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Arcosanti is a prototype city being built based on the visionary architect Paolo Soleri’s principles of Arcology which integrates architecture with ecology. Arcology proposes a compact three-dimensional urban form to provide a lean alternative to the unsustainable urban sprawl city form found in most of America. In its reduction of dependence on the automobile, reliance on pedestrian transportation, proximity to nature and proposal to have agriculture integrated into the city, Arcology is a vision of Green Urbanism. The design of Arcosanti incorporates Biophilic principles that preserve the biodiverse natural landscape, has a compact organic form, and functions with a circular metabolism that is analogous to nature when complete. Arcosanti, located in central Arizona, was begun in 1970 as an urban laboratory, and has been constructed by over 7,000 workshop volunteers over the past 45 years. Following Soleri's death in 2013, the Cosanti Foundation has established a Strategic Planning Steering Committee to help guide the continued development of Arcosanti as a prototype Arcology. The Strategic Plan will provide a framework for future organization and development. This article examines how the concept of Arcology and the development of the Arcosanti prototype encompasses principles of Green Urbanism and sustainable development.

This paper reviews the prospect of a radical redefinition of the relationship between society, technology, and Nature as posited within Paolo Soleri’s Arcology theory, and anticipates a transformative social order and environmental setting in support of sustainability as demonstrated within the urban laboratory Arcosanti. It locates the roots of Soleri's ecological architecture within a rejection of urban sprawl emerging from his early apprenticship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and argues that his own theoretical model, in presenting a fusion of architecture and ecology, prefigures a utopia of transcendence and offers a more rational planned response to the challenges of our age, while offering environmental movements a vision of what a sustainable urban future might look like. The paper argues that the positive utopian tendencies in Soleri’s work should be reaffirmed and, at the same time, it underlines an urgent need for multi-aspect and multi-disciplinary research, and postgraduate education, to be undertaken at Arcosanti, to test the parameters of micro- and macro-structures within alternative models of ecological design. In concluding the paper gives acknowledgement to the ongoing work of the Cosanti Foundation’s Board of Directors and its new Strategic Plan Steering Committee, and their commitment to attract renewed levels of financial and human resource in support of the urban laboratory’s unfinished business.

The world’s urban population is rapidly growing, now exceeding its rural population, and is expected to reach 70% of the world’s total by 2050. Research in environmental psychology increasingly supports the Biophilia Hypothesis which holds that our connection with Nature is innate. Thus, how do we maintain a human connection to Nature in an increasingly urbanising world? This paper is based on current research work and explores the boundary between built and natural environments, specifically how visual connectivity to Nature affects how people use social spaces, compared to spatial connectivity. Case study work is being undertaken at Arcosanti urban laboratory in the Arizona desert. Arcosanti construction began in 1970 to test Paolo Soleri’s Arcology Theory which proposes, in opposition to sprawling cities, a new form of urban setting which is compact with tightly restricted horizontal growth, leaving the surrounding natural environment as undeveloped “wilderness”. Through development of a Space/Nature Syntax methodology applied within a uniquely compact urban form, this research attempts to understand how designing to maintain the instinctive bond with Nature can affect social interaction and inform future design choices within built environments. This paper describes the development of, and basis for, the Space/Nature Syntax methodology, presents initial findings achieved through its recent application at Arcosanti, and outlines future work. Initial analysis indicates that visual connectivity to Nature is a significant influence on certain types of social interactions when compared to spatial connectivity, although more research is needed to verify the level of significance.

Sustainability has been an important topic in many disciplines over two decades, and its urgency is rising. At the same time, a conceptual understanding of sustainability remains rather vague, posing a challenge for research in this area. Nevertheless the term ‘sustainability’ is increasingly used in the context of ecological, economic, and social studies. In green economics it is often used interchangeably with the term ‘sustainable development’, defined by the World commission on environment and development in 1987 as, “development which meets he needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” this underlines sustainability’s ethical dimension where a normative view implies treating sustainability as a form of intergenerational equity and fairness. The question of intergenerational equity constitutes a growing concern, and our obligation to future generations requires us to look beyond short-term public policy preoccupations to anticipate building a better future for all.

The purpose of this paper is to use a newly developed Global Liveable Cities Index (GLCI), to assess how Abu Dhabi ranks among global cities. The paper sheds some light on the strengths and weaknesses associated with the city’s emergence as a global city, as identified by the index.

This paper makes use of a new measure of liveability – the GLCI – to rank the world ' s major cities. The GLCI advances the measurement of the “Liveability” construct by taking into account the multi-dimensional sensibility of diverse groups of ordinary persons across 64 cities. The paper also conducts policy simulations to help aid city planners invest in areas with low scores in the GLCI.

The results from the analysis show Abu Dhabi as a city that has a lot more potential than what most conventional city benchmarking exercises have revealed. It is a city with immense potential in the region by not just being the driver of growth but also being a nodal center for attraction of global talent. It is fast growing into a city of opportunity and already satisfies the characteristics of an emerging global city with a lot of regional attention. The empirical results also find that its potential has been clearly under-rated by many existing studies and indices primarily because of their narrow scope in measuring liveability. The GLCI results brought together multiple indicators to devise an index that is strongly based on a combination of analytical and philosophical values. Taking stock of the rankings of Abu Dhabi using the GLCI so far as well as the policy simulations, one can conclude that Abu Dhabi has multiple strengths as an aspiring global city. The results also indicate that one area that has been consistently identified as lacking in Abu Dhabi is that of environmental sustainability.

While cities have always played a historic role in powering economic growth in some form or the other, the scale of expansions and the speed at which it is happening today appears unprecedented. While a considerable number of indices benchmarking cities exist, they are rather narrow in scope. None of them model liveability from the perspective of an ordinary person with multi-dimensional sensibilities toward issues like economic well-being, social mobility, personal security, political governance, environmental sustainability and aesthetics for a more representative coverage of major cities around the world. These factors are critical measures of “liveability” of a city that in turn elevates it to the status of a global city. This paper thus makes an original contribution to the literature on understanding global cities by applying a newly developed GLCI to assess how Abu Dhabi ranks among global cities. The paper sheds some light on the strengths and weaknesses associated with the city’s emergence as a global city, as identified by the index.

The purpose of this technical viewpoint is to provide a commentary of how we went about using logistics prototyping as a method to engage citizens, science fiction (SF) writers and small- to medium- sized enterprises (SME’s). Six urban logistic prototypes built on the themes of future cities, community resilience and urban supply chain management (SCM) are summarized, together with details of the data collection procedure and the methodological challenges encountered. Our investigation aimed to explore the potential of logistics prototyping to develop “user-driven” and “SME” approaches to future city design and urban supply chain decision-making.

This Boston field experiment was a case study investigation conducted between May and August 2013. Qualitative data was collected using a “mixed-method” approach combining together focus groups (MIT faculty), scenarios, prototyping workshops, interviews and document analysis. These story-creators could use the prototype method as a way of testing their hypotheses, theories and constrained speculations with regard to specified future city and urban supply chain scenarios.

This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of the SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.

By embedding logistics prototyping within a mixed method approach, we might be criticized as constraining its capability to map out the future – that its potential to be flexible and imaginative are held back by the equal weighting given to the more conventional component. In basing our case study within one city then this might be seen as limiting the complexity of the empirical context – however, the situation within different cities is inherently complex. Case studies also attract criticism on the grounds of not being representative; in this situation, they might be criticized as imperfect indicators of what transpires in other situations. However, this technical viewpoint suggests that in spite of its limitations, prototyping facilitates an imaginative and creative approach to theory generation and concept building.

The methodology allows everyday citizens and SME’s to develop user-driven foresight and planning scenarios with city strategists’ and urban logistic designers. It facilitates much broader stakeholder involvement in city and urban supply chain policymaking, than current “quantitative” approaches.

Logistics fiction prototyping provides a democratic approach to future city planning and urban supply chain design. It involves collectively imagining socio-technical futures and second-order sociological effects through the writing of SF narratives or building “design fictions”.

Decision-making in future cities and urban SCM is often a notable challenge, balancing the varying needs and claims of multiple stakeholders, while negotiating an acceptable trade-off between their competing claims. Engagement with stakeholders and active encouragement of stakeholder participation in the supply chain aspects of future cities is increasingly a feature of twenty-first century social decision-making. This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and the urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.