Back in a prior century, I worked on a project to manifest a sustainable small town. It was called Cerro Gordo, above Dorena Lake, East of Cottage Grove, OR, USofA*.
TLDR a bunch of Californian ex-pats worked their way North looking for some land with opportunity. Prior to settling on Cerro Gordo ranch, they looked at an island in the bay at IIRC Newport. They might have succeeded there; but the ranch had an easement for a BLM road and they were trying to create a town without cars. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My hope was that they suceed, so I could start up a car rental property at the designated car ghetto. All air-cooled VW, of course.
A lot of people poured their savings into it; mostly equestrians and would-be railroad tycoons (the tracks are gone now, replaced by a bicycle path.). I was one of the few that made money, by working on the Cerro Gordo Construction Company.
Anyway the small-scale undercapitalized approach didn't work (it takes three permits to build a house, guess how many to build a town). Here's an example of what bottomless capital can achieve.
Some notes in no particular order:
- Rental of business space pays everybody's utilities. Zero maintenance or utilities expense.
- The solar panels are laid flat, accepting some efficiency loss for the architectural cause.
- The 'Fan and PAD' cooling system they've developed is basically a swamp cooler. The fan part is all wrong.
- The serpentine biofilter swale is similar to our local bus stations; but could benefit from the insights of Viktor Shauberger. Cross-section of the serpentines is wrong.
- Condominium purchases include a 10K Euro incentive to buy an electric car.
After the low-cost well-integrated (architecturally and economically) solar electric, it's mostly about water management. Compare:
This is more the level Cerro Gordo operated on. Composting toilets and cob, but there exists at least one house that will last 300 years.
*Off-topic; but the first thing I found online (then stopped):
How Cerro Gordo Mt. got its Name
Edit: Aww, yeah:
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...storiesbysteve
I'd forgotten about the Dolittle family wagon tracks.