Arcosanti: A Revolutionary Model of Super-Dense Urban Living

This desert metropolis has a few hundred people living in it.

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[regentjohannes]

I originally heard about this project in Future Magazine in the 1970's (long gone now). After 40 years, I visited Arcosanti two years ago and to tell you the truth, it is dying. It is inhabited by a few hipsters who continue to cast the bronze bells, but nothing else appears to be going on. What is needed is someone with the drive and vision to raise funding to continue the project and bring it to fruition Good luck with that.

[reallygraycards]

On the outskirts of town you will find the moisture farmers and currently under construction is a cantina, tentatively named Mos Eisley. Do be aware that traveling to this utopia can be dangerous as there are roving bands of raiders known as the Tusken tribe.

[mgabrysSF]

Note : 12:25 - residents don't have to drive 100 mi to PHX for groceries. Cottonwood and Sedona are just around the corner (well, at least 40 miles around the corner).

[TheMrfilmmaker]

I have viewed many videos of Arcosanti, AZ and the main problem I see is that most people don't want to live there.

[aquilarossa]

Where I grew up in the early 1980s was a laughing stock with its concrete cows and roundabouts, but I think it did quite well at achieving its urban planning objectives. Milton Keynes. A brand new town at the time. The schools were really modern with lots of facilities like leisure centers and after school there was lots to do in the area. As kids we were always on the go doing stuff outdoors. Business parks meant jobs and we had the big shopping center too. They planted millions of trees, so MK is now one of the greenest urban centers in Europe and the UK. MK has grown and done quite well for itself. It also borrowed a football team and never gave it back. Wimbledon FC. Making good use of the things that we find I guess.

[ignitionfrn]

1:25 - Chapter 1 - A young visionary
3:00 - Chapter 2 - Arcology explained
7:00 - Chapter 3 - Construction begins in arcosanti
9:55 - Chapter 4 - Life at arcosanti
12:10 - Chapter 5 - A complicated legacy

[Kethambelle]

Simon Whistler now officially owns my YouTube algorithm.

[ziggyshus]

Locals in the Prescott, Arizona area have seen Arcosanti as a total joke for decades.
Prescott, Az is an urban sprawl town about 30 miles away that people like, and it has a population of about 50, 000.
The people hate Acrosanti, which is why no one lives there.
Arcosanti is basically a tourist trap, which scams money off of dreams rather than reality.

[williamozier]

I lived and worked at Arcosanti for nearly 5 years from leaving around 2004. I was the workshop and educational programs director. I lived in the east crescent complex, one balcony of my apt looked out over the mesa, the other porch looked out over the amphitheater, so when we had shows I just sat on my porch as my 'box seat'. This video is pretty spot on, except people do not have drive to Phoenix for groceries, that part was completely wrong. The problem is when Paolo reached his...geriatric convalescence, the top three people who had been there for decades started fighting with each other for control. After Paolo passed those three were fired by the Board of Directors; this created a leadership vacuum that has never been filled. Arcosanti per se isnt for everyone but I loved living there and miss it. I still recommend that everyone should check it out at least once, because though Arcosanti has problems the concept is still engaging and becoming more and more relevant, plus it can be really fun due to how unique the environment is.

[KdetJim]

That Sim City 2000 reference tho. A man after my heart.

[DanielMReck]

3:07 Talks about American urban sprawl, but the footage seems to show a suburb with traffic driving on the left rather than the right. Where is this?

(The footage isn't mirrored because "bus stop" reads correctly.)

[travismiller]

Things that Soleri got right were his selection of materials suitable for the environment. Of particular interest to me was the earth and/or silt he advocated for concrete formwork which allowed Arcosanti to achieve it's unique physical shapes and aesthetics. The silt casting process makes for highly sustainable formwork, and was an important idea worth mentioning in the video.

[finalascent]

I did Seminar Week back in 1995, and stayed there for an evening back in 2012. It's a pretty fascinating place - not necessarily workable, but feeling like you're living in a 70s sci-fi movie is pretty cool in and of itself.

[stevengordon]

Prescott and Prescott valley are less than an hour away and have groceries and Costco (and Amazon delivers), so the need to drive to Phoenix would be rare.

[brett]

Which building houses the community microwave oven?

[robertslater]

Something that might be a great side project video (prob not enough for a mega project) would be all the physical and technical effects that Industrial Lights and Magic have done over the years. Definitely a leader in the film effects industrty

[docersatz]

We used to drive past this place each time we came and went between the Verde Valley and Phoenix. We knew a bit about it, but this fills in the gaps. Good luck to those hardy souls/nutballs who attempt this experiment in living.

[djmk]

When I was an architecture student in the early 1980’s, I had opportunity to do one of the five-week workshops there, but never did it. It has just been in the last couple years I have become interested in Arcosanti. Back in early 2022, I was coming back from a trip from Colorado to California, and after leaving Flagstaff AZ, we stopped at Arcosanti and did one of the tours. It is a fascinating place, and I would love to spend a weekend there to explore it on my own terms. The old architecture school started by Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West has been relocated to Arcosanti as The School of Architecture that offers a Master of Architecture degree to students interested in Wrights Philosophies.

[e.a.noehenry]

hot damn whistler ! relevant ! to say the least .... to me anyway ...nice departure from the other videos i have seen of yours
..all good, i might add . variety iz truly the spice of life whistler ...ya'll have a good one ...and until next time .... carry-on, peAce, davis

[DajuOnYoutube]

Even though I'm not an architect I do have some passion for how optimal urban living could look like.
My own vision is more of a walled city like a huge rectangular mall and everything you need is within the building with a electric train track across the middle on the long side so you don't have to walk very far and smaller transport pods on the short side to get closer to your destination from the middle. With a huge park on the roof, and around the walled city there would be farmland which is trickier to do very space efficiently.

However this video gave me two main ideas to add to it such as reducing the travel time to and from work to almost zero by being an elevator ride from where they work in most cases by having residential floors and letting people live right under or above their workplace.

Another interesting idea would be to minimize personal area and possessions to the minimum people can live comfortably with. While splurging much more on common areas and amenities to be both luxurious but also quite sustainable.
Like do every person need one of everything even though they only use it sometimes? No, so instead of everyone having a pool you could have let's say a x15 as awesome pool/waterpark but shared across 30 families. I think that would result in a positive in life quality for most people while only having half the economic/ecological impact.
But you could also do that with things we aren't necessarily used to share in today's society instead of making so many of each thing for every household just because we want it for ourselves even though it's incredibly wasteful.
But yeah other than stuff personal spaces don't need to be large if they're only thought of as spaces reserved for things you would really like to be alone doing and instead share upscale versions of everything else that you can efficiently share with others without feeling like you would benefit from having your very own.

Man... It's unfortunate that it's pretty much impossible to realize something like this without being given absolute power over a country or something lol.
Like a benevolent dictator atleast for a while, however it seems very hard for people in those positions to find motivation to do things with good intentions.
So it will probably never happen.