Arc Project
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Abundantly Resilient Community
Also known as...
Agricultural, Resilient Communities Anti-Retirement Communities. Affordable Resourceful Communities
Imagine cross breeding an organic farm with select traits from a shopping mall, an apartment complex and a village. The strange beast that results turns out to be very good at surviving economic and ecological storms. It also has a pleasant easy going nature and is fun to be with.
Agricultural Resilient Communities(ARC) are a way to live closer to the earth and to our needs as humans. They emphasize healthy foods, local economies and knowing your neighbors. An ARC is intended to breed low stress abundant lifestyles that have less need for cars, alarm clocks, shopping and garbage. An ARC helps everybody be useful, making good use of all skill levels and ages.
Philosophical underpinnings Marketing and development
All the HUG projects pull together into this one application.
At HUG we have always known that someday we will have to create income by marketing some products that result from our research. Every time we attempted to create a business plan to market something, it just didn't feel like we were doing the right thing yet. It is very important to choose your customers wisely. It turns out that the ARC project will use large amounts of everything we are researching, making us our own best customer.
We have been developing...
Physical Layout
Paul's original vision of an ARC
Now that the Hunts have purchased an actual piece of property for the purpose of building an ARC community, the physical layout portion of ARC design becomes focused in several specific ways.
The physical layout can be divided into two sub-categories:
Layout of buildings and other elements on the landscape
We need to look at the land itself and decide the best place to put the various elements that we want to incorporate into the community.
This raises several questions:
1. What level of self-sufficiency in food and other land-derived resources (fuel, fiber etc) do we want for the community? This will decide the carrying capacity of the land in question. i.e. how many households can we put on this particular piece of land.
2. What kind of access do we want each residence to have?
3. How many single family vs multiple family dwellings do we want? Will this be determined on an ongoing basis as families become interested in joining?
4. What kind of covenants do we want regarding the use of heavy equipment in the building process. In other words, do we want to strictly limit this in order to minimize the land-healing necessary in the aftermath of building?
5. I know there are more....
Elements to be incorporated into overall land design:
1. Perennial polyculture for food and other production
2. Intensive garden areas
3. Fields for grain and/or straw production?
4. Animal husbandry areas?
5. Dwellings, single and multiple family, taking solar gain and surrounding privacy into account
6. Shop/storage space for community owned equipment?
7. Small industry "zones"
8. Retail "zones"
9. Social spaces, for meetings, gatherings, large group, small group, indoor, outdoor, sports, etc
10. Areas to be left alone in their natural state, with or without easy access by people.
11. Entry points, utility corridors
Design of the structures themselves
Paul, what are your current thoughts on this?
Economics
Community income sources:
- Primarily food production
- First sell locally, then high end restaurant and retail
- Adult day care and assisted living
- Internet businesses
- Factories selling items developed and used in the ARC
- New condo buyers
Less need for community outgo:
- Highly local economy
- Local building teams using lots of earth
- Solar heat and lights
- Little need for fuel and cars and paving
- Little need for external food sources
- Less taxes paid because less money is handled
Personal income sources
- Food production
- Small shops
- Building and maintaining structure and utilities
- Factories and restaurants near road
- Teaching
- Internet entrepreneurs
- Car sharing operation
- Nursing, housekeeping, cooking
Less need for personal outgo
- Little need to buy food
- Little need for car
- Housing includes all heat, air conditioning, lights, water, sewer
- Paying less taxes because of handling less dollars
- Entertainment is largely a product of interacting with neighbors; reducing entertainment costs.
Ownership
First thoughts are ...
Individuals may rent apartments or business space, or garden space.
Individuals may buy such spaces (like in condos). They can sell them later at market values, subject to a lot of owner association restrictions.
Much of the building will be common space, such as hallways, parks, utilities, etc. The common space and utilities may be owned by a co-op, a home owner's association, a city, a private investor group.
Utilities
Space heating is provided by building shape and layout, along with solar gain.
Backup???
- possibly a garbage/wood heater or "cooking appliance"???
Air conditioning from groundwater. Air conditioning is generally required only when the garden is thirsty. Water flows first through the refrigerator, then the air conditioner, then the garden.
Refrigeration primarily from groundwater. Some energy may be used to augment and to freeze. Special custom shapes for high efficiency.
Cooking appliance ???
Toilets could be simple composters. Sawdust can be replaced with high carbon, partly composted mulch from the garden. It would be nice to develop a toilet appliance that uses 1/2 inch pipes and minimum water.
Sink, Shower, Bathtub: Prefer to have water recycling plumbing appliance. Default to plain old fixtures.
- See also Plumbing appliances
Laundry ??
Clothes drying ??
Water source will be mostly groundwater from local wells that serve the entire building or complex.
- Very little water will be needed except for air conditioning.
Sewage will only be grey water. It will all end up in the greenhouse and gardens in front of each apartment. (Can we find an economical way to sterilize it first?)
- See also; "Greywater processing system" in Plumbing_appliances
Electric will be mostly on grid. We will first focus heavily on reducing usage as much as possible, then augment with solar and wind.
Garbage will be divided into categories that are treated separately.
- Compostable food will be dumped in the composter or the toilet.
- Paper and other fibers will be used in cob buildings.
- Plastics will be turned into 2x4 decking
- Metals will be sold as scrap
- Difficult composites will be...???
Telephone and internet will be provided by local utility; internally wired by building maintenance people.
Lights are mostly daylighting and LEDs with occupancy sensors.
Transportation: This layout lends itself to Car Sharing. The car share program can be treated as another utility. Hand carts will assist in shuffling goods from cars to apartments. For those who can't walk much, little electric vehicles will be available to navigate the hallways.
Concepts for a natural organic Swimming pool
"Social Engineering" elements
This section consists primarily of questions that have yet to be answered, but would be good to have answered, or at least begin to be answered, before construction of the physical community begins.
First and foremost: Who will be making the decisions for the community, and how will they make them?
Things that these decision-makers will have to decide
1. What sorts of things do we want to regulate in this community?
2. What sorts of provisions will be made for conflict resolution? (notice, I did not ask "do we want to make provisions for resolving conflict"... conflict is inevitable, and depending on the goodwill and maturity of all involved is not always a recipe for successful resolution.)
3. What is the process for deciding all of the other as-yet-to-be-answered questions about the physical layout?
4. Do we need a set of guiding principles for the development of a community, that clarify what we want it to look like, function like, feel like....
