The Clean-Slate City-State

Heh, just discovered something called Eco-Cement. So the CSCS could actually continuously sequester carbon from the atmosphere during construction!

Anyone heard of this stuff before?

Just found your site. Thought I would throw a few ideas into the mix.
Esperance City is a great location in the most politically stable country in the world. Australian society can be a complete contradiction between the 'fair go' ethic and the 'shonky rip off merchant' capacity of the average aussie. Any planning needs to account for the worse case scenario ie that rorting the system will always occur.
Triple Bottom Line Accounting and an emphasis on a Civil Society where social and environmental capital are equal to financial capital is a first.
Water: Australia is water poor and there are no major water supplies near Esperance. Rainfall is low and hence catchment, storage and recycling are imperative. Desal excessively draws down your financial capital.
Power: Base Load - the new geothermal research coming out of Melbourne Energy Institute is brilliant see THE VICTORIAN GEOTHERMAL ASSESSMENT REPORT (VGAR). The only form of nuclear that could be considered would be the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. Of course each building can be responsible to a certain extent, for its own water and power but the city as a whole will need to provide a reliable power grid.
Food: Esperance is not good farming country and organic food as the ideal, requires good soil and water. If you go high tech or have high food miles you lose environmental capital and draw down on your financial capital.
Excessive dependency upon high tech fixes can alienate the inhabitants from their city yielding no 'sense of place' and so no loyalty to the city state.
Community is based around the number of people we can easily relate to ie 100-200 and in an environment that is alive, green and meets the primal needs for open space and sense of place. More later, ciao.

Hey Rusel. Welcome to the forums! I'm looking forward to your sharing of ideas. May I ask, how did you find us?

- Mike

through a search on eco cities

I think you're our first click-thru poster. Another milestone reached. Yay!

Hmm...after reading this thread, here are my two cents. The city should be built in the ocean, pacific perhaps. It could be GROWN out of the ocean. It would be symbiotic with the ocean, and actually heal the ocean. It would have sea farms that enrich the ocean with oxygen and nutrients for sea life. While providing a staple food for the city's inhabitants. Perhaps alga could be farmed on a massive scale in this city. For food, oil and energy.

It sounds like you've been reading Marshall Savages old book too. That book was pretty awesome. I have to admit it did inspire me quite a bit.

- Mike

Yes...plus I loved Stargate Atlantis! On a more serious note, The city state would have to be independent from all other governments on earth, to be truly a clean slate!

Plus the oceans have wast untapped resources, if we could develop a symbiotic way, to extract the wealth, that heals the oceans, from all the industrial damage inflicted up to now, we would be set.

You mean, like a Dyson Tree on the ocean? A lily pad, so to speak...?

A place for everyone, and for everyone a place. That should be our guiding axiom, to give everyone their place in which they are sovereign.

Yes, but, much bigger in scale, there is nothing wrong with being strong, powerful and technologically innovating. I think certain technologies, or rather, sciences would drastically benefit in a clean slate society. In most cases science looks to be driven by political and profit motives, so large ares of science and technology, in my opinion, have, basically, stagnated for the last several decades if not more. In brief, health and medicine, have ignored many "alternative" therapies, that could effectively cure many many ailments. Like this book, "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life is a book by Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden in which Becker, an orthopedic surgeon at the time working for the Veterans Administration, describes his research into 'our bio-electric selves' ". Roughly forty years ago, Becker was practicably on his way to curing most of our health disorders. But was shut down for political and selfish reasons. A similar scenario, has played out it self in my ares of science and knowledge. If anyone digs just slightly, they will see that most all of the academia elite, really practice a self propping up and glorifying, religion, instead of science. If a clean slate is what you guys seek, than it must be truly clean!

Sea cities pose their own set of specific obstacles.
Rogue sea waves ranging 10-20m in height must be carefully planned for.
The average tsunami poses no threat over deep ocean floor positions but a rogue meteorite impact as with the mahuika impact would be nasty.
Perhaps claiming the plastic island in the middle of the Pacific ocean would be an ideal starting point. Cleanup a major site of pollution and you would have UN support as well as every green group on the planet.
The practicalities of sea construction are whole different set of issues.
The cost of establishing resource self sufficiency is going to be the primary issue. There will be no room to move on that. If you are going to be carbon neutral, resource self sufficient, egalitarian, a clean slate etc, then the planning must be rigorous and the due diligence exquisite.
Rusel