The Advantages Of Compact City
Compact City - Elimination Of Urban Sprawl - Flexible Construction - Automatic Deliveries - Airconditioning - Easy Recycling - Low / No Congestion

Air Conditioning & Control

Many parts of the world are inhospitable to human life because of severe weather conditions, that is, they have climates with temperatures below zero, with excessive heat and humidity, or with desert heat and dust. Compact City would provide an attractive and economic protection in such environments, Even the weather on the Park-Roof could be controlled so that it would be comfortable throughout the year, for, if Compact City were to be constructed in a cold climate, excess warm air from the city's interior could be vented into the roof park area to keep it from freezing. In hot desert or moist tropical climates, it would be possible to have areas of the roof protected from heat and rain by small covered domes. Compact Cities located in such climates would undoubtedly tend to have more indoor recreational facilities, and the population there could be oriented more towards the internal opportunities of the city.

Obvious problems of air quality will need to be considered in planning Compact City. In a present day city, the air we breathe is the same as the air into which we dump over automobile exhausts, industrial fumes, and various kitchen odors. In the winter, we use energy to heat the air, in the summer we use energy to cool it. The amounts of pollution we emit into the atmosphere is truly staggering. Most of the time, smog problem would disappear if the automobile could be phased out. Instead of doing this, however, all our efforts are going to salvaging the automobile by refining gasoline and redesigning engines in an attempt to reduce their harmful effects. The effect of smog on the health of people has not been precisely determined. It does cause respiratory and eye irritation. During peaks of concentrations of carbon monoxide, the rate of fatal heart attacks is known to increase. Smog is definitely unpleasant!

Smog also definitely does more than merely obscure distant views. It as a deleterious effect on agriculture and plant life. The acids in smog have a corrosive effect on paint and stone surfaces. There is always the possibility that smog levels could become highly dangerous if inverse temperature layers or other weather conditions conducive to smog were to persist for long periods of time. This has happened in the past. Heavy London "killer" fogs, particularly the famous one that lasted from December 5 to 9,1952, which caused four thousand deaths due, in this case, to presence of coal smoke in the air, led to controls on the burning of soft coal in fireplaces to heat British homes. Animals tat live in open-air environments, like those in municipal zoos and animals grazing near cities or smelting plants have died of lead poisoning. Some researchers believe the cumulative effect of the lead compounds in the air everyone breathes has already adversely affected the mental health of many people.

Some progress in the control of air pollution has already begun to take place, and some cities now issue "smog alerts" when rates of particular emission surpass a predetermined danger point. Devices that reduce the amounts of pollutants are required on automobiles in some states and there will undoubtedly be new laws further restricting the amount of lead used in gasoline. The increased use of automobiles and the growth of human populations have overloaded the atmosphere, however, and smog has become a familiar phenomenon the world over. Population gains appear to be more than offsetting what improvements do result from corrective half measures, and the prospect is that air pollution will undoubtedly get worse.

In addition to the problems of controlling particulate pollution faced by cities, an important environmental problem is also heat pollution. All use of energy produces heat, and as the world becomes increasingly industrialized, so it also becomes increasingly heated. The largest concentrations of heat-producing activities are in and near cities. We anticipate that in Compact City, in addition to industrial processes, humans will also give off heat into the city air . The same is true for the electrical energy used within cities for lights, appliances, vehicles, and so on. According to or studies, the heat that would be given off by human bodies would be small relative to the total generate by all other sources. Since Compact City would be effectively insulated from the outside atmosphere, it would, in time, become unbearably hot unless its internal heat were "pumped" out, and hence, it would be necessary for Compact City to have a massive air conditioning or cooling system.

Lakes near Compact City could serve as a reservoir for coolant water. The city would pass on its excess heat to the lakes and the lakes, in turn, would discharge heat into the atmosphere as depicted in the diagram.

It is of course not necessary that all parts of the city be controlled to the same temperature or to a temperature unvarying through time. People may prefer a variable controlled climate. If so, then energy for cooling and heating could be conserved by mixing warm air from one part of the city wit cool air from another part. The air conditioning process takes place in several steps that are outlined in the diagram below.

In Compact City, air contaminated by various processes never comes in contact with the general atmosphere of the city. Only air of the highest purity, at the temperature and moisture best for individual comfort, is circulated to the homes.

The input of outside air would provide oxygen to the system. Human oxygen needs are small, less than one cubic foot per person per hour. The air that man breathes is not all oxygen. Seventy-nine percent of it is nitrogen, so the one cubic foot of oxygen is in fact diluted by four of nitrogen. Thus humans have a need of 5 cubic feet of fresh air per person per hour. It is also essential that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air we breathe be kept very low, in fact, less than one half of one percent. Removing carbon dioxide requires a flow of 400 cubic feet of fresh air per hour per person. In Compact City, balancing the input of fresh air would require that an equal volume of air from inside the city be expelled. The various passages leading out of the city and to the Park-Roof would function as air vents. Air would naturally flow outward because pressure would be maintained at a slightly higher level within the city. This outward flow could keep various gardens, terraces, and the Park-Roof warm in the winter so that year-round growth of plants, even tropical plants, might be possible.

Air inside a home would need to be circulated several times an hour not only to prevent the buildup of carbon dioxide but also to remove body odors that can give air a stale smell. It would be easy to arrange the flow of air to move from the insides of homes to their outsides. This would be desirable for it would keep airborne dust, pollens, and odors from accumulating. Only air of the highest purity at the temperature and moisture best for individual comfort, would be used in homes.

It would be possible to keep the concentration of oxygen in the air of Compact City at the same level as that found in natural surroundings. This level is somewhat higher than that found in some closed crowded places of today's cities, where the oxygen level can be depressed by a percent or so due to oxygen consumption by people, cars, and industrial processes.

The air recycling system of Compact City could be arranged in such a way that air contaminated by various industrial processes would be kept separate from the general interior atmosphere of the city. Such contaminated air, including that generated in household kitchens and bathrooms, could be carried efficiently by a separate system of ducts to appropriate independent air cleaning systems. The air to be reconditioned, in certain cases, could be first "cascaded." By this, it is meant that the air, although contaminated, is still of sufficiently high quality that it can serve one or more uses. Each use contaminates it a little more until finally it must be cleaned up and recycled. These subsystems could be designed so as never to come in contact with the general atmosphere of the city.

In a similar way, the reconditioning of liquids and solid wastes could also be efficiently tailored to each application because of the multi-level arrangement of Compact City.

>>> Easy Recycling / Garbage Control