Architects are a fascinating species in how they are totally necessary for a beautiful human scaled city and yet they will quite often times stand in the way of the dream of a human scaled connected environment
The solution? We give every architect permission to make one grand unique massive building that is totally out of scale with its environment but no more, and then we send them back to make 4 story mixed use apartment buildings with mild flourishes and ornamentation
We'll put all the mega complexes in Atlanta since like it already has several of them
Every year all the architects will gather and elect 5 amongst themselves to be allowed to design a new skyscraper in either Chicago, Miami, or New York, if the architect wishes to choose another city, they may but they will not be allowed to be selected again
@amtrak-official I would like to propose an exemption to the election rule:
1) If the architect chooses Phoenix, AND
2) agrees the skyscraper they design will be mixed-use and include at least 1/3 living space AND
3) will run >80% on solar power AND
4) will include three-tank septic waste management to allow for water recycling, THEN
they may be entered to participate again one more time.
This exemption to be granted because in the 1970s a bunch of ecologists with good intentions got laws passed that limit the height of all buildings in the Valley of the Sun to three stories, in the belief that the concept of “heat rises” would make it ecologically harmful to allow for more tall buildings….and so instead we got some of the worst urban sprawl in the country because when people cannot build up, they will build out. This has actually created THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM THEY WERE WORRIED ABOUT due to the heatsink effect of all that asphalt, but it’s also come with the absolutely DELIGHTFUL side effect of “what happens when you have several million cars in a depression that’s fully ringed by mountains? E T E R N A L S M O G,” which was not even remotely anticipated.
Architects who choose Phoenix, meet all four of the requirements for being allowed to participate again, and in addition:
1) include xeriscaping,
2) use “green cooling” materials that will help to minimize the need for air conditioning,
3) take at least 25% of their building materials from local abandoned buildings that are no longer needed, and
4) include a system to harvest rainwater during monsoon season and the like four weeks of actual rainfall in winter,
shall be allowed to enter again without restrictions, the same as if they’d chosen one of the three approved cities.
We recently added San Francisco and Seattle to the list of Approved cities and upped it to 7 architects to be elected yearly, but I feel that this Pheonix Exemption is justified
