ArcoSanti and Montezuma's Castle

Granny J just posted some interesting shots of her trip to Cordes. which occurred at about the same time we did a interesting two-place trip to that area. We took the New England ladies and some good friends and went to see Montezuma's Castle in the morning, and ArcoSanti in the morning. I find it interesting to compare our day to her observations : Walking Prescott: Which Cordes has the antiquery?

But before talking about that, lets look at some of the pictures. I was going to put up some 10 shots but this editor has me nearly screaming with frustration. There must be something
I am doing wrong - if it is this hard to get the pictures where one wants to talk about them
there would be bloggers foaming at the mouth on all major street corners, and I have not noticed that.

Pueblos were the original arcology - densly populated dwellings where industry, agriculture and the arts are seamlessly integrated with living quarters. Architecture + Ecology - centuries ago.


Montezuma's Castle shares with all the ancient
pueblos a great sense of mystery. How did
the Sinagua come to live here, and why did they
leave?


The second question is more compelling, since in many ways the situation seems to be idyllic. They lived in a handsome edifice with enough people to make life interesting, but not terribly over-crowded. They did not live in the cliff for defense, but because it made sense to leave the fertile land by the creek free for farming. Today the dappled shadows play over the many colors of the sycamore trees that seem to melt into the light, but then there would have been lots of vegetables and grains.


This was very much like Paolo Soleri's vision for ArcoSanti, a few dozen miles south. He has a grand idea that we could drastically reduce our impact on the earth by living more tightly packed, so that the work and leisure activities for the residents can all be an easy walk. The plans involve elevators and moving sidewalks, evoking images of Asimov's "Caves of Steel" and Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll", and filling several members of our SF oriented party with nostalgia for the future that never was. The experiment he has constructed here had the start of that, but it never got close to getting a critical mass of talent and resources, and it probably never will.





The structures are intriguing - but empty. The place is allegedly designed for 5000 people, though in reality 500 would overwhelm the infrastucture. But there are only about 50 people living there now, and only about 1o of them were visible on a mid-week day. There were very few signs anybody actually lived there - the orange kiddie vehicle in the shot above and a friendly cat were about it. As Granny J mentioned, there were no concessions to age or infirmity - not a moving sidewalk to be seen, and darn few benches.


Perhaps the Sinagua people suffered a loss in leadership too. Today Paolo Solari is 90, and there was no mention of anyone who will fill his shoes - no one with the vision and charisma he has. The bakery closed for lack of interest, and the person who was interested in agriculture moved on. The only industry seems to be making handsome but very overpriced bells. Nobody is fixing windows or painting the rusty spots.


The boom and bust that Granny J talks about, with abandoned buildings and McMansions for commuters, is exactly what Solari hates and is trying to avoid. [previous sentence corrected] But he had a equally impractical notion that he could get everything together and make a self-sustaining micro-economy in a Big Bang, all-or-nothing kind of way. He needed a whole population of people out of an Heinlien or Niven story to come and bring wealth and competance in many areas at once. Instead, he got grad students.