Vertical Cities and Smart Farming
Sustainable progress & technology
High up, in our ivory-like tower of glass, each evening we look out at the setting sun and how it after a long day of traveling, in the end, as always slowly dips each and every one of its rays of light into the watery ocean far beneath our toes and view.
The evening sky and rolling landscape change their hue under the traversing basking light, and in the water, a rainbow of countless shades paints an illuminating backdrop to our goodbye and good night to the day that was.
This unfolds while somewhere else in our sheltered home.
A sound is heard, it is the shrieks of eagles high up above our heads, they are nesting inside our dome, and each day, as the sun sets, they return with sounds and calls of their lasting song from the outside. Unlike us people that walk the streets of this shielded vertical city, traversing it on sky high elevators and silent hyperloop trains, the eagles that too has made this place their home can easily pass in and out as they see fit. We, on the other hand, had to pass through the big city ports down on the ground floor, huge fortified polished airport like entrances leading in and out of our city that for every moment of every day and year were monitored and guarded.
I do not think that anyone for even a second believed that the ever present drones and robots, and artificial security were there to protect us from any existing outside threats. It was mainly for our own calm, to provide the people of this vertical city with the emotional feeling that we were safe and protected inside our dome, the sense of peaceful, fortified freedom.
That, and perhaps to keep short tempered citizens calm.
I look up, but I can't see the Eagles, I can only hear them as twenty floors beneath us, the midnight train approaches, catching my attention as it enters my view and thought. I love those trains, and I will always love the way the setting sun reflects upon the smooth surface of the driverless electric train.
You take my hand and we start walking, yet again. Our feet´s guiding us to the artificial waterfalls that help provide the city with an endless loop of fresh and clean water. Water from which our man-made lakes are kept alive, the very same water that the cities vertical, smart farms and wildlife feed on and we all shower in.
They also help us generate electricity through the kinetic energy we gather from its violent free fall through our walled off world before it goes back underground for a brief encounter with the natural ecosystem of the outside world that our water system is an essential, almost natural part of.
A watery world all in itself that also includes our free swimming farmed fish.
Once humanity moved into these sky high cities, like fossil fuel, the unsustainable global fishing industry had already been outlawed too. But not only is fish a healthy treat, we also knew that keeping them around as a natural part of our closed off ecosystem had other substantial benefits for us and our artificial dome.
Outside the glass walls of our home, giant solar and wind panels hover up in the air, tethered to the ground and the even bigger ground solar facilities that is scattered throughout the outside landscape.
Our city, of course, complements it all by also collecting ground and air heating and energy from the outside world. You reach out with your well-manicured hand and you pluck a few strawberries from the vertical pads where they all year round grows, we smile in secret since we are not really supposed to pluck strawberries up here. But who can really blame us, seeing how it is such a tasty little treat.
Minutes later while we slowly walk towards the cliffs and beaches, allocated like if we were standing outside in a hidden valley somewhere, with trees and rocky cliffs and sandy shores entwined together in a fairy tale like creation. In the background, behind us, the pads starts to move yet again.
As we stand there, our toes dipped in the moving water and the still warming sand, we see the sun waves its last goodbye and soon it disappear beneath its nightly cloak and the system, in turn, start to transport the never ending lines of strawberries back inside where they will get to enjoy a slow transport back down to ground inside a carefully temperated and perfectly humid night storage.
Come morning, once the sun once again rises up above the ocean floor, the strawberries will start their daily journey from the ground floor back to the sky-high ceiling of our city. Strawberries, greens and other fruit, the moist and water, and the sun, all traveling together for the entirety of the day.
Haha, as always, I smile at the slight madness of it all.
5 million people. You and me and 5 million people living inside a giant house of glass. A tiny world just like the world outside, but clean, green and never ending, a world that feeds itself, just like those old Viking symbols of a snake that eats itself.
5 million people.
That is the official number of people that is living inside this one gigantic building, an old polluted, insecure and wasteful big city block turned sky-high city.
And here we are, living inside our own little closed off system, a world within a world.
Outside our walled world, far away and scattered all around in the lush landscape, you could see dozens of similar buildings, each one taking up the horizontal footprint of a traditional big city block, but all vertically housing 5 million people living in a perfectly sustainable environment.
And in-between the sky high cities, untouched, healthy land where solar powered roads nestled their way in between the crops, trees, water and wildlife. Roads upon which only self-driving, electrical vehicles moved. Vehicles that transport people, goods and crops between the cities while also providing us with an endless stream of data from the outside world.
And yes, dear reader. If you feel the slightest curious, some do move outside, but surprisingly few ever choose to live outside our garden like cities, and the ones that do end up making that choice, they all have to live by the same regulations as we do. This was not a regional change, it was a global change across all nations and cultures.
Anyone that move back out still has to live a sustainable and healthy life, but they will do it just outside our walled gardens. Some of them still work inside our cities, while others never again return. But for most of us, these cities represents something of a healthy, and wonderful paradise compared to what Earth had been reduced to by human hands in the year of 2100.
Concept idea for evolo.us by someone
Artificial burgers Say it ain't so!.
Meat producers didn't take up any traditional resources anymore, they didn't even exist.
Having gone the way of the bye bye Texas that all forms of unsustainable behavior had, from fossil fuel to meat production and most of the traditional pulp and paper industry. Nor did we have a sugar, tobacco or alcohol industry. Neither did we over medicate healthy people with emotionally numbing medications anymore. A lot of things had changed for the better, and as a result, people were not just healthier and lived much longer, they did so being much happier too. Liberated not just from the chains of unhealthy corporations and polluting cities and corrupt politicians, but we had also put an end to the hateful religious teachings that for so long had fueled extremism and violence across our world.
Yes, we still printed some things, and we still had a pulp and paper industry, but a much different one that instead helped produce walls that looked like glass but in reality was made by hardened, transparent wood, and our pulp and paper industry was entirely sustainable with vast forest productions possibly having given us more forest than Earth had ever had before, at least since the Dinosaurs roamed these parts.
The little meat we produced was artificially grown inside the cities and the cows that weren't part of our outside world's free walking dairy production had been rewilded since long. Not that we actually ate much meat anymore, it had caused to big of a strain on the elderly population, our general health and medical care with its negative impact on all sorts of health issues ranging from cancer to diabetes.
But most of us did enjoy the occasional treat, once a month or so, and let me tell you. Artificial meat tastes as good as any old day BBQ meal ever did. And the fact that it was super healthy in comparison and so much less of a resource hog made it even better.
Show me the money
Other huge health benefits had been the clean air we were now all breathing, causing a massive uptick in general health and longevity throughout our biological lifespan. And while it had been too late to put a halt to the climate change our age of Anthropocene had already caused. By now, I don't think anyone would ever want to go back.
Not even the religious zealots had much to complain about, religious freedom still existed, it just wasn't allowed to be anything else beyond your own choice of faith. No churches and meetings, no preachers and teachings and no influence on law and science, rights and education. It had all been stripped away.
But individually you had the right to believe in whatever you felt like. People just wasn't taught anymore that it had anything real to say beyond any other fantasy.
So at times hateful minds flared up, of course, protested and spewed their toxic views but everybody else could see how much more freedom and peace our world and all its people had received so the hate and violence and inequality of past religions had forever been wiped away.
And nature and wildlife itself had settled for a striking comeback once we had moved inside and put a global end to unsustainable practices and energy productions.
The age of Anthropocene was here and there where no reverting it.
But instead of the final dawn of mankind, it had been turned around and been made into a healthier world, a healthier mankind, and we were all winners in the end.
Here on Earth and far away on our space bound colonies as well. But in the history books, the age of mankind would forever be remembered for how it had started, serving as a warning example of never again losing touch with how we are but one ingredient in an important ecosystem that needs to be kept in balance.
Anthropocene
The word comes from the two words anthropo, which means “man,” and cene, which translates to “new”.
The meaning of the combined word comes from the fact that human- kind had caused a mass extinctions of plant and animal species, as well as polluted the oceans and lands, and even altered the atmosphere, causing a range of century lasting impacts.
Perhaps like other ages before it, it too would now be with us for millenniums to come
Photo by Mike Koontz, our city ground floor with an indoor lake and vast forestmusic of the day while you are reading our article
Little Dreamer by Ensiferum
Spotify
The Mouse In our Wall
We play in the snow, under the shooting star
Told to you, as I once told, a mind and girly soul, so beautiful.
Inside the walls of our homes, and lives. There are Undraped windows through which we see both in and out, and at night I look out and up with you.
A shooting star stirs and moves the northern lights. Like a spoon through water, it moves before our eyes. Clear as day yet slightly obfuscated through the sheets of glass, the world is silent and it could be a dream as I witness the star cut through the puffy clouds.
And at night.
Some other times, there we are, walking through life's small moments and we are holding hands.
Together, we stand outside having walked amongst the falling leafs and the subtle snow.
Rain or sunshine matters not.
Looking in, through the of night, all chilly frosty glass, the burning lamps the pleasant light and warmth that moves and lives inside.
Is it empty we ask out loud, or is there someone looking out? Back at us. Do they hear our silent minds, can they feel our burning soul and warming hands.
In between these two sides. Neither looking in or out. Or perhaps, they do them both all the time.
There live a gnarly little furry mice that move about with his love and all their friends.
At night, you can hear them talk and hug it out. They move, play and dart around, inside and outside the walls that people build. Sometimes they walk our floors, sitting near, our sleeping faces.
We kiss and make a cute little snowy angel. Your arms whisp around and I kiss your pretty lips, yet again.
And right there. In the corner of my eye. I swear the little mice sits right nearby. Looking out at us as we hug it out.
And perhaps he too thinks the very same. Looking out and about, at us and all the shooting stars.
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