Photos of our trip to Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are posted! Hover over the “Photos” item in the main menu bar. Then move the cursor over the title for Arizona etc and click. Then click on the first photo and use the arrow on the right hand side to move through the slide show.
Enjoy!
The American Automobile Association map we picked up before we left on our trip to Arizona had small green dots aligning some of the highways that were more or less in our line of travel. Upon inspection of the map’s legend, the dots demarcate scenic drives. Further investigation revealed there are no stretches of any interstate highway that are considered a scenic drive. The more famous of these routes are mentioned in the Lonely Planet travel guide for the area.
We end up following several of these scenic drives. Even when the road is not the shortest or fastest route we alter our original plan for a more relaxed and interesting drive. The movie that plays out is worth the extra distance and time.
The first stretch of highway mirrored by green dots is Highway 89 from Wickenburg to Flagstaff and beyond to Valle on Hwy. 180. Because we want to see Arcosanti we do not follow the first part of the route but we are able to join it at Cottonwood and follow it the rest of the way. We note we are directed through smaller centers not around them as an interstate might. The speed limit is slower but we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere. We still have to make time to smell the metaphorical roses and we do. If something needs examining or a photo op presents itself we stop.
The next section of road worth mentioning, Highway 64, parallels the rim of the Grand Canyon and continues east to Cameron, Arizona. A great stretch of highway that takes us from the pine filled highlands at the edge of the canyon out onto scrub filled desert. Just enough change in altitude for the vegetation to change dramatically.
The next morning finds us on the third stretch of road of interest. Highway 163 traverses the Monument Valley, starting in Kayenta, Arizona and winds its way to Bluff, Utah. Again, the route directs us through the center of some of the small towns enroute while passing by the desert landscape which is completely foreign to our eyes.
In Colorado even though scenery is outstanding we actually pass a side trip on the million dollar highway which links Durango to Silverton. The time required to do this out and back drive would have made the rest of the trip a rush.
However the day we drove through Durango on our way to Taos, we followed Hwy. 64 in New Mexico from Tierra Amarilla to Tres Piedras. There are no villages or towns but the road traverses a very high pass and the rolling terrain is very much reminiscent of the foothills of the Rockies. Debbie is driving so all I have to gawk out the window and I’m mesmerized by what I see.
Between Taos and Santa Fe is another noted drive. Highways 518, 76, and 503 are older highways called the Taos High Road. I think they are the old road to Taos which is now by-passed by a more sterile and faster Hwy. 64. October is not full on winter in New Mexico so the road is very drivable and again we are diverted through places displaying everyday life in that corner of the world.
On leaving Santa Fe we opt to use Highway 14 to get us to Albuquerque rather than Interstate 25. This is a day to make time but we have had so much success on the smaller roads up to now we think we would be rewarded. It is of course much less stressful and gives us time to see a bit more of New Mexico.
We now have a chance to follow the historic Route 66. Renamed Interstate 40. As I said this is a day to make time and an interstate is a good way to do that, with speed limits of 75 mph and no towns to interrupt the rhythm we travel from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Holbrook, Arizona quickly. Being curious sorts and in need of the occasional Coke we choose to take a few side roads rather than stopping at the highway gas stations on the edge of the road. In so doing we do see a bit of the local life but only from the seat of the auto. And NO Coke!
We find one more highway of green dots to take us into Phoenix. It starts south of Holbrook in Payson and ends in Mesa. Even though Highway 87 is divided, it is not busy and it provides us with a nice view of the country side.
Many years ago, I found myself driving an Autobaun in Germany and screamed at my travel companions to get us off the damn road because all we were looking at was concrete walls and an asphalt road surface. Since then, I have steered clear of super highways when I can. I travel to see what other places are like and the backroads of the world present much more of what the world has to offer.
Arizona is suppose to be such a bike riders state. A place with excellent riding. Rolling roads and nice weather. In ten days of travel we have seen a grand total of about 20 riders, ten of which I would categorize as commuters and 10 either people that ride for fitness or are training for one thing or another. I guess my expectation was a little high. The possibilities for riding here look good. Much more difficult than the flat lands from which we hail but I think if one were to spend a year here his/her climbing skills would improve greatly. They would have to, either that or give up riding. The hills here are long and the grades are relentless.
Another day of travel, head back to the spot we started a week and a half ago. Often, in the past few posts, we have mentioned the changing terrain and scenery. Today holds a little of each of the types of land we crossed while traversing the highways of four states. We start in Holbrook, Arizona, the land is flat without much vegetation at all. Our route is another ‘scenic drive’ SW towards Phoenix. Not long after we start, we tip up and gain a lot of altitude, there is a forest of Ponderosa Pine trees for as far as you can see. Half way to our destination the tall evergreens morph into a very dense forest of short and bushy evergreens. Similar to Muego Pines but not. The landscape continues to change and very fast, we don’t even notice the transition, just that what we see is totally different. The evergreens give way to scrubby sage brush bushes and grasslands. The sage brush disappears and there is grass to the horizon. Out of nowhere Saguaro Cacti are the dominant feature, sage brush and grasses become the undergrowth. This is the desert as us nondesert dwellers think of as desert. And, we see more riders today, in one day, than we have total in the other nine.
Aside from all the architectural sites, new and old, we visited, the landscape has been the most interesting to follow, but I think the folks in this area deserve a mention. They are most friendly and polite. It is not as if they greet you on the street, although some do, but if there is any occasion to engage a person they were helpful and very chatty. The store owners and in particular the art gallery employees greet us as we enter, even though we are not dressed as we might be if we were going to buy a $50,000 painting, and thank us for coming in as we leave. It seems the clerks at the hotels and stores are truly interested in making us feel important, they are not gushy about it, it is just the way they approach their work. I never feel I am a tourist or a bother.
As with all places these days it is unlikely we will return, it is not because we do not like it here, in fact I think this is one of the nicer places to visit, it is just there are so many places we have not been and only a limited amount of time to go. In the mean time I will ride my bike on the flat lands of Alberta and pretend that I can climb the hills around here.
Today is a travel day. We could drive straight from Santa Fe to Phoenix in about 7 or 8 hours, but we have decided to split the drive in two pieces. Hence, here we sit in Holbrook, Arizona, right on Route 66. We will take a drive around town before supper to see what’s here.
Since we didn’t do the tourist thing today, the post is an oleo of observations.
We drive the famed Route 66 out of Albuquerque. As kids, both Murray and I remember the song and the aura around Route 66. Unfortunately, the route is now Interstate 40, four lanes and 75 mph speed limit and more semi truck traffic than highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary. We delight in seeing the Phillips 66 gas stations that were prevalent at home when we were young.
As we travel north from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, east to Cortez, south to Taos and now west back to Phoenix, we have noticed the lack of water. No ponds, creeks, dugouts, lakes or rivers. We do see some water sources in Colorado, of course in the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the Rio Grande in Taos, but the number of occurrences are sparse. This is something we are not used to, as when we travel in Alberta we see many ponds and creeks and rivers and lakes.
We drive west towards Albuquerque in dark green forest and as soon as we go from one side of the city to the other, we are in desert scrub – low green bushes and light brown undergrowth. Poof! How does that happen?
Today is the first day we drive a major highway. Up until now, we have taken secondary highways and scenic drives. The scenic drives have less traffic, a slower speed limit and gorgeous scenery. These roads are great for exploring the countryside and getting a much better idea of what the area has to offer.
We are finally getting the “accommodation things” down. Pull into a town, check out 3 or 4 motels and pick one based on…..usually gut feel. In Holbrook, we stopped at the Howard Johnsons, Days Inn, Super 8 and Travelodge. The prices are all within a few bucks of one another, except for the Super 8 which was more expensive – toss it out. I pick the Travelodge because the front desk clerk was very friendly, I liked the breakfast room better and they serve a ‘hot’ breakfast. Or, mostly gut feel.
Sedona room for approx $130
On our little tour, the most expensive place we stayed was Sedona. The crappiest room we had was….Sedona. The least expensive place we stayed was Taos (the room was okay for 2 nights, but no longer). The best room was Santa Fe, and it was pretty inexpensive too!
Santa Fe room for $100
We drive through Holbrook on the way to supper. The road through town is the Historic Route 66 it’s lined with old motel after old motel. There is even the Wigwam Motel where the individual rooms are tepees! During the high days of Route 66 this place would have been hopping. Today it looks just sad. We eat supper at Joe and Aggies Cafe, right on the route. Tacos for me and a combo plate of a taco and enchilada for Murray. Murray has discovered fry bread down here, it is a Navajo bread that is salty and fried.
Tomorrow we say goodbye to Route 66 and will drive into Phoenix along another scenic road through the Tonto National Forest.
After a short two hour drive over the scenic route called “The High Road to Taos”, we arrive in Santa Fe ready to explore the city.
First impressions of the city (approx. population is 60,000) indicate it would be comfortable place to live. It is not busy, the roads are not crowded, the downtown core is walkable and the people friendly. There is a ski hill not too far away and the city itself gets minimal snow.
Sculpture off downtown Santa Fe
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is a stop worth making. Her paintings are exquisite and the short films about her life very informative. Her art done in the 20s and 30s when she was painting abstracts was ahead of its time. We decide there is are a number of her works we would hang in our house, given the opportunity, of course.
Santa Fe’s Plaza
Our walk continues through the plaza, the centre of Santa Fe, towards Canyon Road where there are over 100 galleries along the street. We stop in at a number of them to view the paintings and sculpture. The gallery staff are very friendly and chatty. There we find several pieces we like and would also hang in our house, except for the exorbitant price tags. Gallery browsing is a great way to see where art is going and what is being created out there. Bronze mountain sheep, kinetic wind mills, abstract watercolours of desert sunsets, brightly coloured oils of horses, metal cast origami cranes. Art for your garden, walls, office, atria.
Driving the last few days through the many different landscapes viewing them for the first time, and forming impression of our own and then spending the last two days seeing how others see the same environment is very enlightening. Colours and lighting are what really stand out.
We walk back to our hotel through the Railway Yards that have been renovated to house shops, restaurants and a farmer’s market. We have enjoyed our day in Santa Fe and will take back the visions of all the artwork we encountered.
Today’s a day in Taos. Why Taos? Well, it’s a ski town. Always been on a list for that, but to make it worth while for skiing we should visit in the winter. And. It’s a place used frequently on crossword puzzles, which promoted curiosity from which we discovered it is a place that many artists live and work. And. We are in the area, sort of, so why not stop by.
Forty or so years ago Taos was a backwater little town that for the most part only skiers knew about. Oh, it had its famous inhabitants, like D.H. Lawrence and even further back Kit Carson and there were a few artists that had “discovered” the place but in the seventies the word got out among the North American nomads, the hippies. They moved here in droves and Taos soon became a trendy place to live. That trendiness still holds true and there are many immigrant residents that have found a very easy going place to settle. I think maybe the biggest barrier to a perfect place is the influx of us damn tourists. Fortunately we also provide a source of income that allows those residents to make a decent living.
Taos Pueblo
Long before even Kit Carson, maybe 800 years before, the Taos Indians established residency here with the construction of an adobe city, the Taos Pueblo. The structures are still inhabited and have been consistently for the past about 1000 years. The designers of the modern day condos being built everywhere along the west coast of North America (I am quite sure) took their inspiration from these native buildings. These dwellings are constructed of adobe and require constant maintenance. I cannot begin to imagine the number of man hours that have been put into additions and repairs over the last 10 centuries. A couple of the lower buildings are shops and accessible to the visiting public. We stop in at an art/craft shop to have a look see. The interior, although small, looks quite liveable. The dirt floors have been covered with wood flooring, there is a small fireplace in the corner providing heat on a cool morning and two or three tiny rooms to call home. I think the most impressive part is to see how much of the building type and methods have been only slightly modified and still used in the area today. There must be something to be said for the use of indigenous construction methods and materials.
An Earthship
Farther down the road from whence we came yesterday a very different type of construction is taking place. There are several unique buildings being built that are referred to as Earthships. They too are buildings to live in but are built of more 20th century materials and 21st century construction methods. The premise is to build houses with net zero energy consumption using materials that have been discarded. The main structure is comprised of used car tires. They are stacked at least 2 rows deep on the north side of the building. Then earth is backfilled to fill the voids and sloping to the ground so that from the back the house looks like a small hill, just a natural topographical feature. The front side is exposed to the sun and is for the most part glass. This uses the solar gain to heat up the masonry surfaces on the living side of the glass and provides heating for the occupants all winter long. In the summer these windows are shaded and the solar effect on the masonry is minimal. Some of the more recent house have utilized pop and beer cans mortared together, used for both decorating and trying to take advantage of the insulating qualities of the dead air in the cans. I don’t know for a fact but I have to presume the ecological aspects of this experiment works. There are more than a few of the houses scattered across the landscape. They are truly strange looking and are outerspaceish. Thus the name I guess.
They have obviously proven popular with a certain facet of the population. I do question the commitment to the whole philosophy. The owners and workers are supposedly concerned about their impact on the environment but because of the size and number of vehicles parked around the construction sites and the now owned houses I wonder how much are they committed to saving the planet and how much it is the status, and bragging rights, of owning one of these places that prompts the purchase.
On the way back into town, the fauna of the area introduces itself to use. I noticed a couple of cars parked on the side of the highway ahead. I scanned the area to see if I could see anything and running a fence line parallel to the highway is an elk with a very large rack. Debbie pulls over and I reach for my camera, the elk jumps the fence runs across the road, over the fence on our side of the road and into the sage brush. He is quite a majestic animal and quite agile as well. He leaped a 4 foot fence without hesitation and was on his way and out of sight quickly.
Next on the list of critters is a little more disconcerting. A black widow spider. Or at least I am reasonably sure it was a black widow. I have never really seen one and I can only remember transferring decals of them onto the model cars I built a mere 50 years ago. We stop at the Rio Grande to see the main geological feature of so many C & W films of the 50’s and 60’s and while walking toward the bridge to get a better look of the gorge, head down of course looking for rattlesnakes, I see movement. There waddling along on a path just ahead of me is a spider, very large and hairy. Debbie isn’t too excited about it but all I could think of was to snap a few pictures. It is far enough away so I am not worried about it leaping upon me and inflicting great pain, I just want to see if I can get a good photo.
The canyon by the way is awesome. Very deep and sharp, steep sides. The soil must not be very resistant to erosion and the water has a devastating effect on the landscape.
Rio Grand Canyon
The central part of the town of Taos is small and easily traversed on foot. There are many shops and galleries that can occupy a curious tourist for half a day. Plying the streets and visiting the galleries is how we decide to wile away the afternoon. I mentioned Taos is a magnet for artists. The quality of the art produced here is very high and the market for a lot of the local artists extends well beyond the edge of this fine town. Many of these folks sell their works nationally and some internationally. Most of the galleries we visit have at least one piece we like but a couple of galleries display a good number of things Debbie and/or I like. As with all art there are few I would want in my house and frankly most of the art is far too expensive to be considered for purchase but one can still like art and enjoy the vision and not have to buy it.
A couple of really good meals later and we are back at the hotel relaxing for the first time in over a week.
I like Taos, the place, the setting, the food and the people. All that could lead to a ski trip here in the near future, but as we have mentioned before there are a lot of places to see in this world and every year that goes by is one less year we have to visit places yet unseen.
The tourist goal for today is Mesa Verde National Park. Inside the park are the cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people. We take a tour of the Cliff Palace, which was home to an estimated 90 people. They farmed on top of the Mesa and lived under the cliff in quite a substantial group of dwellings.
Cliff Palace
The ranger was quite informative and humorous, drawing on current lifestyle examples to explain the way of life back around 1200 AD when the pueblo peoples lived in the area. These dwellings look very much like the condos you might find in any west coast city. Smallish abodes stacked this way and that, they even have lofts which I guess served as sleeping quarters.
Cliff Palace
Everyone seemed to be astonished that these folk could build these houses with square corners, fine workmanship and mortar, but one must remember the Greeks and Romans were building great structures long before that time.
Balcony House
Now, don’t get me wrong, we both thoroughly enjoyed the tour and seeing the various dwellings. The peoples that lived here and the city they lived in are indeed fantastic. There is a lot to be impressed by and a lot to learn, like; why did they abandon such a beautiful place? The question is, even if we figure out the reason, are we prepared to listen to the past and maybe avoid the same fate the befell their civilization?
It’s funny but I always look at this type of artifact from an engineering viewpoint. In the museum, the displays that intrigue me are the ones that show how the houses etc were constructed. I usually cruise past the pottery and clothing.
Murray and I were talking on the drive from Mesa Verde towards Taos, New Mexico about how we find traveling in the US different than elsewhere we have been. The one thing that disturbs me is the gun thing. You know how when you enter a building, like a visitor centre, there are stickers at the entrance showing no smoking, no dogs. Here there are often stickers that say NO FIREARMS!! WTF!! (I just thought the signs were funny. M) I do not like the fact that people could be carry guns in stores, at gas stations, in restaurants. “I don’t like the way you drive…..BLAM!” Okay, now I am ranting. Anyway, the gun thing makes me just a little…..touchy.
Update on the speed limit thing. It was quite easy to follow the Colorado system of speed. It seemed to match Alberta’s closely. This size road in such a condition and the speed is thus. It was relatively easy to know what the limit was even if we had not seen a sign. Then we crossed into New Mexico. The speed immediately dropped 15 mph. Back to searching for signs and the signs are few.
Rainbows on our drive to Taos!
Mesa Verde is how the day starts. The rest of the day traverses another ecosystem and much different terrain. We are now in the foot hills, the mountains are near but we are not and will not go above the treeline but we are in an evergreen forest and the road takes us over this hill and that, never flat and rarely straight. We do feel quite at home in this environment. We arrive in Taos, it is chilly and there is winter in the air.
We cover many miles again today. Kayenta, Arizona to Cortez, Colorado with a dip into Utah.
The speed limits in Arizona and Utah are odd, or maybe we just haven’t figured them out yet. They vary between 40 mph and 65 mph sometimes with no logic that we can discern. Some roads we think we should be going fast on, are designated slow and vice versa. Since we are pretty much driving the speed limit, when we know what it is, we are just hoping we can talk our way out of a ticket if we get caught accidentally doing the wrong speed on the wrong road.
Monument Valley
First tourist stop is the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. A 17 mile drive takes us around towering giant rock outcroppings. The colours in the morning light range from brilliant reds to dark blues. Erosion creates these structures that have inspired artists, builders and dreamers.
Monument Valley
The plant life in this part of the US is quite different than in Alberta. The plants here have to survive desert conditions, so many of them are stunted in size.
Cacti, ponderosa pines, Mormon tea, junipers and many we do not know the names of.
Next stop is Hovenweep National Monument. It is a 2 mile walking trail trough the ruins of a community from over 700 years ago. They were ancestral Pueblo people who began to cultivate corn and other crops so adopted a stationary lifestyle, rather than nomadic one. The construction of the buildings show, to us, an advanced nature.
Hovenweep National Monument ruins
The construction and siting is what intrigues. The buildings look like miniature houses of today that appear to be multistory with many different shapes. Curved walls on the entry side of the building with flat walls on the ‘view’ side. The dwellings are sited right on the edge along a valley. I’m guessing it had to do with ventilation or something but the siting would be outstanding in terms of today’s criteria, people would pay big money for the views and privacy afforded by building on the edge of a coulee.
Since we left Phoenix we have seen the terrain, the flora, the landscape, the architecture all change and just when we get a feel for our surroundings it changes again. I’m guessing again but I think altitude is the main reason for this change. Phoenix is smack dab in the middle of the desert, complete with 20′ high cacti and very scrubby shrubs. Traveling north towards the Grand Canyon the vegetation changes to Ponderosa Pine and the air is slightly cooler.
On the way to the Grand Canyon
At the rim of the canyon (7000 ft) the vegetation is not dense but there are enough trees to make a proper forest. Shortly after leaving the G.C. National Park, to the east we encounter a slightly different desert. No blowing sand like one might envision the Sahara, and no tall cacti like around Phoenix but very low scrub and what is really miles and miles of very little. The terrain is strange to us. The top of the mesas are flat like our prairies but their vastness is interrupted by outcroppings of red rock.
Eastern Arizona
Mountains that have not eroded and have remained standing proud for the past many centuries. As we travel we suddenly plunge down (or up) very steep inclines into the plains between the mesas or to the top of the next mesa. This type of landscape continues for many, many miles. Then we cross the Utah/Colorado border and it is as if we are transported back to Southern Alberta. The scrub vegetation has been replaced by fields of wheat and other grains. There are fields of corn. All this is made possible because of irrigation, again just like S. Alberta. We have another long day on the road tomorrow crossing into yet another state, New Mexico, it will be interesting to see what that brings.
Being from North America traveling big distances to get any where is a very familiar concept. When in Phoenix, before we started our road trip, we were talking to couple of ladies from Belgium. The one thing they were completely astonished at was the wide open spaces with not much humanity. In most places in the world it is difficult to move very far in any direction without running into someone. Here we just get in the car and drive. Three, four, five hours is not very long if one wants to get anywhere in Canada or the US. Our trip to this part of the States will last 10 days. We’ll cover over 1000 miles and we are not traveling every day. Paulo Soleri should be rolling over in his grave.
We didn’t mention Sedona yesterday as it surely was not the high point in our day. Arcosanti was the highlight, definitely. Besides the majestic red mountains surrounding Sedona, the town was Banff on a very very busy summer day. Too many people, too much traffic and too many shops.
Sedona
Let’s get onto today, because it truly was exciting…..
We gave each other this year’s Christmas presents today and they were a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. We had thought of this idea yesterday, set a price limit, and one of the tour companies (Papillon Helicopter Tours) that we stopped at came in right at our budget number. And they had room on a flight only an hours wait away.
We fly over trees of the Kaibab National Forest and then drop over the south rim of the canyon. It is spectacular! The initial panoramic view made me hold my breath. The striations of the rock formations are brilliant and I now know where the Hopis get their colour palettes.
The Colorado River is a brown ribbon about a mile below us. The river is about 300 to 400 yards wide. That is 8 lengths in the pool we swim in! WOW! The river is bordered by lush greenery, the only bright green in the canyon.
The bottom and lower sides of the canyon are rocky and inhospitable with touches of sage coloured green. It is a wonder that any animal life survives down there.
After we land, Murray and I agree that this was a marvelous Christmas present. This is a great way to view the canyon without hiking down into it or riding a raft down the river.
We spend the next few hours walking the rim of the canyon with the myriad of tourists that visit every day. Driving east we stop at a few of the points of interest, seeing a different view of the canyon each time. The canyon is indeed one of the natural wonders on the planet.
The reason we are in Arizona is to see Arcosanti. It is not a big place and in reality it is not worth more than a couple of hours to visit but I have been interested in seeing it for a very long time. I first learned of this ‘urban experiment’ 35ish years ago while at UBC studying architecture. An architect with a vision saw that the way things in our western world were headed was a long road to disaster. Our cities take far too much from the balance of nature and do not return nearly enough to maintain that balance. He surmised a big part of the problem is the automobile. He wanted to build a city that would be carless and address a whole slew of the other things ‘wrong’ with our cities of then and still very much wrong today.
Ceramic windbell workshop
In the early 1970s Paolo Soleri was busy drawing cities and planning how they would function. He was busy test building bits and piece of his vision on his 5 acres of land north of Phoenix, Arizona. The opportunity arose for the purchase of some property north of Phoenix that could provide the backdrop for a full scale model city to be constructed. This is when I learned of his work and was fascinated by an attempt to build a city from scratch. Hopefully this city would not reflect the shortcomings of the cities we now live in and would provide us with a usable alternate for the future.
Arches at the central square
My impression of Arcosanti in its present state is that it is a bit quirky. The forms are familiar, just because I have followed it on and off for the 35 years it has been under construction. The shapes all make sense from a design point of view but, like the concept itself, are unusual in the world as we know it. The site itself is of course a work in progress, a construction site; that said it is very messy. I don’t know if the unfinished state is the cause the untidiness or if it is the nature of a work/live environment. Things in the communal areas are in need of a good cleaning and minor repairs such as the rehanging of drapery dislodged from the curtain rod. Even though it is a communal environment someone or indeed everyone needs to take responsibility for the shared spaces. The shared spaces are an integral part of how Arcosanti is intended to function. I think it is a remnant of our present way of life and residents future and present have to reprogram themselves to meet the requirements of living in an arcology.
Windbells
People do live and work there now. The residents are working toward the completion of their city in one way or another. Some folks work in the ‘tourist’ industry, leading tours, working in the café, selling goods in the gift shop. Some make windbells, designed by Soleri and the first source of income towards the start of construction of his vision. Some are construction workers. The city has begun to take shape but it is very long way from reality.
Arcosanti today
Could I live in a place like that? Not sure. I think I would be OK living there for a short period of time, say 6 weeks, as it is in its present state. Right now it is a very small village. I lived in Whistler, BC many years ago when it was very small and being from the city I was not use to the fact the every person in the village knew more about my life than I did. No secrets, NONE. I think that if the city ever is completed and the planned 5,000 people become resident I think the place would be quite a nice place to live in. Even if several of these small cities are built adjacent to one another there would be substantially less impact on the world than what is now the status quo.
It is only recently in my home city, Edmonton, the planners have been able to overcome their tunnel vision and realize we cannot keep expanding laterally even though our city is built on a never ending plane of flat. The infrastructure required to maintain such a model is crippling. It will soon not be possible to service the citizens as they should expect from an affluent society such as ours.
I’m glad I got a chance to see Arcosanti and hope that some of the things learned from this experiment are absorbed by our system in the very near future. Cities as we know them are doomed and it would be good to start revising our future soon.
