Arcology

Arcology (from Architecture and Ecology) is a term coined by architect Paolo Soleri for a self contained high density constructed enviroment able to fulfill most of the functionality of a city with a minimal impact on the surrounding ecology. A massive structure which encompasses the functions of a city including not only residential spaces but also commercial, services (schools, police, etc), economic and even agricultural spaces.

Arcologies in Speculative Fiction

Soleri was a Utopian futurist, though many Arcologies in fiction are on the other side of the spectrum.

Hives in Warhammer 40,000 are described as Arcologies in that they house a large volume of people in an extremely high density situation. Even so, while they have the shape of an arcology they don't meet it's goals. Rather than minimizing human impact on the environment Hive Cities act as anti-terraformers and their design is fairly random and haphazard, with Hab-Blocks stacked on top of each other. They are also typically dependant on other worlds for food. In Varangantua there are structures which are explicitly described as Arcologies which were designed to be self-contained communities but these are the exception rather than the norm and they are also older structures from better days, now falling into disrepair.

There are, However, more traditional arcologies outside the Imperium of Man. The Kin of the Leagues of Votann often live in their usually enclosed Holds, which are a combination of fortification, city, and industrial complex. Holds come in many different shapes, sizes, and types, from rows of domes, to fortified void stations, to hold ships, to city covered hold worlds. Being a cluster of societies that directly descend from Dark Age of Technology civilizations, which were created specifically to survive in the dangerous core, the Holds of the Kin are naturally generally self sufficient. Their self sufficiency is in fact one of the reasons why the Kin endured the age of strife, and survived and thrived into the 42nd Millennium. Each hold generally provides four critical pieces of infrastructure that satisfies the Holds needs, which are the crucibles, the forge, the hearth, and the fane (all of which you can learn on the other page). While the Leagues do infact have trade, Holds generally only require raw materials acquired from outside. Overall, The Holds stay, for the most, true to the idea of Arcologies, and remain prime examples of what daot humanity.

There were (and probably still are) other examples of Human and abhuman Arcologies in 40k such as the ones of the formerly existent interex, and quite a few worlds discovered during the Great Crusade also had their own variety. And don't be surprised if there are even more functions and even well kept Arcologies within the Imperium. After all, they did miss House Van Saar with their Standard Template Construct core hidden right under them, along with misidentifying the Squats. Who knows what they missed hidden within their own borders.

Moving on to more Xenos examples, we have the prominent Craftworld from the eldar. These are essentially moon-sized to planet-sized arcology space yachts. These big, beautiful, arks of the eldar race are generally in many ways more sophisticated than the Hive cities, and Arcologies of Man and abman. Unlike Humanity, the Eldar are more reliant on the immaterium than than the materium, as they use psychic energies and powers to make everything they need and want. Even the craftworld's themselves are made out of crystallized psychic energy called wraithbone. Thanks to the wraithbone, which is psycho-conductive, the ship not only has a self refilling reservoir of psychic energy, it also makes the craftworld function in a similar vein to a living creature. Said psychic power can also be expended as light and energy, and is also outputted by a wireless psychic power grid that many aeldari technologies could not function without. Craftworlds were also equipped with webway gates, allowing travel into the webway itself. Each craftworld contains a multitude of environments and urban centers, often populated with different wildlife and technologies. Many of the craftworlds remain uninhabited due to the Eldar's current afterlife crisis, and their lack of Spirit stone. This is an aspect that the Kin actually kinda equal Eldar on. The Kin have the Votann, while the Eldar have the Infinity Circuit. The infinity circuit (which is available on all craftworlds by the way), can always be used to safely store one's soul without incident as long as they have a spirit Stone (made from crystallized eldar remains). This ends up causing a population cap should one wish to not have future eldar generations soul's not eaten by daemons in the warp while also having a limited supply of spirit stones. The Kin, meanwhile, can chuck as many souls as they want into the Votann, removing the population cap until the Votann probably gets overloaded by the amount of souls, and crashes and devolves into nothing, leaving its Kindreds and holds destabilized. The Eldar have an edge with stability, while the Kin have an edge on quantity. Anyways, the Eldar Craftworlds originally got their start as merchant ships during the time of the Eldar empire. They were much smallers, and essentially served as the self sufficient communities for what are basically Amish space elves. When the Fall of the Eldar came after many years of decadence and depravity, the craftworld Eldar took as much shit as they could, and ran into the depths of the galaxy, where their ships eventually grew into the sizes they are in the modern 41st and 42nd Millennium.

You also had the Webway and the cities and communities contained within. The Webway itself also acted in a similar vein to a living creature like the Craftworlds. Commorragh itself is a complicated, and questionable example. On the one, much of the realm probably does meet the qualifications to be considered an arcology. On the other hand, it also shares many qualities with the Hive cities of Man.

Moving on to another xenos example, you have Jokaero, an advanced yet seemingly simple species that are capable of making food synthesizers, miniature versions of known technologies, and advanced ships that look unlike any other in the galaxy. It's no doubt that they have capabilities to create self sufficient Arcologies, and their vessels they travel on are most certainly examples.

The Vaults from Fallout would qualify as Arcologies, as would the Silos in Hugh Howey's Silo books. Both are Self Contained structures designed to accommodate large numbers of people internally for decades or centuries. Or at least that's what they're advertised as. In actuality, only around less than a dozen of these were control vaults, which served their intended purpose. The rest were experimental vaults, which were mostly used to conduct experiments for the creation of a enclave generation (although there were vaults created just for the evulz thanks to the evil bastards at vault-tec). Some of these experimental vaults weren't even close to the adverts, as for example vault 111 could be considered more of a cryogenic storage facility than a actual arcology. For many vault inhabitants, they met grisly and horrible ends, and their vaults either laid abandoned, or turned into habitats for terrible abominations. Only a few of these expirmentation vaults came close to the results of the control vaults (and a demonstration vault), and often not without at least a couple of drawbacks.

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it