Planned Portuguese Eco-City Is Controlled By A Central Computer Brain

Sounds like this would be an intersting place to visit if it's ever built. I can see a lot of things changing before a project like this is completed. Still, cool idea though

Wait, so they're building a whole new city or just upgrading a current one?

Those hexagonal buildings aren't going to save space, as it's a horribly inefficient way to design a building.

... and are all the roads giong to be wobbly to fit around the hex buildings?

@omaracoustic
It's a whole new city.

@NOM
You really think that they would say a hexagonal building would be the most effective if it wasn't...? Really, think before you type. Also, the roads wouldn't have to follow the edges of the roads. They could form a square or circle around the hexagonal buildings. Every wall doesn't need to be against the road.

I was wondering if you could help me use the brain/computer metaphor to explain these parts of the brain, in comparing them to computer parts. if you just do a few i'll be sooo happy!
http://renadexsite.com

Sounds like a fantastically bad idea. Remind me again why I'd want to live in a fragile, centrally planned mess?

Too many cooks for one soup.

1) It can't seem to figure out if it wants to be an eco-hippie alternative living commune or a digital age integrated community. Doing both at the same time is impossible, as you can't go "back to the Earth" and be an innovative frontier for plugging more of life into the grid.

2) It wants to be a workplace communite (corporate housing) and yet luxery living at the same time (not luxery in the actual lifestyle, but in the cost of the habitation).

3) It wants to be a closed loop communitee, that cost $10B in outside funding. This is equivalent to the US stockpiling fifty years worth of Middle East oil and then claiming "energy independence."

4) It wants to be "high tech" and yet is going to be so complex that it needs an army of low tech, low wage emplyees to come in and maintain it (a poor ghetto outside of utopia, I am sure). Someone has to fish the non-biodegradibles (bone, tinfoil, etc) out of the fermenters. Someone has to plant and harvest the manuer grass. Again, you can't have a $10B community and expect the janitor and his six kids to be able to live there.

Wow, this is quite the ambitious undertaking. I absolutely love the idea of a city-wide plan for green filtration and water recapturing. On the other hand, how safe is this proposed central computer brain from cyber attack? If it has any vulnerabilities whatsoever, you can be sure that someone will jump on the opportunity to wreak havoc on a large scale.

PlanIT Valley and the town of Paredes are in the North of Portugal not in the South, just a thought.

I can't believe that the people of Portugal are going to approve spending all the tax money this will take to get up and running. According to an article I read earlier this year the Portuguese, who have the lowest recycling rate in Europe (nearly 0%), care very little about the environment.

It's true... we wont! Private founding.

@AlexRB

Oh, I didn't realise that "they" were designing it, since "they" always know what they are doing.

But about the roads, supposedly the buildings are hexagonal to maximise space. But a non-hex road suddenly wastes a whole bunch of space. How exactly does that work?
And what shape rooms do you expect inside a hexagonal building? You end up with very inefficient triangles.

But "they" must know that. Silly me, I should have thought before I typed.

So at some point they need business to move into the city to create jobs so they have a tax base to run all this expensive recycling equipment. The "plan" calls for "a European alternative to Silicon Valley." That sounds great, but unless the city offers a more competitive business climate than other cities, the companies will not move in.

"That sounds great, but unless the city offers a more competitive business climate than other cities, the companies will not move in."

What attracts innovators to silicon valley is that there's an existing base of skill, capital equipment, knowledge and a culture of innovation and risk taking.

California is not business friendly by any stretch of the immaginaion. They couldn't have done a better job of destroying their heavy industry if they nuked it from orbit.

If you're not first, it is very difficult to kick start this thing. Why would they settle for this start up when they can go to the real silicon valley or to some local university town or something that is already way ahead of this project?

This is akin to what The Venus Project advocates for cities of the future, except a much more efficient circular design. Very cool stuff.
www.thevenusproject.com
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

I think it sounds like a great idea, far more sustainable and "green" than the cities we live in now. I would like to see some data about how hexagonal buildings save space too (haven't heard that before).And like brettbell said, it does seem to share some ideas with The Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement. Sounds pretty cool, can't wait to see how it's turns out.

I also like their reference to the way it all works like one cooperative system like the body.

"What kind of competition is there in your body? Imagine your brain said 'I'm the most important organ' and the liver said 'No I am, and I want to go on a Free Enterprise system', you'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself" ~ Jacque Fresco

Nice. Instead of using low tech employees for repetitive drudge work they could just use robotics to automate those jobs. Like what we are already doing but in a more robust fashion. This frees up the residents to do their research and development like the article says. Automation should be used in this way everywhere to free people from repetitive menial jobs so they can pursue further education, contribute back into society more and to have more fulfilling lives. Google "The End of Work" by Jeremy Rifkin for an article on "technological unemployment" or a free ebook called "The Lights in the tunnel" by Martin Ford

For examples of high tech automation and sustainable technologies available today youtube "our technical reality" and "automation is here" For a more thorough explanation of how a system like this works I would recommend the book "The Best that Money Can't Buy" by Jacque Fresco. "Zeitgeist Moving Forward" is also very informative youtube(dot)com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

Tons of relevant information out there. I can only imagine that as technology continues to advance, more cities will be designed to be efficient and sustainable rather than just haphazardly formed.