city limits.

While these things are impossible in the chaotic sprawl of today's cities, they can be realised in a new style of city that has a significantly more structured and interconnected configuration.

#  Introduction

Contemporary cities have very little structure. The muddled, chaotic nature of their layouts has a pervasive impact on its denizen's daily lives. This work will address the drawbacks of today's design and demonstrate how a new "city of the future" could overcome nearly all of them. The architectural structure of this city will be a game changer. Uniformity is a key theme. With uniformity comes synergy, and with synergy efficiency.

It is called Terrarium City. The influence that its unique design will have on transport, production, commerce, recreation, utilities and farming will be discussed in the following sections. Every one of those aspects changes considerably so every one of those aspects needs to be explicated. At the end of this exposition it should be obvious how all of the components work together in harmony to serve the people in a more efficient way. A broader section of the population will have a chance to rise above the humdrum of daily work and subsistence.

A major deliverable of the Terrarium city will be to give countryside back to nature. The city will be an island of intense population and productivity, but beyond the city limits the landscape will be returned to its natural order.

One of the themes of this work is that of multi-purpose design. Every time a solution is tabled, the answer should not only resolve the issue in question but also a number of tangential issues. This could include things like quality of life for elderly, safety of children, travelling time economies, and energy efficiency. That way the resolution expands beyond the scope of the original issue to become a many faceted remedy.

But first some background...

# Where Cities Are At Today

The inefficient, ramshackle institutions we call cities are a result of slow evolution of an urban design that was laid down several millennia ago.

The traditional "grid plan" dates all the way back to the cities of the Indus Valley, which existed about four or five thousand years ago. The Indus Valley civilisation came up with the idea of arranging the elements of a city into blocks, partitioned by streets running north-to-south and east-to-west. It was the optimal solution for the rudimentary days of sandals and chariot wheels. The frequent intersections and orthogonal geometry allowed pedestrians to get from point to point quickly and efficiently.

It was such an effective layout that just a few hundred years ago it was still going strong. Manhattan was designed that way. An additional benefit for a bourgeoning municipality like Manhattan was that it was an efficient way of parcelling up land and expanding the perimeters. Grids just worked.

However, the advent of the motor car radically changed the nature of those street intersections. It came about at the turn of the last century with the advent of the horseless wagon. These were dangerous contraptions. According to the Detroit News, "As early as 1908, auto accidents in Detroit were recognized as a menacing problem: In two months that summer, 31 people were killed in car crashes and so many were injured it went unrecorded." And the answer to that problem? "Detroit was the first city to use stop signs, lane markings, one-way streets and traffic signals." [Detroit News.com].

Throughout the 20th century the big cities were heavily shaped by another factor: architectural styles. Probably the most enduring movement was post-modern architecture. Robert Venturi, a founder of the movement, advocated a shift away from austerity, formality, and lack of variety when designing city buildings. He espoused "messy vitality over obvious unity". This type of thinking led to buildings being independently styled and no longer having to harmonise into a district-wide or city-wide whole. Whether or not his ideas carried much weight in the minds of architects, cities on the whole do seem to evolve this way. They are like forests full of mismatching flora. And just like a forest, when a building falls due to age or irrelevance it's invariably replaced with something completely different.

Global population has also done its bit to change cities. Not only has it boomed over the last century but modern lifestyles have led many to throw down their pitchforks and head for the happening places. In more recent times the big smokes have continued to swell through this population growth and urbanisation, which has put unrelenting pressure on infrastructure. In 1908 the largest city was about 6 million (London) and now the largest city is circa 40 million (Tokyo).

But population growth is not as bad as the increase in vehicle demand. Numbers of vehicles have increased at a far greater rate. The production pace of motor vehicles has been frenetic, with the world fleet increasing almost tenfold since 1960. Cities struggle to re-lane their central hubs and ward off the constant threat of gridlock.

Cars are of course much nippier than they were in 1908, but the improved speed hasn't translated into appreciable time savings. That's due to the inherent shortcomings of the street layout. While some cities have deviated from the strict "grid plan" layout, a network of criss-crossing thoroughfares remains prevalent in every city today and their presence drags transportation down to a crawl in peak hours. Commuters find themselves in choked traffic streams shuffling from crossroads to crossroads in a vexing procession of stop-start movements. Whether the roads are dominated by stoplights, roundabouts, or give way signs, it all adds up to the same thing. Vehicles are forced to decelerate, wait for a period, and then expend energy restarting. When they finally do get up to speed they're often restricted to a 50km speed limit.

When considering the machines and thoroughfares in which we get around, it's fair to say that in many respects civilisation hasn't progressed significantly over the last hundred years. The vehicles are still far too big and energy hungry, the roads too numerous and disorganised, the time delays too excessive, and method of commuting not safe enough. We've made incremental steps but no giant leaps, and while technology drives us forward, population growth and greater disposable income to buy new cars pushes us back.

But transport is just one of the inefficiencies that plague a modern city. There are many others.

Take, for example, the process of getting fresh produce to market. It's a long-winded, energy consuming, and wasteful process. Consider the process from beginning to end. Firstly a product needs to be harvested in an orchard or farm somewhere out in the country, either by hand or by someone operating machinery. From there it's transported by tractor to a processing plant where it's sorted, crated, and loaded on a truck. Next it's transported dozens of kilometres – via the stop-start roads - to a distribution cool store. From there it's re-distributed via truck to supermarkets. At the supermarket it's moved by hand jack into the produce department. It can sit there on display for any number of days and depending on turnover time may need to be moved in and out of the supermarket cool store several times. Any defects and aged product that don't sell are thrown out. Finally the consumer has to drive to the supermarket – via the stop-start roads - to retrieve the product, then return home with it.

The whole process is woefully wasteful and relies heavily on bulk processing to spread costs. The energy expended is considerable and gets worse by several magnitudes whenever the goods are shipped overseas.

This shouldn't be permitted. We tolerate far too much disorganization in our day to day lives and there's really no need.

The solution to the problem is to overhaul the whole mechanics of how a city functions. The next section will take into account many of the shortfalls listed here and use them as a basis for setting objectives for the new Terrarium City.

#  Objectives

The overarching objective of this new Terrarium city is to be self-sustaining... an island unto itself. If the world beyond the city walls ceased to exist it should still be able to thrive, producing enough food, water and power to comfortably sustain its population.

There are many synergies in the new design that will achieve additional benefits. The key objectives are summarised in the table below and will be expanded further throughout this exposition.

This following section provides some context to the table above.

## 1.Energy Neutral

Nowadays a great amount of a city's electricity is generated externally and imported into the city via network grid. This incurs a certain amount of line loss due to the distance the electricity must travel. It also requires the existence of huge generation plants and hydro schemes that mar the landscape. In the Terrarium city no electricity will be imported. All of the electricity will be generated by converting naturally occurring solar, wind, and heat sources.

Although today's cities couldn't realistically run on natural energy alone, it's reasonable to expect that the city of the future will gain great efficiencies through its integrated design.

## 2.Water neutral

Nowadays water must be imported into the city. It's drawn from natural sources above ground or deep under the ground, sanitised, and then piped into the city. Waste water is then sent to treatment plants and cleaned before being disposed of into the natural environment.

Terrarium cities won't have such an impact on the environment. Once they have filled up their enormous water reservoirs they will remain water neutral by capturing and storing rain water on a large scale. In areas where this isn't feasible due to low rainfall the cities will be located near naturally occurring underground sources so that water can be pumped up directly into the city.

Sewerage decontamination will occur within the city, and the outflow can be utilised in the covered agricultural areas.

## 3.Self-sustaining consumable market

Nowadays nearly all the products a city needs are manufactured outside the suburban areas, either in large manufacturing plants or in the countryside. This means that a whole infrastructure of transport and storage needs to exist.

The Terrarium city does away with this by producing all goods within the suburban areas themselves. Products are received faster and fresher, with much less energy expended. There is very little need to export to other cities because each new city will be self-sustainable. With shipping and distribution channels slashed, so too is mankind's footprint on the landscape.

## 4.Ten minute point-to-point travel

In mega cities nowadays the reality of sitting in a car for two hours a day is an accepted norm for many commuters. Traffic jams in peak hours aside, it takes considerable time to get through congested areas on a god day and it involves a lot of stop-start motion. Trains and subway systems can shortcut some of this, but they fall short of being an effective solution due to the fact that the commuter is forced to find a means of getting from terminal to destination.

The objective of the Terrarium city is to have a maximum travel time of ten minutes to any location in the city.That means from start to end the most extreme trip will only cost ten minutes. This will be achievable because all travel will be non-stop and there will be no intersections to navigate. Without those intersections the vehicles will be able to attain speeds of several hundred kilometres an hour. The ten minute target will comprise of one minute to raise or lower the vehicle to the vehicle deck at the start of the journey, eight minutes horizontal travel to reach the destination, and then another minute to raise or lower from the vehicle deck to destination.

This ten minute objective assumes a population of about 5 million.

## 5.Ten minute product delivery

In the marketplace nowadays it can take months to get a product to market. Today's companies often use Just-In-Time operations planning in order to save resources, but the downside of this approach is that the customer often has to suffer longer lead times. They can't get their products delivered when they need them. Traditional goods-to-market strategies are still very much prevalent in the market and these involve a lot of storage and oversupply.

In the Terrarium city there will not be much in the way of isolated manufacturing plants. All manufacturing will be done in one continuous plant, with many multifunctional machines. Wherever possible, raw materials will be stored in "assembly ready" mode so that they can be assembled to order.

From the point where an assembled product is ready, or produce is harvested, to the point where it arrives at the consumers door, will be ten minutes. The goods will follow a parallel path to commuter transportation.

Another way that time can be wasted is in the need to visit stores. A lot of it is taken up in the collection of groceries and mundane items. A number of supermarkets offer delivery services but these generally carry a premium and involve an inefficient vehicle trip.

Customers who use that service are not able to hand pick products themselves. That's fine for packaged products but may not be the best for produce. Will the underpaid store hand acting on your behalf choose the best apples from the fruit display?

The new city will do away with all the inefficiencies. It is be better not to have to visit the store, not to have someone deliver the goods, and yet still allow customers to choose their own products.

The ten minute delivery time objective also assumes a population of about 5 million.

## 6.Improved lifestyle

If major retail outlets are a thing of the past and people can purchase everything they need directly from their domicile, then they won't need to store so many consumables. They won't need to bulk purchase food or maintain cooling systems for food because they can simply order it fresh as required. If retail outlets still exist they will only carry fashionable specialty items. They would be housed in quaint marketplaces where people shop for pleasure.

There should be no part of the city that feels like a congested jungle dozens of miles away from the greenbelt. Every part of the city will be equally populated and will have the same access to parks and resources. Vulnerable people – elderly, children, and disabled – will be able to get around the city by themselves.

## 7.Efficient use of space

Everywhere you look in a contemporary city there are poorly utilised spaces. Consider all the ground used up in roads and footpaths. Especially those dead end streets where few cars come and go and for the best part of the day nobody gets to enjoy the space. It adds up. For example, Portland estimates that about 42% of the city space is wasted on roads and footpaths. Some traffic islands are the size of several football fields yet no one can use them.

The new city needs to use the precious space much more effectively. Every square meter should be used.

## 8.Markedly improved safety

Cities nowadays are still far too unsafe. Children can get knocked off their bicycles by passing cars and have to navigate busy intersections. Many choose not to cycle for this reason. In the Terrarium city the only collisions possible should be non-motorised (bike versus bike, bike versus pedestrian).

Contemporary also cities tend to have dark spots... places where people don't dare walk at night. That environment shouldn't exist in the Terrarium city. There should be no dark alleyways and people should always be quite close to the safety of an occupied building.

If somebody hurts themselves they need to get to help quickly. With easy access to buildings and an efficient transport system, a victim will be in an emergency centre in less than 15 minutes.

## 9.Greater inclusion of nature

Some modern city centres have turned into concrete jungles with only a few trees dotted along the avenues to invite nature in.

The Terrarium city places a much greater emphasis on parks and green spaces, giving everyone very easy access to them. Not only that, but the parks will be connected in a continuum. The park on a denizen's doorstep is an egress to all the green thoroughfares of the city.

The greenbelt is the border to the natural world. The city will not be surrounded by pastoral farmland or crops as far as the eye can see, but by forests or wetlands or deserts or grasslands.

## 10.Zero waste

All of the city's waste products should be re-used or stored for re-use. This includes all sewerage, run-off water, green waste, household goods and discarded packaging. The aim is not just to leave a clean world but to harvest all of the energy from that waste.

The cycle of waste recovery and conversion needs to be conducted without transportation over long distances taking place because that in itself is a waste of energy.

Hand in hand with the zero wastage principle is the principle of not creating so much of it in the first place. There needs to be a way to move goods about that does not rely so heavily on packaging.

# The New Suburbia

## 11.Present Day Suburbs

The suburbs are where the most far-reaching changes are going to occur. Current suburbs are laid out in a sprawl of houses separated by fences and accessed by a network of lanes and cul-de-sacs.

There's a plethora of wasted space. The areas of section either side of a house are often poorly utilised because they're too narrow and too close to the fence, while the area at the front of a house is typically a "presentation" piece that has to be kept up to scratch but is rarely used. The driveway is a poorly utilised area too. That means that the only extensively utilised areas are the dwelling itself and the back section. Of course there are always exceptions but this describes a typical dwelling.

Beyond the property owner's front fence is more depleted space. The public service areas including the footpath, the strip of public lawn either side of the footpath, and the road itself, is a large chunk of land. In a quiet cul-de-sac those areas would hardly be used for the most part of the day. Also those roads and footpaths are not a particularly attractive amenity.

A handful of properties are lucky enough to be adjacent to parks and natural features, but most properties have no such good fortune. A stroll around the block means walking past long rows of neighbour's houses and admiring their front gardens while one ear is assaulted by the grumbling drone of vehicles. The fact that so much land is taken up by the sprawl of properties means that those walks can be quite long before an open public area presents itself.

## 12.New Suburbs

The suburbs of the Terrarium city stand in stark contrast to today's cities. From a position in a city park, an observer would look up to see an enormous curved apartment block. This building is what a new suburb will look like.

The lower floors have an inwards stepping profile like the terraces of a pyramid. Each level is a contiguous series of apartments with patios and terraces. The terraces stop about half way up the building and then there are several floors of flat black panels that form a glistening middle belt for the structure. Above this belt are the upper floor apartments, which step back out again so that the uppermost floor has the same projection as the ground floor. Finally there is the flat roof, which is covered in a huge transparent archway that extends from side to side.

The building is only thirty stories high so not impressive in terms of height, but when the observer looks along its length they will see it stretching like an ominous wall into the horizon. The curve is so subtle it's only when they follow its line for several kilometres that they can discern its distant arc.

This is the basic building block of the city. It is a closed circle structure with a radius of about five kilometres and a total circumference of around thirty one. It has a perfectly uniform edifice of constant height and is dead level. Several hundred thousand people live within its walls.

Henceforth this will be referred to as a residential ring. It is the foundation block of the new city.

# Anatomy of the Residential Rings

A city of around five million will be made up of up to a dozen residential rings. From a bird's eye view this would look like a dozen concentric circles wrapped around each other, with the smallest circle in the middle and the largest on the city boundary. At approximately thirty floors high above ground and five stories below, each circle wraps around the city centre point in a contiguous, unbroken circle. Being circular there are no sides, only an inwards face and an outwards face. The innermost ring has a circumference of about thirty kilometres, and therefore a diameter of about ten. About eight hundred meters beyond that is another huge ring, and the same distance beyond that another.

It is a very simple design and reduces an entire city to a handful of buildings. However, there are enormous efficiencies to be gained in this simple design and it provides the basis for many new lifestyle improvements.

## 13.Cross Section of a Ring

If a residential ring were to be sliced down the middle, the resulting cross section would look something like this...

The basement, extending some twenty to thirty meters below ground level, would be an industrial terrain. It would contain manufacturing plant, raw materials, maintenance machinery, some water storage, and waste management. Above the basement is the ground floor, which is used for park access, garaging, sheds, and storage. Next would come about ten levels of back to back apartments. Above those floors are several enclosed vehicle decks. Then ten more levels of apartments. Finally there would be a very wide, barrel-shaped canopy with a transparent (glass-like) top. Its apex would rise about forty meters above the roof.

## 14.Manufacturing and Storage

The basement beneath every ring is one continuous bunker. The purpose of this space is to house all of the manufacturing plants and storage depots needed for the city. It will be broken at regular intervals by firewalls to separate the plants and storage facilities from each other and prevent heat transfer. However, goods will travel through or around these on a conveyer system so that one plant can feed another.

The creation of these bunkers would entail a huge amount of earthworks. There are some specific reasons why they are situated below the residential rings (besides the fact they'd be out of sight) and these will be explained later.

## 15.Ground Floor

The ground floor will hold slightly fewer apartments because some frontage space will be allotted for general public use. This will include shuttle drop-offs (see Transportation), lockers for storage of sports equipment, garden equipment, and other means of self-propelled commute such as bicycles. Typically people wouldn't carry items such as sports equipment up to their home but would store them in the ground floor areas close to the park. That provides much more space in the appartments.

The ground floor would be punctuated by large archways that connect parks. This will allow people to walk or cycle straight under the building to get to the other side.

##  16.Apartments

Above the industrial basement are the apartments. Each level will be two apartments deep – one unit facing "North" and one facing "South". Each apartment will have a narrow width relative to its depth in order to maximise the number of properties that can be fitted along one ring. There would be no units in the middle of the building because that would not allow every resident to access natural light, nor allow them to have any sort of view.

At the innermost wall of an individual apartment will be the embarking/disembarking area for shuttles (explained later), as well as the drop-off/pick-up hatch for consumables. There is no real need to waste space on internal hallways, stairwells and elevators inside the walls of the apartment area, as all movement is conducted via shuttle.

Apartments will be linked together by internal doors. These can be opened to join families or create small communities if desired. If that is not desired they can be left permanently closed but will open in cases of emergency (e.g. fire).

There will be a set allocation of square meterage per head. A single occupant would have a _unit_ of space five meters wide and ten meters deep. A couple could join two units, so ten meters of frontage and ten meters deep. A big family (or community) of ten people would therefore have 50m of frontage. Even if some of that number were children or infants, the same space will be allocated. There is no need to cram large families into small properties in a well-planned city. In fact in the Terrarium city that won't be allowed. A couple with three children must have five units allocated.

## 17.External Face

The external faces will be different depending on whether the property is in the bottom half or top half of the building. The building will be a convex shape with the transport section, or belt, in the middle as its narrowest point. Below the transport level the building will stager outwards as it gets closer to the ground. Above the transport belt the building will stager outwards as it gets closer the roof.

## 18.Lower Floors

The lower level apartments will have a generous terrace with a good sized garden/patio area extending across the face of the property. About a third of the terraced area will be exposed to the sun and two thirds will be sheltered by the overhanging apartment above. This will give an outside area for all weather conditions. It's probable that the outer facing wall of an apartment will be movable, permitting residents to claim the outside area during the winter months and incorporate it into the living space. The balustrade may be solar panelled to bring extra energy to the unit.

If the exposed section of terrace is about three meters for every level, then the base of the building would be about thirty meters wider than the middle (on both east and west sides).

Exposed narrow staircases and walkways wrap around the external terraces, allowing residents to move across the building face and get all the way down to ground level. The maze of staircases and walkways is not designed for long strolls, and if anything will intentionally discourage that practice, but it will create an easy way for close neighbours to visit each other. The lower floors would therefore suit sociable people.

The walkways need to be designed so that passers-by don't intrude on the privacy of the homeowners enjoying their personal space. People need to be able to close off access to their terrace and shut out the world if they want to, without someone being able to look over their balustrade or enter uninvited.

## 19.Middle Belt

The middle of the building is its narrowest point. This is the enclosed vehicle deck, which will be explained in more detail later. It is about ten meters high and has an outer facing completely covered in solar panels.

## 20.Upper Floors

The ten upper floors of an apartment block step out in the opposite direction to the lower floors, protruding more outwards the higher they go.

The upper levels may not have a terrace as such because of the health and safety risk. In that case they will have a projecting window in lieu of a terrace, and this will have a strip of transparent floor that will create a "floating in the air" feel. Because they have no terrace these apartments will have a proportionally larger living space (i.e. are the same as a lower level apartment plus terrace space).

There will be no external walkways on these floors because it is not practicable. Tenants will look through their windows and see a straight drop to the ground. It will therefore suit people who enjoy privacy, along with elevated views and quiet.

An alternative to the projecting window might be a small external terrace with a glass chest-height balustrade. These could be alternated along the face of the building to create a more social environment for tenants (i.e. people in one apartment can talk to occupants of another).

## 21.Roof

The roof is wide and covered by an immense transparent canopy, curving some forty to fifty meters high at the apex and enclosing an extensive open space. This barrel shaped canopy covers the building from side to side and extends right the way around the circle. Sunlight goes straight through the transparent material unimpeded. The roof needs to be very wide and this dictates the shape of the building.

The reason that the roof is so wide is that this is where much of the farming is located. Plantations and livestock will be explained later, but suffice to say the roof needs to be substantial in order to provide a significant amount of produce.

The fact that the building is a complete circle gives a lot of strength to the structure and compensates for the top heavy roof.

## 22.Community Centres

Community centres will be situated at regular intervals around the Residential rings, approximately every four kilometres. These will contain educational facilities (non-digital), sporting facilities, conference centres, medical centres, a few public bars and cafes, and a handful of "social" shops. The Community Centre could accommodate public swimming pools at ground level.

Community centres would be located near bridges (detailed later) so that apartments are not disadvantaged by the main vehicle bridge blocking their view. They will also be the points where access arches run through the buildings to connect parks.

## 23.Population Density

The rings can be sized to match the desired population, although above five million the time objectives become somewhat challenging. This section demonstrates the feasibility of the city design for housing a population of just under five million.

For the model Terrarium city the following statistics have been used:

  * The residential rings have twenty floors of habitation

  * Each apartment is five meters wide

  * The first ring is 31 kilometres long (inside diameter about 10 kilometres)

  * Each living unit is allocated to one person

The number of dwellings per kilometre section of band can be calculated as follows:

Multiplying the factors in the last column gives 8000 people/linear km

If the area between buildings is around 800 meters, and the buildings themselves are about 200 meters across, then the population density works out to be about 8,000 per square kilometre.

This result is denser than the suburban areas of European cities (3000 persons per km), or England (4000 persons per km) but not as dense as Indian cities (15,000 persons per km) or Hong Kong (30,000 persons per km).

Each band would have roughly 12 Community centres, each needing about 100m width, which would mean 1.2km of space per ring is not available for living. With a few archways at ground level and other interruptions we could round that up a bit and say about 2km of each ring is not available for habitation.

If there were ten Bands in a city, their approximate measurements would be:

Totalling the last column gives a habitable total of about 574 linear kilometres of residential rings. At a density of 8000 persons per km, the total population of the city is 4,592,000. The diameter of the last ring gives us the city's width – 28 kilometres from one side to the other.

Of course, these are back-of-a-napkin calculations. They are just approximations to show that a reasonable sized city can be created using this concentric circle configuration.

Note that a resident in the innermost ring is only 9km away as the crow flies from the green belt.

# Between the Rings

## 24.Suburban Parks

Public parks will fill up the eight hundred or so meters of space spanning between the residential rings. Every apartment's front terrace, without exception, will be overlooking a park. These parks will be made up of all manner of wood-lots, native wetlands, ponds, small lakes, canals, streams, play equipment, and sports fields. Parks can be accessed by taking the stairways that weave through the lower terraces or via shuttle (explained later). The shuttles would deliver a visitor to the edge of the park.

Some larger areas of the city are covered like a glasshouse in order to protect crops from the elements, but all of the parks between the rings are open to the sky.

Cycling and walking is well catered for. If you refer back to the "population density" section you will see that there were 670 kilometres of apartment blocks in a medium sized city. Given that there will be a minimum of one bike lane and one walking lane for every park, there will be at least 670 kilometres of lanes for both types of activity. In fact, there would probably be much more. The lanes will be dedicated too, so there's no need for cyclists to contend with pedestrians and vice versa. A winding footpath can cross a bike lane by way of an ornamental bridge.

And there won't be a road, car or truck in sight.

A park visitor needs to travel though an apartment block to get to the park on the other side. They wouldn't want to feel trapped between stretches of terraced buildings. So every two kilometres there would be a large archway (located at the community centres). This would be wide enough and high enough that it could accommodate a canal or stream as well as the cycle path and footpath. There would be guardrails extending just beyond the tunnels so the cyclists don't collide with others coming around a blind corner.

Getting to the park from the top floors is done by Shuttle. This would take the commuter down an elevator (Transport Shaft) to the ground floor. Some portion of the first floor is taken up by a cross-cut horizontal conveyer system, which takes the Shuttles from the Transport Shaft in the middle of the building to the park access point at the foot of the building. The park visitor would be dropped off right on the park edge.

Given that the buildings are at most eight hundred metres apart, and that every column of apartments has transportation access at ground level, the citizens are never far away from a public vehicle. Despite having enormous swathes of parks to utilise, they would never be more than four hundred meters from a vehicle access point. They can simply walk to any building and call up the nearest Shuttle (which are public assets) and the vehicle would turn up within a minute.

At the ground level of each apartment column there would also be a shed for bicycles, skates, balls etc. So generally riders wouldn't take their bicycles up to their properties. They would take the Shuttle down to the park edge, or simply walk down, and pick up the bike from the sheds. There would be no need to take the bikes up to an apartment for repairing either. It would be much easier to throw it onto the conveyer system and send it off to a repair shop (discussion over the conveyer system to follow).

For the most part no combustion engine vehicles are permitted in parks. Possible exceptions are lawn mowers and earth moving equipment for park maintenance and development.

People who miss their gardens and don't find the terraces nearly large enough to satisfy for their green fingers will have the opportunity to participate in landscaping or maintaining the large public gardens. Great swathes of the park will be reserved for use as arranged gardens – such as flowers and seasonal plants – and these will produce an ever-changing aspect to the city.

It's important that the parks are the every changing face of the city. The long buildings will always create a somewhat austere feel no matter how much the façade is decorated. Therefore parks have to create extra stimulation. Paths need to wind through the spaces randomly as if laid down by nature, large trees need to be scattered in the middle to break up the view of the opposing apartment block, and park users need feel immersed in the wilderness here and there through the use of view blocking foliage, low embankments or shallow gullies.

Parks will form part of the very green footprint of the city. Looking down from the air, the city will appear to be nothing but gardens, parks, and agriculture. There is green in the middle, green on top of the rings, green between the rings, and finally a green belt around the whole city. In terms of natural richness the city should be barely discernible from the surrounding landscape.

## 25.Villages

There may be a few historic buildings from a past era that the city wants to maintain. A group of such buildings can be clustered together to form a small village midway between Residential rings. Shops could operate commercially on these premises but would be small scale.

Other small villages or architectural structures could also be scattered to break up the parks.

## 26.Zoos and botanical gardens

These will be placed between rings throughout the gardens. It's not expected that there will be a park entry fee like there is today – it will be more of a community owned resource. Therefore the enclosures can be integrated into parks and gardens. A zoo will likely spread out along many kilometres in isolated pockets.

There will be farmlets too, allowing residents to interact with farm animals. These will be quite unlike the main industrial farms that use high tech equipment to maximise production; they will be hands-on type farms that allow people to experience the old pace of life. For example, milking cows or goats by hand, bottle feeding lambs if a ewe can't give milk.

## 27.Stadiums

Stadiums will also be positioned between rings. These would be temporary structures that can be raised and lowered for an event. Nowadays stadiums are huge fixed structures but they are only fully utilised for a few hours every week. This wastefulness will not be present in the Terrarium city. After the main event the stadiums will collapse down beneath the ground. Their roofs will be topped by thinly soiled gardens, so that when they drop down it would be hard to detect their existence.

People won't sit or stand in stadiums, but will instead attend in a shuttle. See the section Entertainment and Shuttles for more information.

# City Centre

There will no longer be a CBD city centre. There is no requirement for office blocks or centralised shopping districts as this has been distributed around the city rings. The absence of a city centre also means that vehicles will not need to congregate around a central hub and merge into gridlock.

At the heart of the city is about 80 square kilometres of free space. This will be used primarily for agriculture and livestock. In order to optimise the space and control the growing environment it will be completely glassed in, much like the rooftop gardens. And just like those gardens it will be divided into segments so that one crop can't contaminate another. Conveyer belts running under the ground will bring produce from the city centre to the suburban rings.

There will be a small amount of space allotted as park ground immediately in front of the innermost ring. This will not be as wide as the other parks. The compensation for these residents is that the apartment block on their horizon will be 10km away.

#  Transportation

## 28.Vehicles

Vehicle design is certainly one aspect of city life that must change dramatically. Contemporary vehicles are too clumsy and inefficient.

One of the key principles of vehicle design for the Terrarium city is that it should be very lightweight and tightly circumscribed.

A good example of a "right sized" mode of transport that exists today is the motorbike. It makes much more sense than a car because it uses a lot less energy, is quicker off the mark, and takes up a lot less space. However, cars tend to be the preferred mode due to the numerous drawbacks of motorbikes. Some of those drawbacks include the fact that the driver is exposed to the weather, is exposed to danger, can't carry things, and needs to don a lot of gear. But if you can eliminate all of those drawbacks then it seems logical that something the size of a motorbike would win easily over those two-tonne, power-guzzling, road-straddling monstrosities called cars. Okay, to be fair electric cars don't guzzle so much but they are still far too big.

The new vehicle is called a shuttle. It's much closer to a bike than a car in terms of passenger fit.

### Shuttle Design

A shuttle is a lightweight single seater with no power source. It has an outer shell like an egg, a bucket style seat, a low canopy, and a surround just big enough to encase a tall person. The front dash will be just a few inches away from the knees, and the sides a few inches away from the shoulders (of a large person). Reclining would have to be possible, but because the shuttle is so small it may be that the whole unit would have to roll back and change its centre of balance.

There will be no shared commuting – only one person can occupy a shuttle. A parent would simply place each child in a shuttle and send them off to their destination one by one. Then she/he would follow. With video conferencing in each vehicle the parent could keep a constant eye on the children, although that probably wouldn't be needed as a computer "nanny" could keep watch. If for some reason the parent needed to assist a child they could all pull off the route in about 30 seconds (not much different to the situation nowadays). At the other end of the journey the parent would get out of his or her shuttle first and then help the children get out. The same scenario would occur for any vulnerable person – elderly, sick or handicapped. The carer would simply follow behind in another vehicle.

The reason for not having vehicles of different sizes is to do with economies. Lifts and chutes can be designed to accommodate one sort of vehicle only. There would be no such thing as a four door vehicle carrying one person. Every shuttle that is moving is carrying its expected payload.

Commuters don't need to transport personal items in the vehicles either. There is a conveyer system for moving goods around. It may be a little slower than the shuttles, but the luggage should turn up very soon after the commuter reaches their destination. And it's always an option to send the luggage ahead of time. The advantage of this arrangement is that if a commuter arrives at a destination and finds they have forgotten something or need something, they can contact someone back home (or perhaps the neighbour) – and ask them to set it on the conveyer.

### Vehicle control

There will be no steering wheels or pedals in the shuttles. A central computer manages all the driving throughout the city. A passenger would get in their vehicle, state their destination, and let the centrally controlled traffic network system (administrated by the local government) do the rest. The reason for this is that a computer system could run things much more safely and efficiently. The lightweight shuttles will be rushing along at top speeds of three to four hundred kilometres an hour, sometimes cutting across lanes, and it's too dangerous to leave traffic judgements in the hands of individuals. What's more, the traffic needs to be co-ordinated as a whole across the entire city. If every vehicle responds to its immediate environment without consideration of the holistic flow it will create considerable inefficiency. Instead the computer network will have traffic weaving in and out at high speeds and can control distances between vehicles perfectly. Traffic algorithms would be simplified by the fact that there are only a handful of carriageways in the whole city. For example, a city with ten residential rings, each having ten traffic bridges going on and off, would only have 180 "intersections". Even these are really just merge lanes, not actual intersections.

There are some added benefits of having computers running things. Firstly, the vehicle requires no driver, so old people and children and handicapped individuals can step into a shuttle themselves and be whisked away. Secondly, commuters will be able to catch up on sleep, which might be especially useful if travelling intercity.

The shuttles will have no propulsion system of their own and no wheels, which allows them to be very lightweight. It is the carriageways (explained later) that generate the propulsion. Power inside the cab (lighting and communication) will also be provided by the carriageway.

### Vehicle Ownership

It makes sense that shuttles are not privately owned assets. Communal ownership is more practical. That way as soon as one passenger is finished with a vehicle it's available for the next person. In the case of a department store, for example, as soon as one commuter arrives and exits the vehicle, another can step in. That means less parking and diseconomies caused by moving vehicles about. In the case of a residential ring, a person would be able to approach the building on foot and there would be any number of shuttles at ground level that they could utilise. Hence no matter where you are in the city, a vehicle is only a few hundred meters away... day and night. Another disincentive to ownership is the fact that the vehicles can't be customised. Due to their interaction with various tracks and conveyer systems they are a standard size, shape, and design.

## 29.Internal Point to Point

There won't be any other forms of passenger transport on the system besides shuttles. Modern day mass transport such as buses or trains will be a thing of the past. That's because this city offers point to point service and distribution points are not needed. Instead of arriving at the roadside, car park, or terminal some distance from the destination, the commuter would arrive inside the walls of the destination building.

As an example, say a person wanted to go to an art exhibition. They would first walk toward a small departure lounge at the back of their apartment. There a shuttle would be waiting. They step into the shuttle, the canopy lowers over their head, and the vehicle starts moving. It progresses along a conveyer belt for a few meters, comes to an elevator shaft, and is hoisted up to the carriageway in the middle of the building. Seven minutes later the passenger would arrive in the foyer of the third floor of the building where the exhibition is being held. They'd step out of their vehicle into the reception area of the conference centre. This pick-up and departure point is large enough to handle a dozen shuttles at once, and each wave of disembarking commuters takes about ten seconds. The auditorium, holding about two hundred people, can receive all of its guests in under five minutes.

This point-to-point service is not only much more convenient, it's also safer. It means that there is no need to walk through the residential apartment complex to get anywhere. A person can step into a shuttle in the safety of their apartment and go just about anywhere. They won't have to share an elevator, walk across a terrace, or take on the stairs. They won't even have to share any form of public transport. A frail elderly person who is fearful of others can go from their house to a friend's house without crossing the path of another person. And without having to worry about traffic.

## 30.Vehicle Lifts

Getting the shuttles up and down the buildings will require lifts. The shafts will be located near the centre of the residential rings. A side by side pair will exist for every column of apartments, one for upwards moving traffic and another for downwards. For each apartment in that column one of the shafts will serve as a drop off, the other as a pick up (one will be moving toward the carriageway deck, the other away).

At the rear of each apartment there will need to be a loading platform. When a commuter is seated the loader will draw the shuttle into the lift.

A large community centre will have ten pairs of shafts to service visitors – a concentration called multi-lifts. The loading platform will include a small conveyer so that commuters can arrive in quick succession. Like a baggage carrier at an airport, these will bring the shuttles out into the foyer and allow commuters to disembark.

The lifts are going to be the most power hungry part of the whole transport system, and therefore require considerable design effort in order to conserve energy. The energy from a descending vehicle needs to be captured or utilised to pull up an ascending vehicle. Ideally the descending energy could be captured and pushed into the electric grid.

Note that there will be no need for people lifts. Because shuttles deliver their cargo to the correct floor, there is no need for them.

##  31.Carriageways

The decks that move vehicles in a horizontal direction throughout the Terrarium city are called carriageways. These take the place of modern day highways.

Carriageways exist within the walls of the residential rings, and on bridges that span the rings.

### Residential Ring Carriageways

The residential ring carriageways are decks are located half way up the residential ring buildings on floors twelve to sixteen. There are four separate carriageway levels, meaning four floors with vehicle decks. The two lower decks extend right the way around each ring in an unbroken circle, while the two upper decks are intersected at regular intervals by perpendicular bridges. These suspension bridges will facilitate travel from ring to ring. They will span the space between two rings at levels fifteen and sixteen.

The transport decks only need to accommodate the height of a shuttle, so the levels (floors) only need to be a few meters high. Due to the small width of the shuttles the lanes do not need to be wide either, perhaps just a meter across. A single deck would therefore have dozens of lanes running under a low roof.

From one end of the city to the other there will be no rise or fall in the main carriageways or bridges – they will all be dead level. All shuttles will operate on the same four horizontal planes. It will be a very flat arrangement so that energy can be conserved. Buildings are bound to settle over the course of time and upset this uniformity, so to offset this the platforms will be adjustable, either by changing the height of their supports or, if they are suspended, by changing the length of their suspension cables. The reason for this levelness is conservation of energy. If a vehicle has no slopes to climb it can get up to speed very quickly and maintain that speed with a minimal amount of energy (like a puck sliding across an ice rink).

The reason the carriageways are located on the middle floor of the buildings is to minimise the amount of lifting required. If they were placed at ground level then some shuttles would have to be hoisted all the way to the top, and if they were located near the roof then some vehicles would have to be lowered all the way to the bottom. While the effective use of counter weights might reduce the energy needed to perform the task, the travel time would be increased.

The residential ring carriageways are also used for vehicle storage. Parked shuttles will be evenly distributed throughout the system.

### Bridges

Suspension bridges are on floors 15 and 16 and run perpendicular to the rings. Every bridge starts at the innermost ring and runs in a perfectly direct line all the way to the outermost ring. So this is the way a commuter gets from one ring to another. The bridge vehicle decks go straight through the centre of each residential ring and continue on the other side. As these are the only structures above the ground that link the Residential rings together they must span the hundreds of meters between them.

The bridges are enclosed in glass-look casing; the top and sides of which are lined with solar panels. The bridge is very slender, with the each deck being only a few meters high and about ten meters wide. High support towers on the sides of the residential rings provide anchors for the support cables that hold the main deck. They also provided anchors for the support cables that hold the on and off ramps.

The fact that each bridge section is supported at the ends by a residential ring tower means that the parks are not interrupted by a colonnade of support pylons holding up the deck. The view from the residential rings is relatively unimpeded too. The only areas impacted are the community centres as these are sited behind the support towers themselves.

There are two levels for every bridge. The **upper** deck takes traffic towards the city centre and the **lower** deck takes traffic away from it.

If the residential apartment blocks are akin to the radials of a spiderweb then the bridges are the framework threads. It's important to keep in mind that a bridge is a straight road, the deck of which goes directly through the middle of an apartment block and comes out the other side. So if the distance from the inner ring to the outer ring is nine kilometres, then this will be a straight nine kilometre deck. In the whole city there will only be about ten or twelve evenly spaced bridge systems leading from the inner ring to the outer ring, so these form the major thoroughfares.

### Traffic Flow within a Ring

Throughout the city the traffic will be flowing on one way systems. In order to avoid the need for intersections there will be four levels of traffic within the ring itself, and each level occupies a full floor of the residential ring (i.e. for the first ring there will be four floors 31 kilometres long).

  * Level 1 is the upper bridge level. It is intercepted by the bridge decks but either side of those decks is the place that inter-ring vehicles are delivered into the system. So most of the level is actually a bridge onramp. In a residential ring the traffic will only be raised to this level if it needs to cross a bridge in the direction of the _inner_ city. That means any traffic that needs to reach an inner apartment ring (e.g. a commuter is in ring 7 and needs to travel to ring 5). The bridge itself extends as a flat platform across the residential ring, so there is no rise or fall when approaching a bridge. Shuttles that are dismounted on this level (via the elevators) will either go clockwise or anticlockwise to access the most suitable bridge. Traffic doesn't flow around the ring on the bridge level, it would travel a few kilometres at modest speed until it come across an intercepting bridge and then it would join.

  * Level 2 is also a bridge level, with the same purpose as level 1. However, traffic will only be dropped off at his level if it needs to cross a bridge in the direction of the _outer_ city. That means all traffic that needs to reach an inner apartment ring (e.g. a commuter is in ring 7 and needs to travel to ring 9).

  * Level 3 is an expressway that moves around a residential ring in a clockwise direction. Traffic can enter this system from either or two methods \- dismounted via an apartment lift or merged via a bridge onramp. All shuttles that are delivered to this level have destinations in the ring itself, and the shortest way to get there is to travel in a clockwise direction. So for the inner ring, the deck is a 31km roundabout that goes one way.

  * Level 4 is an expressway that moves around a residential ring in an anti-clockwise direction. It is therefore a mirror of level 3. All shuttles that are delivered to this level have destinations in the ring itself, and the fastest way to get there is to head anti-clockwise.

The two lower expressways will have slow moving lanes and fast moving lanes. Because the vehicle lifts deliver vehicles into the middle of the expressway, there will need to be some acceleration/deceleration lanes right in the middle. Merging bridge traffic will be travelling at a slightly slower speed so that the commuters aren't subject to excessive centripetal force on their approach. The fast moving lanes within a Ring are designated for traffic that need to go almost half way around the ring, which could be 20km, so these should be moving very fast (circa 300kph).

Side note:

It would be possible to have traffic running on fewer levels than proposed here. Level 1 and 2 could be combined, and so could levels 3 and 4. However, that would mean having two way roads. The problem that introduces is the necessity for overbridges in order for traffic to access the lanes on the far side – just like motorways have nowadays. Another possible way to configure the traffic is to create "pulses" so that traffic can cross at right angles. In this arrangement traffic could cluster and move in groups, thereby leaving gaps before and aft for groups moving orthogonally. However, this only works at relatively low speeds.

The four level system presented here allows traffic to get to the destination as fast as possible and as safely as possible. With all the traffic heading the same way, the airflow will be more efficient and this will help reduce the amount of power needed. Shuttles never have to rise up a ramp in the four level system, also conserving energy.

### Bridge Ramps

The "bridge levels" of residential rings serve only as an approach to the bridges. So bridge level one is an approach to the upper deck moving toward the city centre and bridge level two is an approach to the bottom deck heading toward the city limits. Because this arriving traffic needs to pick-up speed and merge into bridge traffic it may be necessary to have curved _on-_ ramps that extend out of the building.

Traffic exits the bridges via _off-_ ramps. These need to be curved in order to allow speed to be maintained and smooth traffic merging, so once again may need to cross the open air between bridge and residential building.

The off-ramps are the only part of the system that is not level. They will need to drop down one or two levels, depending on whether the vehicle needs to go clockwise or anti-clockwise around the ring. If a shuttle was travelling across a bridge toward the city and needed to head clockwise in the ring ahead, it would drop from the top deck on level one down to level three. If it needed to go in the other direction around the ring, it would drop to level four.

### Propulsion

The carriageways will most likely use some variation of monorail type propulsion system. So vehicle thrust will be provided by the track via electromagnetic suspension. This could be similar to the technology that currently drives the high-speed maglev (magnetic levitation) train in China, only it is has been adapted for smaller vehicles.

It may be that shuttles have to be connected to small undercarriages in order to interact with the deck, or it could be that technology has advanced to the point where these are no longer needed.

The Shuttles themselves will consequently have no form of propulsion and no wheels. They're just containers.

### Power

Electric power for the tracks is generated primarily from sunlight. Solar panels on the sides of the traffic levels, and all over the bridges will capture sunlight. Surplus energy captured during the day by these panels will be put into the main city grid.

There will also be other sources of energy to supplement solar (discussed later). Surplus energy from the grid as a whole will be stored in batteries for night usage.

The city won't create a lot of energy, so conservation is critical. This is the reason that vehicles are on a dead flat surface. Further conservation could be created by filling the enclosed decks and bridges with a lighter, lower friction gas. Or even a partial vacuum. Commuters won't need to exit their shuttle until they reach their destination so this won't create a problem.

## 32.Freight

Commerce uses a different system to the shuttle carriageways. The shuttle carriageways are for commuters only. Freight will be carried around rings using a residential ring conveyer system, and between rings using a main trunk line. Both systems are sited underground.

This freight system will effectively replace all variations of contemporary goods movement, including truck, courier van, car delivery, rail, and hand delivery.

It will also be used by residents for getting goods from place to place. For example, moving a piece of furniture from one place to another.

### Freight Lifts

Running parallel to the vertical shuttle lifts are general goods lifts. So these will exist as a pair of side-by-side shafts that have termination points in every apartment. The goods are not compartmentalised into shuttle like objects in order to move them about, they simply sit on an adjustable platform. In that way large objects like furniture can be move in and out of apartments.

The freight lift shafts will extend below the ground level down into the bunkers. This will allow them to pick-up manufactured goods that are moving along the bunker conveyer system. The same system that brings a partially finished good to another plant will also line up the completed good with the customer's apartment lift.

These lifts will likely be co-ordinated with shuttle movements whenever possible, so that a descending vehicle lift can raise a product up from the bunker with no additional energy required from the grid.

### Residential Ring Bunker Conveyers

Underground stock movement will be achieved by use of conveyer/transport belts positioned in the centre of the manufacturing bunkers. These basement level bunkers extend unbroken around the ring (so a complete circle). There may be several lanes of conveyers running at different speeds, allowing smaller objects to get to their destination faster.

Because these belts need an uninterrupted passage all the way around they'll penetrate the firewalls between bunker sections.

The belts will be running right through the manufacturing plants, so they will form the final stage of any manufacturing process (i.e. finished goods will be dropped onto the belt). If their final destination is within the current ring, the goods would then move along the belts until they are under the correct apartment and then would be taken up by the freight lifts.

### Main Trunk

Goods will pass from the production facilities to consumers in other residential rings via a simple underground tunnel system. This comprises of four tunnel evenly spread tunnel systems running perpendicular to the rings, from central city all the way out to the outer residential ring. These tunnels could be incorporated into the underground tunnels used by intercity traffic (perhaps just off to the side).

After arriving at the correct ring, goods will be moved onto the ring bunker conveyer in order to line up with the correct destination.

The main trunk extends to the central city because good harvested there need to be sent into the residential areas.

### Scanners

Most goods will have some form of scannable code on them. These will be used by automated sorting units to get goods to the right place. Goods may be destined for customers, or for other plants that will add value to the product.

Example: A person orders a sofa from a manufacturer. The manufacturer's software orders the prefabricated pieces from storage, which arrive a few minutes later via the underground conveyer belts. Sensors above the belt detect the material identifiers as they pass by and push the pieces off into the finishing plant. Robots in the finishing plant assemble the item and then place it back onto the main belt. It's moved around the ring for a few hundred meters until it is directly beneath the intended recipient's property. A vertical elevator then takes the item up and delivers it into the customer's house. The whole process only takes about 20 minutes, including the build.

## 33.Bikes and other ground transport

Extensive cycle-ways will exist throughout the parks. Most recreational bikes are communal assets, so can be picked up and dropped off at the many ground level access points along the domestic rings. A residential property will only ever be a couple of hundred meters away from one of these points.

Sensors on a bike would measure the rider and adjust the size of the handle grips, seat and frame to fit. An alternative method is that the commuter would simply identify themselves and the bike adjusts to their standard settings. The rider would still be able to make some minor adjustments to suit their posture preference or accommodate injuries.

A damaged bike would simply be put on the conveyor system and a replacement bike taken out of the rack.

Generally commuters will arrive at a destination and drop off their bikes off at the nearest access point. There is no need to take special security measures. Bike theft would be pointless as there are bikes for everyone.

Because bikes and other human powered wheeled transport items can be picked up at the ground level access points there is no need to store those things in apartments, thereby avoiding the need to carry them up and down levels.

### Repairs

Both shuttles and bikes would be serviced in repair centres at the basement level. Robots and conveyors would be responsible for the whole process, meaning that no human interaction is involved in the pick-up, repair, drop-off, or receipting (if any). Once fixed and refreshed the vehicle would be sent back to the next access point where operations planning showed that a shortage existed.

## 34.Walkways

In the lower apartment blocks are walkways along the outer faces. These will allow people to go up and down levels and walk along or across the ring.

It is also feasible to have walkways within the heart of the apartment blocks so that residents can walk a few doors down to a neighbour's place or walk to the nearest community centre. The corridor design will be impacted by the vehicle chutes, which must have a direct line into the back of every apartment. One way to get around that problem could be to place the walkways behind the chutes in the middle of the building so that they no longer present an obstruction. A person exiting their apartment would simply walk alongside the delivery chute, past the shaft, and then turn into the corridor.

  1. # Commerce

The CBD is usually the beating heart of a city. Its skyline provides much of the character. Certainly the imagery and romanticism that is brought to mind when one is thinking about the city draws from the elements and structures within the CBD. Those towering office blocks, grand cathedrals and well-lit concert halls.

Accordingly it would seem like the most important part to get right. But there is no city centre at all in the Terrarium city. At least not one with towering buildings and entertainment centres.

A city centre would create an unnecessarily traffic juncture due to the fact the traffic is converging on a small area.

And what does a CBD provide that is so important anyway? Concert halls? Those can be incorporated into the community centres. Restaurants and eateries? Again, the community centres. Stadiums? Those will be placed between residential rings. Offices? No longer needed. Shops? No longer needed.

So the CBD can be discarded. It's just a relic of the way cities used to be.

We don't really need it to create the feel of a city either. The residential rings will have regularly spaced community centres, and these will make up the "city". When taking the surrounding concentric rings into account, a typical resident would have close to half a dozen community centres nearby, each with an eatery and entertainment activities. The distance from the inner ring to the outer ring will only be about nine kilometres, meaning the residents will never be far away from the city limits. If they were packed into the city centre they'd be somewhat further away than that. Removing the point of congestion will take away the psychological feeling of being stuck in the middle of a huge metropolis, dozens of miles away from the greenbelt. The city would probably feel more like a hundred villages clustered together than an actual city.

So what is the CBD of this new city then then? A grand park like Central Park, NY? Actually no. There are plenty of parks throughout the city – in fact most of the area between the rings is parkland, so there is no real need to have an enormous park in the middle of the city.

Instead, the CBD will now be an intense farming area. Conditions should be ideal. The sixty or seventy square kilometre area located inside the inner ring is well sheltered from strong winds as it is completely enveloped by tall buildings. It is much easier to control drifting seeds and insects because these will have to clear a series of thirty story buildings in order to get into the enclosure. Some cities may have a canopy over the whole inner city circle.

Livestock can also be held in this area. Given current dietary trends I would envisage a city consuming less raw meat and dairy than it does now, with those products attracting premium prices.

All sowing, harvesting and milking will be done by robotic equipment. There will be no need for human intervention. The yield will be moved via underground conveyer belts to the residential buildings for processing or consumption.

## 35.Goods Purchases

What shopping there is will mostly be window-shopping. Rather than seeing huge racks of the same product at various locations around the inner city, customers will generally only see one version of the product. For most items that product won't be seen in any other store around the city.

That's because the seller will often be the designer. In general there will be no need for a "retailer" who simply on-sells another person's goods or ideas.

The entire supply chain is cut right back. Designers will simply send orders to manufacturers via an automated booking system, and those manufacturers will in turn deliver the products straight to customers. City customers will have the goods sent to their apartments via the conveyer belts in the residential rings. The need for distribution plants and transportation will be reduced dramatically.

No human intervention in the transaction is necessary. There is also no need for a customer to "fit" a product. When the customer places an order for clothing the store computer also takes a physical scan of their physique. The computer relays that information to the plant and the plant manufactures the good to fit that person's exact shape. There is no need for people in that process. Besides cost saving it means less chance of sizing errors, breakages, theft, or embarrassment.

There will still be a demand for promotional activities to boost sales. That part of the sales process wouldn't change. However, there will be more opportunities for the manufacturer or designer to do it themselves.

## 36.Purchaser Identification

People won't carry any sort of physical identification at all. No variation of bar coding or chipping will be necessary. A combination of facial and vocal recognition should be enough to confirm a purchase. Every transaction terminal will send images and audio to a central database to confirm the identity of a purchaser.

Just as family members wouldn't confuse members of their immediate family with anyone else on the planet, computers will be able to differentiate the same way... possibly even more accurately. They can track the subtle changes due to aging as most consumers will purchase goods every week or so. The only issue might be if someone comes back from the wilderness after many years, in which case other forms of verification might need to be used (e.g. fingerprinting).

This should make theft crimes extremely difficult. Nobody would be carrying currency of any sort. Identity theft would be very nearly impossible, and would require perfect impersonation (facial features, height and voice). Furthermore city cameras would be able to trace back the movements of a perpetrators, making it nearly impossible to get away with most commercial crimes.

## 37.Clothes shopping: an example

Stores will exist in the community centres or in the historic settlements between rings, though the experience would be quite different to nowadays. This is how it might look:

A customer walks into a boutique store and is met by exemplars of clothing on mannequins or live models. On seeing an item they like the customer points or gestures to the object on display and voices the transaction requirements ("I would like two of those in woodland green charged against my cheque account and sent to my home").

But they may not be so sure in the first instance. Not a problem, there will be additional display screens to help with the purchase decisions. While the customer had been going about their business in the store the monitoring cameras (and associated computers) recorded their size, posture, and gait. On request a display screen can show a video of the customer. Using specialised software it dresses them in the selected garments and moves them around – pivoting them on the spot, walking them back and forth. The customer observes how the garments move and whether it suits their figure. They can change the colours to suit their taste through screen interaction. In the case of multi coloured garments they may choose to change the base colour only.

The customer then confirms the purchase verbally, with phrases like "I'll take the jacket, pants, and shoes only". The store computer checks their bank account (using the customers voice and image as identification) to make sure the person has adequate funds in the stated account. If they have the store accepts the purchase and withdraws the money.

The cut of the item will be done to the person's exact measurements. Precise measurements can be taken before the customer leaves home (using home scanners) or the customer can leave it to the store scanners to approximate.

Typically the customer won't actually walk off with the product. Once the purchase is finalised the order is sent to the textile manufacturer, who produces the item in a subterranean manufacturing plant (a bunker). It will be produced on demand from raw materials – like plain cotton or tanned leather – and colouring will be added as stipulated by the order. That gives the customer much more options in terms of colours and styles because the plant makes them to requirements.

The product will then be delivered to the customer's apartment, or to any other pick-up point in the inner city, via the conveyer system. It will require little or no packaging as there is no need for it.

A few days later the customer decides to return the product. This should not be an issue. Because the manufacturer is sending the item directly to the customer there will be no need for "proof of purchase", as the manufacturer will have a record of the sale and so will the customer (it will be stamped on the customer's bank account). Also, the council-run conveyer system will record the delivery. However, as most items are customised, and the customer has had every chance to view the item, the manufacturer is only compelled to take returns on faulty items.

## 38.Production of Goods

Manufacturing is done in large underground plants (mentioned previously), which run directly below the residential rings. Ideally much of the manufacturing would be robotic or mechanical. A big advantage of this is that it could operate in near total darkness as robots don't need good lighting. Mechanical processes don't need to see and robotic processes can use infrared or similar low light technologies.

The manufacturing output of any given plant would mostly be intended for the residents in the residential ring above. Inter ring traffic would be minimised as much as possible.

Production machinery could be owned by private enterprise or by the city. This may be governed by the nature of the market. With 574 linear kilometres of manufacturing space there should be enough room for producers to rise and fall.

## 39.Processing Of Produce

Once collected by harvesting machines, rooftop produce will be transported to the middle of the canopy and lowered into the building space that exists between the top most apartments. This space is there due to the convex shape of the building and the uniform apartment size. Consequently the upper floors are more and more separated the higher they go.

Within the top floor space is room for sorting and grading. It also has a ring conveyer system, just like the basement bunkers, so that raw produce can be delivered straight to the customers via the vertical freight lifts.

Much of the bulk harvested produce such as grain may be stored in that floor space. However, some of the plant for producing processed foods (e.g. bread or pasta sauce) may be located in the bunker. In that case the raw food materials will have to be moved down the building and placed into storage there. After processing the bulk of the finished products remain underground in cool storage areas until customers order them.

A customer's order for processed or stored grocery items will go directly to the produce handler, who will be able to supply the exact quantity required from the stores in the underground storage area. For example, if a person ordered 455 grams of a rolled oats brand they will get exactly that quantity.

This customised production process would not be anywhere near as efficient as mass production processes, but there are advantages. There would be zero stock waste. There whole supply chain is eliminated (shipping, transport by road, storing).

If you consider the mass-produced items of today, which admittedly are produced very efficiently in great volumes, they still need to be stacked on the supermarket shelf by hand. So while starting off with impressive efficiency at factory level, by the time the customer gets their hands on it there's been a lot of manual intervention. That adds considerably to the cost of the product (often retail mark-up is in the vicinity of 100%).

## 40.Packaging

There will be far less packaging of goods. Present day suppliers use packaging to entice customers to purchase the product, but in the new city the customer won't actually be walking away with the shelf-displayed product.

Apparel items will turn up in reusable containers. Nothing needs to have plastic wrapped around it and no tags or labels are required. The service provider is welcome to use whatever is required to market their product in the store, but when it comes to delivering the purchase they will not be allowed to increase the city's pollution output with wasteful wrapping.

General supermarket items (including all food goods) will also turn up in reusable containers.

## 41.Customer Services

In present day cities there is still a lot of "do-it-yourself" activity. In the new city there will be less of this.

The down side of DIY is that a lot of tasks end up being done by unskilled people with poor quality equipment. The time taken to do the job is often much longer. However, it's easy to understand why this approach is popular... call out costs are high and companies need to recoup a lot of wasted time. For a small job the lion's share of a professional's bill may relate to the cost of driving to and from the property.

In the new city tradespeople can get to and from properties much faster via the carriageways. They can order materials on the spot and expect them to turn up quickly via the conveyer system, meaning they don't have to stop working and go and pick things up.

For the Terrarium city customer these economies would tip the balance back towards professional services, meaning DIY would be very much a thing of the past.

# Farming

### Objectives

The city should be self-sufficient "capable". The city is called Terrarium city to reflect the fact that it should be a self-contained eco system.

The reality may be that cities of the future continue to trade with each other, and trade with rural producers, so that no limitations are placed on the market. But hopefully this trade will occur on a much reduced scale. The city should be at least able to survive an emergency without relying on external resources.

Without knowing the exact capabilities of modern farming it is very difficult to determine how many square meters are required to feed a population of 5 million. It could be that the city farms can't achieve that goal even with the most advanced methods, but that doesn't mean the city farms should be discounted. Their presence would surely reduce the demands on the surrounding countryside.

### Agriculture Produce Fields

Crops will be grown both in the city centre and on top of the residential rings. The city centre will have about 70 - 80 square kilometres of usable space, and the rooftops another 110 - 120 square kilometres. The provision for farms is the reason that the apartments have the profiles they have. They need to curve back out nearer the top of the building to allow the top farming deck to be as wide as is practicably possible.

While a few hundred square kilometres doesn't sound like much real estate to grow crops, the aeroponic and aquaponic techniques used nowadays can get much greater yields than traditional farming. Large indoor farms in Japan are 100 times more productive than traditional farms. There's is no reason to doubt that these techniques will be refined over the coming years to attain even greater yields.

If it remains impossible to feed the population from this small amount of acreage, then the land beyond the outermost ring will be used for crops.

It makes sense to keep the majority of crops, if not all, under glass. That way they are sheltered from weather and pestilence, allowing them to be grown naturally without the need for pesticides. Every element of their growth can be controlled, including light, water, spacing and exposure, so each crop can be given the optimal conditions. With this level of control there should be little need for GE type crops (e.g. glyphosate resistant soybeans).

The heat generated from the growth process within the rooftop tunnels will form a blanket for the building and will help insulate the apartments below. Excess heat will be captured at the tunnel apex and channelled to thermoelectric generator plants that can convert the heat into electric energy, or to places where direct heat is required. For example, eat can be transferred from one farm to another. If the apple orchard is getting too hot, the excess heat can be funnelled toward the section with beans and capsicums. If there is still excess heat, that can be funnelled into the houses

### Livestock and Feed

It's very unlikely that livestock will be run in the city centre. There would be little space or sunlight for them amongst the towering glasshouses. A limited amount of livestock will instead be kept in the residential ring rooftop farms.

The fact that livestock tramples its own feed is an efficiency problem. If they were to be kept in a rooftop farm then an alternative could be to put down a transparent floor for them to walk on. A few inches beneath that floor the grass can grow in its own shallow environment. Periodically the blades of grass will be skimmed off by cutters and the feed brought up to the animals.

Supplementing this feedstock would be green waste from agriculture farms located further along the ring – things such as leftover fruit, trimmings, chaff, or even dead leaves. Waste from the ground level parks and central city could supplement this form of animal feed. In return, every bit of animal waste product will be removed off the smooth floor at regular intervals and transported back to the agriculture fields to be used as fertiliser.

There is no avoiding the fact that livestock will not have a lot of room in the city. An acre of space per cow is simply not possible. Citizens will either have to put up with the fact that animals raised for meat will live in cramped conditions, or greatly reduce their meat intake.

### Ecology

Tunnel systems of the residential rings will be like a giant greenhouses partitioned into sections. Each section is separated from the next by large glass walls.

Recycling of materials between sections will be managed using the top floor conveyer system mentioned above. Because of this convenience every bit of waste will be reutilised. Modern recycling methods can turn garden waste into fertiliser in about six weeks. The bacterial process generates a large amount of heat, which could be funnelled into the electro thermal generators.

Fertilisation of plants can be controlled to a large extent by robots. There is no need for insects. However, some insects might be preferred to complement (particularly to pollinate) certain crops. The totally enclosed spaces mean that the city will be able to precisely control which insects and bacteria are able to exist in which ecosystem.

This means that there is no chance of say a pear getting damaged by the usual environmental factors – blight (bacteria), fungi, aphids, ants, mites, moths, birds, hail, frosts, drought. It also means no sprays are required, and if bacteria and fungi can be kept in check by careful management this will provide a pristine, untainted environment. Every pear will be a winner.

### Harvesting

Robots will do all the harvesting and this will be as close to "just in time" as possible. For tree picking these robots may be suspended from the roof. They will run along slender tracks and be as lightweight as possible.

A theory a householder could order up an apple and it would be plucked by the robot, set on the conveyer system, and delivered to the person's home within a matter of minutes. It's quite possible that the customer could view the produce through a lens on the robot arm or head, and "hand" pick their own fruit (this could be a premium service). The product and customer won't actually be separated by any great distance.

Picking fruit one piece at a time may not always be possible at peak demand times so some pre-harvesting may be required for the mass market. It might also be an inefficient use of the lifts and transport belts, so batch purchasing (say a bag at a time) will still be presented as a lower cost option.

### Hydration

All water will be supplied to the farms via sprinkler system. The great barrel roofs above the farms will capture water that falls from the atmosphere, which will be used for both hydrating the crops and processing into domestic water.

Water gathered in this fashion will need to be filtered and treated before utilisation as drinking water, so water treatment plants will exist in every residential building.

A lot of moisture will gather on the underside of the glass barrel canopy due to the hothouse effect. This can be collected as pure water and added back into the drinking water system with little treatment.

Sewerage can also be used as hydration. Because all aspects of farming will be handled by machine, there will be no reason for persons to enter the great greenhouse enclosures. Unpleasant odours from sanitary sewerage are therefore not an issue. The process could be managed in the city centre, far away from the suburbs. That would take advantage of gravity to move sewerage and negate the need for pumping stations.

The rain that falls on the canopy will bring dust with it that may affect sunlight penetration over time. To resolve this issue robots will have to continually clean the surfaces.

### Fisheries

Waterways will be included in the residential rings to house aquatic life. These waterways, or tanks, will extend right around the ring. Because the rings are a closed circle the water can be set in motion and continually move, allowing easier oxygenation. The tanks will be sited along the spaces between apartments. While only the width and depth of a few rooms, they will extend for dozens of kilometres around the ring.

Getting light to these long tanks is an issue because they are housed inside the walls of the building away from the sun. To compensate there will need to be sun tunnels spaced at regular intervals that perforate the rooftop and direct light into the tanks. Ambient light could also be collected at the back of residential properties and redirected into the tanks.

With twelve rings in a city there is potential to have twelve systems running. That will allow for freshwater and saltwater systems, as well as water of differing qualities such as temperature, richness of plankton and algae levels. There may be scope to add open air waterways into the city centre farming area.

The intension for these fisheries would be to maximise the harvest. As many kilos as possible should be extracted from the system.

Processing would be done on the upper floors of the residential rings and the same conveyer system will be used that's employed for agriculture and farming. With the farms themselves located immediately above the waterways, grain and other feed for the fish need only travel a short distance. The water cleansing systems will likewise be able to dispose of dead marine life and excrement onto the farm fields, thus completing a tight energy circle.

Fish could also be fished recreationally from the city park ponds, streams, and canals.

# Entertainment and Shuttles

The residents of the Terrarium city will not need to hold down a 9-5 type of job because many of the things that keep workers busy are no longer needed. Plant machinery will run with minimal supervision, farming and consumable products are handled by automated systems, and the constant cycle of building new houses or renovating old ones is no longer requited. The average denizen will therefore spend much more time on entertainment – either creating it or absorbing it.

To meet this increased demand there will be one or two big stadiums in every span between rings. Smaller events would be facilitated in the community centres. The community centres (some 120 of them) would also house restaurants, skating rinks, pool complexes, theatres, hotels, and small sports halls.

## 42.Shuttles and Entertainment Facilities

The shuttles will change the way theatres and stadiums are utilised. One of the added advantages of their minimalistic size (being egg shaped with flat sides and little bigger than a sitting person would need) is so they can also be exploited for the entertainment and consumer industry.

The customer can be brought from their home directly to their seat at a function. They would not need to leave the vehicle and find their seat, because the vehicle _is_ their seat. Allowing for a little congestion, a patron could reasonably expect a trip from home to a stadium to be completed within ten minutes. So they generally wouldn't leave until about ten minutes before the game or performance start time, no matter how popular it is.

## 43.Theatres

Because shuttles are so compact it's possible that patrons could remain in their vehicles when attending smaller theatres too. These are the indoor theatres in the community centres. The shuttles would be manoeuvred into tight rows and columns on the flat floor area where the audience would normally sit.

A patron could watch the show without stepping out of their vehicle. At the end of the show the vehicle is moved back to the carriageway and the patron can continue on their way.

If an old fashioned seating arrangement is part of the presentation, patrons can disembark in the main foyer and walk to their seat. Theatre facilities should be able to accommodate both types of seating configuration.

## 44.Stadiums and Arenas

The stack-ability of the shuttles will lead to a revolution in terms of stadium design.

Because the shuttles themselves provide all the necessary seating the stadium only needs to provide framing for parking. Stadiums will be configurable to the size of the audience, so a small game will have only a dozen or so rows, and a big game several hundred. There won't be the feeling of a big empty stadium for small games as the framework will simply collapse to meet the audience size.

Spectators have no need to get out of their vehicles. Food could be pre-ordered, in which case it is kept in the vehicle itself and pulled out hot when wanted. It's also feasible that a toilet could be provided in the vehicles – a la commode chair – and when the visitor feels the call of nature they simply raise the canopy and activate the dark tint (after the game those vehicles will need to go for special servicing).

The advantage with not allowing visitors out of their shuttles, besides the obvious congestion at toilets and hotdog stands, is that the shuttles can be configured in all manner of ways. Isles or walkways are not required; the vehicles can form a solid block, curving upwards, and attain all sorts of heights and angles.

Because no facilities or restaurants are needed, when all the shuttles have finally departed the whole stadium is nothing but a framework of metal. It can be collapsed right down and lowered into the ground. Because of this the stadium footprint could be used for something else during the day. In keeping with the green theme of the city the roof could have a thin layer of soil, topped with grass, so that the huge stadium all but vanishes after the game.

Spectators would purchase tickets for a certain section and row, but within that section and row it would be first in first parked. That's because it simply wouldn't be practical to shuffle vehicles into exact slots - there would be no end of positional manoeuvring.

Stadiums will be located beside bridges. Shuttle access will be via the off ramps. Part of the stadium structure will be ramp extensions that split the arriving traffic into the right elevations so that each vehicle is slotted into the allotted row. An arriving shuttle would skirt the outer rim of the stadium and deliver the passenger to their "seat". Exiting the big stadiums is a little more complex. Vehicles will most likely be raised to the carriageway using the lifts at the nearby community centres.

##  45.Exhibitions

Exhibitions can also make use of the Shuttles. The vehicles can be taken off the Carriageway and sent through the exhibition using propulsion systems on the floor. Shuttles could be sent at low speed through a display where walking would take too much time. Such exhibitions could include a museum display where the customers are expected to look but not touch.

## 46.Thrill Rides

There's an opportunity to utilise the shuttles on thrill rides. Anywhere a car might be used on a thrill ride a shuttle could be clipped on. Imaging for example a roller coaster ride where there is no seating deck, only a chassis on a track, and the shuttles are coupled to it as they arrive.

## 47.Eateries

The availability of freight lifts and conveyers means that consumers do not need to take the shuttle out to pick it up takeaway foods. What's more, it will make hot food so easily accessible that the demand for eateries may be lessened. While people may not want to sit in the restaurants, they probably will be ordering much more food because of this. It's feasibly that cooking will become a pleasure activity only.

The old-fashioned seated restaurants and cafeterias will still exist in community centres.

Supplies for restaurants and cafes will be kept in the subterranean bunker stores.

# Essential Services

## 48.Sewerage and Water Transport

Major underground conduits will follow the shape of the city below ground.

The main conduits will be aligned directly beneath the bridges, extending from the outer residential band to the inner city. This means there will be a dozen main conduits throughout the city. Because they intersect the subterranean factory level of each ring they can be serviced from those points.

Secondary conduits will be aligned with the rings of the city, so will run through the bunkers. These will be connected to the main conduits. They will lie be just below or to the side of the goods conveyer belts so that failure points anywhere along the conduits can be easily accessed.

All amenities will be managed through these all-encompassing conduits. So they will contain sub-pipes, which convey water, power, sewerage, and communications. They must be insulated sufficiently so that cross contamination in the case of disaster/rupture is impossible.

This bundled configuration means all utility services are much more maintainable. Having to do a major dig every time there is damage to one of the services, as is the case in contemporary cities, is a waste of time and resources. Having thin snaking pipes going in all directions underground is also hazardous, as they can be struck accidentally during digging.

The web layout of the city provides greater redundancy throughout the network. Any failure can be circumvented. If a major sewer pipe was damaged and had to be shut off then the effluent could simply be redirected around the ring till it exited another major pipe.

## 49.Water Supply and Storage

Cities should not rely on natural sources for supply. Even pumping water up from the ground, which seems like an ideal solution, risks subsidence from over drafting the aquifer. So unless it never rains in the area, the city will recycle its own moisture and top up the shortfall with collected rainfall.

The residential ring rooftops will be able to capture large amounts of water falling from the atmosphere. Collected in gutters at the bottom of the large tunnels, this will be stored and processed on the first floor and stored a few floors down. The tunnel shaped roofs of the main buildings will also capture condensing water on the underside. It will be possible to harness this and provide it as drinking water to consumers with a minimal amount of treatment.

The glass-topped farms of the central city can also collect rain and condensation in the same fashion. This will be kept in underground tanks to be used for crops, so are unlikely to need purifying treatment.

##  50.Communications

Because the city is interconnected there will be less need for radio signals within the Residential apartments. Most of those communications can be wired via the walls.

It may be that some-day the vast amount of radio signals in the air will be seen as a health hazard. If that turns out to be the case then the Terrarium city is well designed for wired communication as the underground conduits will be have a very simple configuration and be much more serviceable.

## 51.Power

### Sun

The sun is far and away the central source of power for this city. Solar panels are expected to provide the main power source for running vehicles, manufacturing and distribution systems.

Panels will be located on the external walls of the vehicle levels, meaning that the cladding of the middle floors for each apartment block will be completely blacked out. The vehicle bridges between the residential rings will also be entirely decked with solar panels.

External to the city are vehicle highways (intercity). These will be decked from end to end with panels (explained later). These will provide a lot of excess power that will also be fed into the city.

The sun energy is also captured by plants, which leads to bioconversion (discussed below).

### Water

Rain water could be utilised to create additional electricity. Turbines at the basement level could be driven by the vast amounts of surplus water captured during rainfalls. The roofing system is huge and the water could be gathered at points along the residential rings and then released periodically to run ground level turbines. The falling water would then be directed into huge underground water reservoirs in the central city.

Saying that, it seems a rather archaic way to produce energy and it wouldn't create a great many megawatts, so there's a question mark over its viability. Water will also have to be retained for rooftop farms and residential use, so there is a limit to how much would be available for this type of generation.

### Wind

Wind blades will be placed at the apex of the barrel roofs. These won't be the large propeller type blades, but much flatter devices rotating around an axis parallel to the top of the roof. Wind will hit the large curved surface of the transparent roofs and drive upwards towards the rooftop, where it will blow the blades around with a concentrated force.

There should be a good amount of power generation on a windy day as there will be 574 kilometres of roof apex that will be used.

On a still day, it may be possible to run the propellers by concentrating the rising heat and water vapour inside the greenhouse to turn the blades using steam. There may also be surplus heat rising from the manufacturing bunkers, which could also produce steam.

### Thermal

Thermoelectric generators will be used to capture/convert wasted heat throughout the system. The heat sources include:

  * Subterranean manufacturing

  * Excess from top deck greenhouse

  * Heat exchange from water systems

  * Heat generated by composting materials

  * Excess ambient termperature

###  Bioconversion

Given the amount of inner city farming, there is plenty of potential for bioconversion of plant and animal waste. This waste would be collected on the farms and converted into ethanol using microorganisms.

### Energy reduction

The best way the city will meet its energy needs will not come from increasing supply, but from greatly reducing demand.

The sheer size of a residential building, and the lack of sides, should provide a degree of insulation that significantly reduces the need to warm the dwellings. The top deck greenhouse with its self-regulating atmosphere will provide the perfect roof insulation. Altogether this should almost negate the need to heat dwellings.

Manufacturing processes will exist below the residential blocks, meaning that all surplus heat will rise toward the residential properties and will help heat the lower floors on cold days.

There is less demand for lighting throughout the city. Vehicle decks will be dimly lit, if illuminated at all. The manufacturing basement will be operating in complete darkness except for isolated pockets where robots actually need to "see" the object being manipulated.

There is less demand for transportation energy. The vehicles are in much better proportion so there is not a lot of power used up due to the weight of the vehicle. Shuttles don't have to decelerate and accelerate and glide on a perfectly flat plane. These factors should result in them using a fraction of the energy that cars today use.

## 52.Building Maintenance

Once a ring is finished it shouldn't need intensive maintenance. If the carriageway propulsion mechanism can be made in such a way that the vehicle doesn't contact the ground then the deck should last a very long time. Typical work for builders and renovators will be limited to changing interior walls of dwellings and community centres, setting up stages and structures for shows, and developing parks. Work relating to the construction of minor dwellings, small buildings and roads (compared to nowadays) is almost non-existent.

## 53.Asset management

Many of the assets will be managed by the local council or municipal body. This includes running the transport systems, owning the shuttle fleet, owning the residences and buildings, and core services such as data storage and manufacturing.

In order for the city to function efficiently it needs to have somewhat monopolistic governance. Privatising and parcelling up those functions mentioned above would lead to the same diseconomies that exist in contemporary cities.

In the case of the shuttle fleet, for example, there can only be one supplier. To have a more competitive model with multiple suppliers brings difficulties in coordination and compatibility. To provide a choice of two shuttle services to the consumer would lead to a doubling of inefficiency and unnecessary power wastage because the right provider would have to turn up.

However, the council will be able to subcontract work associated with servicing.

## 54.Recycling

People are going to start demanding more bespoke and customised items. Shirts that fit perfectly, shoes that match foot shape, beds that are the exact size and shape for a couple, chairs that are made-to-measure and so on. In which case there will be less demand for second hand items.

The discarded items can be moved at no charge via the conveyer belts. Recycling facilities will receive goods at no cost. Robots will sort each and every item that hits the conveyer system and send it on to the appropriate facility. Waste food, for example, will be delivered directly to farms for feed or fertilisation.

## 55.Waste Reduction through pricing

One problem that arises with everything in the Terrarium city being free is the potential to overuse. A citizen might ride the shuttles constantly, or they might continually order small amounts of goods. This would put a strain on the transportation systems, leading to congestion problems and power demand peaks.

One way of addressing this is to charge a nominal amount for the transportation of every product. The pricing needs to be structured in such a way that consumers are encouraged to order economic quantities, whilst not rising prices so high that it encourages over ordering. This rationale is often employed today in council water supply, when it is metred to discourage waste.

#  Intercity

## 56.Intercity travel

The same shuttles used to get around within the city limits would be leveraged for intercity travel.

They enter and exit from the bridge level (on levels 15 and 16) directly via straight off-ramps on the outer side of the furthest residential ring. These ramps can be thought of as extensions to the bridge network. They will continue the bridge appearance, with panelled sides, only they will have a descending gradient that lowers the vehicles to the countryside highway level over the span of a few kilometres.

The countryside highway connects cities to other cities and key destinations. The casing will also have the same appearance as a bridge only it is closer to the ground. So it has a similar width deck and canopy height. It is also a fully enclosed 2 story system with top traffic flowing one way and bottom traffic flowing the other.

The intercity traffic will be travelling at about double the velocity of the city bridge traffic, so gravity will be exploited to manage the change of speed. Outgoing traffic (leaving the city) will pick up the required speed by going down the ramps so there is no need to waste power accelerating them. Incoming traffic (arriving at the city) will use the ramps to brake and achieve a slower inner city speed. So if the ramps are designed just right the acceleration and deceleration should be able to happen without external propulsion, thereby conserving considerable energy.

The deck of the countryside highway will be raised five to ten meters above the ground on pylons like a never-ending bridge. As much as possible the deck will maintain its zero gradient all the way to the next city. If the next city has a different elevation then there will be a very gentle rise over the entire distance. The highway will be a very direct route and will tunnel straight through any intervening hill ranges. Having the decks elevated on pylons for the vast majority of the way will reduce the amount of terrain that has to be excavated to lay the roads. It also means any naturally occurring ground settling or subsidence can be easily countered – only a few points are affected rather than the whole deck – so very little maintenance would be required compared to today's tar roads. And finally it means a large strip of nature isn't swallowed up by roads to the extent it is today. Marsh, scrubland and other terrain can exist immediately below the highway.

The track will be powered by solar panels that run all the way along the canopy. Given that there will be hundreds of miles of highway, there should be surplus electricity collected by the solar panels and this will feed back into the city grid. The protective canopy has the added benefit of ensuring that the lightweight Shuttles aren't blown off track or affected by external elements in any way. Another advantage is that people and animals out in the country can't walk in front of vehicles.

The highway will be shared with driverless goods transport vehicles. These will be much smaller than big rigs of today to fit within the confines of the Highway canopy, though it is feasible that they take up several lanes.

All of the vehicles will rush along the track at very high speeds. The Shanghai Maglev can move at 430km an hour, so it's reasonable to expect greater speeds than that in the next few decades. Given that the shuttles are controlled by a computer-controlled traffic management system there is no need for passing and other inefficient manoeuvres.

Because these highway have two decks traffic heading in one direction is isolated from traffic heading in the other. That will reduce disruptive wind flow that affects aerodynamics and efficiency. It will also make accidents impossible.

Major intersections in the country will merge on and off the Main Trunk Line in sweeping arcs. This may need to be a cloverleaf interchange type configuration. Side roads would also have closed canopies.

The speed and efficiency of intercity travel changes the role of aircraft. Because carriageway travel will be so much faster aircraft will only be utilised for long haul flights. A destination less than a few hundred kilometres away would be more quickly reached by Shuttle (considering the time it takes to seat a passenger and taxi an aircraft).

# Imports

The city should be completely self-sufficient, meaning that very few imports from other cities are required. However, it is likely that luxury goods (dairy, meat and fish) are brought in from the country to make up supply shortfall and match market demands.

The remainder of the imports should be in as raw a form as possible. For example, glass raw material might be brought in as silicon dioxide and aluminium oxides direct from the mines, as opposed to the finished product. Warehousing unrefined products in this manner allows for more customisation, reduces storage (of processed goods) and greatly cuts down on waste.

# Greenbelt and Surrounds

Surrounding the city will be a greenbelt, or nature belt. The belt immediately outside the last residential ring will be replete with cycle lanes and walk ways for the enjoyment of residents. But beyond that area much of the land should be restored to something like its original natural state.

People won't be permitted to live permanently in the countryside to the extent they do today. The city itself will have a little touch of country in it with the farmlets. There may be a few satellite pockets of civilisation in the deep countryside – centre points for attractions like beaches, lakes or snow topped mountains. But accommodation there should be temporary.

The reason for this proposal is that nowadays the footprint of mankind is just too great, and it's hard to imagine that it hasn't upset the natural balance in some way. There's no such thing as "natural forest" in central Europe, and landscapes that we think of as lush green grasslands were actually once dense bush or forest. Environmentalists would complain about the damage South America is doing to their landscape. But countries there could claim they are only doing to their native tracts of land what the Europeans have done to everything they've set foot on for countless generations.

If no-one lives in the countryside then there is no need for criss-crossing roads to get to properties or verges that need to be sprayed and mowed. The number of shoots coming off the main highway will be greatly reduced as people only need to get to key points.

If we build Terrarium cities we have the opportunity to restore huge swathes of land back to its natural state. In a country where now 100% of the land has been cultivated by man, perhaps 90% can be restored to nature. It's almost too hard to imagine because mankind seems to be on an unescapable course to snuffle out the remnants of the natural world, but perhaps it is possible.

The sea too, would be exploited far less and should be able to recover from the excessive fishing of today. The aquatic tanks in the residential rings should cover most needs.

# Other Considerations

## 57.Positioning the City

It would be extremely difficult to build this new city over top of an existing city. Such a strategy would slow the process of building down dramatically and bring the existing city to a standstill. Furthermore, existing cities are often not sited on appropriate terrain. The new city needs to be relatively flat in order for the transport system to be level.

The new city should be started from scratch and located on a vast stretch of relatively flat terrain. The "population density" section of this paper calculated a diameter of 12.5 km, equating to an area of 490 square kilometres.

Generally hills will have to be re-scaped, with excess soil used to fill up the space between bands. States with generally undulating topography will present a problem as high altitude hills and very wide rivers will have to be avoided.

The need for sunlight, the key energy source, is going to be a critical design consideration. It would make sense for the world's population to cluster around the equator where the sun is going to be at its strongest and therefore plant growth the most vigorous. North Africa and Central Asia may be prime site candidates in the future because city water conservation would nullify the lack of rain.

## 58.City Size

There is no theoretical limit to how large a Terrarium city can grow. However, it won't be able to grow in small increments. In order for a city to expand, an entire new residential ring will needed to be added to the outermost circle of the city. So there will have to be a step change.

However, increasing the city size beyond the size proposed here will create logistic issues. The centre of the city, with the largest producing farms, can never expand because it's bordered by the inner ring. So for every new ring that is added the production per head that the city can create is lowered.

Traffic congestion will also become a problem if extra rings are added. If the outside ring is dozens of rings away from the inside ring it will put a lot more traffic on the bridges. It possibly won't be as bad as the effects of population growth in modern city infrastructure as only the bridge system will be impacted, but there must be a tipping point where there is too much traffic on the bridge.

If city size is limited it may have a positive effect on population control. When residents know that a city is very close to its saturation point they may be less inclined to add to the population. That's particularly true because every person – be it adult or child – must have the allotted space. There is no exception to that. So if two parents have a child they will require a third living unit. If there are no available units on either side of the couple they will be forced to move to another part of the city to accommodate the newcomer. If the city is approaching its maximum population the couple may even be forced to move city altogether.

## 59.City Efficiency

In contemporary cities it is normal for citizens to live on one side of the city and work on the other. In the Terrarium city this should rarely happen. The government software will get the positioning of residents down to a fine science. It will take into account all of the places a person might commute to (work place, particular community centres, friends and family), what their locale preferences are, and what sort of person would fit with them as a neighbour. People change their habits or preferences over time. For this reason the allocation system will continually offer people the chance to move to a more optimal spot. The city would perpetually reshuffle towards its optimal configuration (a little like disk defragmentation of a hard drive). This is possible because every living unit has the same dimensions, so people are never going up or down the scale – they just get a different view and different neighbours.

This optimisation model would greatly lessen the distance people would need to travel to get to all the places they wanted to get to. The instances where a person lived on one side of town and all their frequent destinations were on the other would be much less common place than it is nowadays. It will still happen when two people partner up and their spheres of interest are in opposite directions, but it will be less.

To be able to achieve this end the government databases will have to collect and collate detailed information on individual lifestyle habits. Such a notion would trouble many people nowadays and be considered Orwellian big brother tactics. But I imagine people will be less paranoid about the government in the future. The average civilian probably won't care less about all this information being captured so long as its confidentiality was assured.

## 60.Natural Disasters

The city design makes it well equipped to handle all manner of natural disasters.

The outer residential ring is going to take the brunt of any natural disaster. A lahar, tidal wave, pyroplasmic blast or storm surge will break on that ring. This fifteen-story building will be able to divert minor disasters across its curved outline. Catastrophic collisions would smash through it, but then the next ring, eight hundred meters away, would absorb and spread the remainder of the impact. For this reason hard to replace manufacturing equipment would not be put in prone positions in the outer ring's bunker system.

Bulkheads at the factory level and emergency gates on the conveyer system will prevent floor or fire disaster spilling underground around an entire ring. Gates will also be able to be closed where pedestrians pass under the residential rings, so that the entire grounds of a city aren't subjected to flooding. In general only an outward facing segment of the outermost Band will be affected by the disaster.

The city will also be well equipped to get people out of harm's way at a moment's notice. In no part of the city is anybody more than about 400m away from a vehicle, so it will be easy to take cover (say, to evade a tornado). The transport system is so efficient it can move thousands of people per minute to the far side of the city and away from the main impact of any collision.

The major underground pipes, which align with the bridges, provide at least half a dozen access points for essential services to enter a ring. Again, a series of bulkheads will mean that damaged parts of the system can be isolated, and all the functioning parts of the rings will still receive those services.

Earthquakes are most concerning for vehicles. Chances are that the buildings will be designed to absorb an earthquake's energy and will be relatively immune, but the light-vehicles travelling at very high speeds will be susceptible to being tossed off course if the magnetic attraction isn't very stron. To mitigate this the carriage tracks could be raised onto shock absorbers, which are effective enough to ensure the cars in motion won't feel the effects of the quake.

If there are historical stone structures in the gardens then these are also an earthquake threat. They need to be strengthened, either by introducing steel supports or by replacing the stone with a relatively lightweight imitation product.

# Summary

I don't expect the Terrarium city described here to ever be built. At least certainly not in this exact format. The main goal with this work is to engender a new way of thinking about city design.

##  61.Shortfalls

A person who today lives in a state of luxury could argue that their quality of life would slip back. If they're accustomed to a mansion with huge lawns, great swathes of landscaped garden, private tennis courts or Olympic pools, or where yachts sail gently past their verandas, they might not be so happy with the new plan. But for most people who live in today's cities their quality of life should improve, and the pros should outweigh the cons.

Citizens won't be able to show off their wealth as much, and an argument could made that it would create the Communist problem of discouraging entrepreneurship. But wealth could simply be captured in other ways – interior design, artworks etc.

The suburbs also suffer from a degree of blandness. The city is going to comprise a number of huge concentric circles all looking more or less the same. One way to address this is to change large sections of the facings, or create colour motifs across hundreds of properties. The historic patches of buildings and structures dotted about the parks should also help alleviate the sameness.

## 62.Fringe Benefits

Huge amounts of time will be freed up by the synergies. The point to point transportation efficiency and the absence of any intersections will mean much less travel time. The easy care apartments will mean much less house maintenance and necessitated gardening. Supermarket shopping doesn't need to be done. All of these savings free up time to get involved with the family and community, to delve into hobbies, research, and running businesses.

Safety is a large benefit of this new city design. People can go jogging or cycling on a Sunday afternoon along endless paths without the threat of being hit by a car. Mothers can bundle their kids into a vehicle and send them off to Grandma's without having to worry about whether or not they'll get there safely. With transportation taken out of the citizen's hands there will no traffic accidents possible. The bikeways and walkways will be separated so a collision between two of those transit types will be rare.

Resource wastage will be reduced. With dramatically shortened supply chains, minimal stock transportation needs, and an increase in just-in-time manufacturing there will be far less resource cost associated with getting the goods to the customer. And because stores will only have display items there will be far less need to carry stock. Grocery goods don't need to be distributed over a dozen supermarkets as they do nowadays... they all go directly from garden or storage to the customer.

The close proximity of residents, manufacturing and food means that heat and air can be exchanged from one area to the next. The shape of the buildings allows essential services to be extremely simple. Instead of thousands of pipes, wires and roads sprawling every which way, there only needs to be a few main lines that follow those big sweeping shapes.

The green footprint will be bigger than ever. The city won't overrun the countryside to the same extent as present day cities. It will be a tree-rich oasis in itself. Whereas present day cities cover much of the ground with buildings and streets, and new city will be over 80% green. From a bird's eye view the parks, terraces, and crops take up most of the ground.

## 63.Closing Comments

The city of the future will need to look at every aspect of life, not just the traditional things that city planners of today look at. There will be more to city planning than roads, water, sewerage, power, and buildings. The planners will need to streamline every piece of the human experience... from safety and security, to time management, to quality of life. They need to look at each facet of the city and ask not only how can it be improved in itself, but how can it be used to compliment other aspects of the city. All the pieces need to come together like a perfect assembly of clockwork parts, each cog helping to turn the others.

One of the principles of this design is simplify things. Contemporary cities are too chaotic and complex in their design and the larger they grow the more that complexity grinds life to a halt.

Planners of the future shouldn't use current cities as a starting point. They're just too inefficient. When you stand back and look at modern cities critically you can see inefficiencies everywhere you look. For example, take personal transport. Imagine what a busy intersection would look like if you took all the cars away and saw the commuters standing on the road. There would be an absurd amount of unused space. The fact is that cars are simply too big for their purpose and waste far too much space and energy. The whole traffic/road system needs to be rethought.

By 2050 we're going to have to find homes to 2 billion more people. And considering that more and more people are moving to the cities, we're really going to have to find a way to create cities that don't tear up the countryside. We need something a little bit outside the square.

One aspect I haven't taken into account is undiscovered or untapped technology. In that respect this city design is not all that remarkable... it simply reshuffles the things that we already know about. New technologies could change what people want out of a city and make the ideas presented here completely obsolete.

This is the best I could come up with based on my observations of a city's needs. The Terrarium city. My challenge to anybody reading this exposition would be to come up with something superior. I certainly don't have all the answers... in fact I may not have any of them. Time will tell.

Thank you for your interest.

#

# Author Profile

Nicholas Sheffield grew up in Hamilton, New Zealand. He obtained a Bachelor of Management Studies from the University of Waikato, and has a long history of work in the Information Systems sector. He and his wife Simone have six children.

Double Dragon published his first work, Overlanders, in 2004. The novel revolves around a group of friends whose utopian existence is put at risk when they're thrust into the archaic and dangerous cities of the overlands.

Sheffield's writings are generally set in, or around, the Earth, and employ a plausible use of technology. Therefore many of the popular science fiction themes, such as time travel and alternative dimensions, never appear in his works.

The concepts that form the spine of each story are often as important as the main narrative. They're not always held up to the spotlight, but tend to be woven quietly into the background.

# Other Works by Nicholas Sheffield

Science Fiction Novels

Science Fiction Short Story Anthologies

Science Fiction Short Stories

Future City Conceptual Design (superseded by Terrarium City)

