the venus project

Very neat!

Are you familiar with the Masdar City? It's an Arabic city out in the desert designed to be self-sustaining. They have a unique design of narrow streets and tall buildings to help keep the outdoor areas and the sides of buildings out of direct sunlight to reduce cooling costs. Underground is used for transportation. They have a network of community access cars that drive you around to various destinations.

Anyways, I definately like the idea of circular design. The slanted buildings I figured that even in low density areas, circular roadways would be a huge benefit for packing in homes and businesses more efficiently. It would also greatly reduce intersections and traffic congestion. Anyways, I'm just waiting for electric self-driving cars to really take off. i envision a future where car ownership is more of a luxury rather than a necessity. Uber and Lyft are already showing how the traditional taxi service is becoming a thing of the past. There is a huge interstate expansion taking place where I live that's going to greatly increase the throughput. However, just imagine if everyone was getting around by driverless car. You'd have less conjestion and accidents due to human judgement, possibly lots of carpooling opportunities (essentially what Uber and Lyft open the door to). I also think my city should have dedicated bus lanes and put out more busses. More people would likely take the bus if the experience was more consistent and the on time. I take the train in to work as often as I can. It avoids a huge mess of traffic and when I come back home, it drops me off within a mile of where i live which is around the spot where the evening rush-hour traffic ends.

Well... I can go on for hours thinking about cool things we could be doing. I get very hopeful of the future at times even as frightening as it is at times considering how much we've refaced our planet already and our population is predicted to grow to about 11billion before it tapers off. :\