Bright lights, bug city

Insect architects could help us build the eco-cities of the future
says Philip Ball

“In the heart of Africa’s savannah lies a city that is a model of sustainable development. Its buttressed towers are built entirely of natural, biodegradable materials. Its inhabitants live and work in quarters that are air-conditioned and humidity-regulated, without consuming a single watt of electricity. Water comes from wells that dip deep into the earth, and food is cultivated self-sufficiently in gardens within its walls. This metropolis is not just eco-friendly: with is curved walls and graceful arches, it is rather beautiful too.

“This is no human city, of course. It is a termite mound.”

Might require qualification, since nature provides everything including the intelligence for adaptation to sculpt in pure solipsistic reverie; to build along with nature in quite elegant designs including human-mobility amplification devices in the forms of bicycles and commercial bike rail systems (before the beginning of the last century), high-speed sailboats projected to soon reach peak speeds of 65 mph, iceboats clocked at 144 miles per hour at the beginning of the last century; including passive solar homes, John Todd’s Living Machines waste disposal systems, wind mills and generators.

Though there is no need to turn the clock back, a sense of history, origin, derivation, and an understanding of the cognitive asymmetries and biases of intuition and deliberation in the progressive decisions driving the built environment are of considerable significance.

And, regarding: Bill Gates’ “Why would we want to sustain a world where millions of children die from preventable disease?” and “Imagine a world without . . . the automobile” is perhaps, a bit too utopian for dense urban environments where cars make absolutely no sense and are more like a treatable and preventable disease?