This Could Go Either Way

How would you design the city of the future?

My city would be completely sustainable and small, perhaps even easy to break down and move because global warming is slowly killing us whether we like it or not. Eventually, you may not have a choice whether you live in Houston or Helsinki. I’m not trying to be all doomsday here, I’m just trying to troubleshoot what issues we’re dealing with. We should have researched more about what carbon emissions could do before we built cars. We just didn’t know we needed to do it. We needed time to discover that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer and I had to give up my Aquanet habit until they could figure it out.

(I’m glad they did, but I use a water-based wax & gel called “Gorilla Ear Wax” now. I also have the gel alone and it’s called “Gorilla Snot.” It’s a Mexican product originally, so when I bought it the first time it was because the label made me laugh- it wasn’t in English and I thought it was clever, so why not?)

I thought Al Gore did a great job with “An Inconvenient Truth” and I wish the government had truly listened. I feel that car companies have not embraced new technology easily and therefore have no idea how much they’re going to become completely irrelevant if they don’t change. It will speed up the relentlessness of Mother Nature, because we won’t be able to predict what’s going to be hit next with accuracy in the future because the temperature swings are going to be too violent.

That leads to putting together buildings that have enough strength to withstand extreme temperatures and weather. I feel the that Finns are the best in the world at this because they have to be. They have to have a lot more in place for “oopsie babies” and poor people because the temperature is too cold to leave anyone outside and feel good about it. The construction of their houses usually has the finest insulation available and windows with three panes of glass with argon instead of two. We could learn a lot from Scandinavia about living with extreme cold as much as they could learn about living in heat from me. I’m from the South and I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest. Ask me anything. 😛

I think it would be smart to learn from the military on how to build down into the ground in the desert and make it comfortable. I’m sure part of it is full-spectrum bulbs in the overhead lights or permission to bring a lamp if you need it. It stands to reason that places like southwest Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona can’t withstand heat if it gets any hotter. They’re going to have to get creative, and I believe that letting the heat pass over you is a viable option. It would also be good for places that experience wildfires. I believe that a lot more houses would survive if the only thing you could see on the ground level is a concrete slab. What else can we do without building an entirely new infrastructure to regulate temperature and acts of God (in the insurance sense of the phrase)?

I’ve found houses built in the US, New Zealand, and Australia on this very concept. The ground provides natural insulation if you can keep your house dry, because it won’t take as much in power to cool your house. The walls will stay cool longer with that much padding. Even in the desert, groundwater is colder than the air above, thus the need for dehumidifiers built into the HVAC system. It is not easily or cheaply done, but it’s amazing how much you adapt when you have to, not because you want to spend that money or DIY that much.

If we’re dreaming entirely new ways of building, the earth will survive whether we do or not, so it makes sense that we adapt to it. It will never adapt to us. Because we already have more technology in living underground than living in, say, space, I think it would be wise to invest as much money as possible in getting it even further along. We could create buildings in the middle of lakes and oceans to naturally cool them. My favorite cinematic wonder in film is the underwater kingdom on Jar-Jar Binks’ home planet. Seeing the fish swim in the windows was just magnificent on the big screen.

I would love it because I am a fish person, anyway. Just not goldfish. They’re pretty to look at but require too much maintenance. I’d probably go with tilapia because they are so plentiful and freely available if I catch my own. Because of course, by now in my head there’s a beautiful underwater house in a lake I’ve filled with tilapia myself. I watch so much of this stuff on YouTube that I’m very Elle Woods about it. “What? Like it’s hard?” I may not be the best at DIY, but I can certainly tell when a contractor is bullshitting me or not. I know what things cost and what’s worth the hype. Insulation with as high an R value you can find is priceless because you’ll hardly have to do anything to keep yourself comfortable. Energy will just keep getting more expensive, and I don’t think it’s a bad move to start making your own. You can run an entire homestead off solar panels and batteries. You can even tap into the grid and make your utility bills negative, but won’t experience a loss of power if your batteries are dead.

The thing about construction and insulation is that you cannot miss a trick. Any leak and the whole concept is ruined. The quality of every material matters, but not as much as the skill of the people doing it. If no one tells you that you need a French drain for your basement in order to convert it into livable space, your basement is going to flood every time it rains. You just won’t notice it until your beams are rotted.

It is very, very hard to retrofit a house, especially where converting basements to living rooms is concerned. If you want a three-story house, you have to know that up front. Retrofitting a house for the proper drainage only sort of works. The only way to do it properly is not worth the money because you’d have to rip everything out. Even more expensive when the ceiling isn’t tall enough and you have to lower the floor to live comfortably.

In other words, basements build to hold Christmas stuff and basements built to hold a gang of teenagers like it’s “That 70s Show” are not the same.

That’s all about building the cities of the future. Using materials that work with the earth to make us more comfortable, instead of insisting that this fight is one we can win if we do nothing long enough.

But in every seed of desperation, there’s a strand of inspiration. We don’t need to let global warming paralyze us. We need to learn to roll with it. I, personally, will deal with it a lot better if I can see fresh or saltwater fish. But that’s just me. Maybe you’re the spaceship type. I wish you peace, luck, and any other color shirt but red on a trek not to be lost in space.

Mother Earth is trying to tell us something, and we are falling down on the job. We have to fix it one way or another. Mine would address it before it even leapt off the blueprints, in my city I build in the future.