Welcome to Croyden, a City of the Future : What Life Could Be Like in a Metropolis That Works

It was early one Indian-summer morning when I set off to do my research on the startling developments at Croyden. Soon I was behind the wheel of the V-8 Belligerent, chugging north on the San Diego Freeway through swirls of rush-hour traffic.

Ahead of me the Santa Monica Mountains were swathed in gauze-like shrouds of smog; behind me billowed a turbulent cloud of brown exhaust from my car. Coming up fast was the L.A. Interchronological Airport, where I was to meet the man known as Reuben. Some considered him a visionary, others a malcontent. Indisputably, he was a primary instigator of the changes at Croyden and thus was to be my guide for a tour of that city.

As an ecologist, I believe that people who want to lessen ecological damage need to think about redesigning cities, where most natural resources are consumed. But frankly, I doubted that Croyden could be, as claimed, ecologically sound, economically viable and attractive.

Keeping those reservations to myself, however, I met Reuben, and together we boarded a small private jet bound for Croyden. The flight began normally enough. But after an hour or so, I began to feel a queer sense of time distortion, and the sky outside the cabin seemed to fade. The next thing I knew, the engines were quiet and we were cruising at 1,000 feet over a huge urban landscape reminiscent of a well-tended Mayan city.

The clarity of the air was stunning, and so great was the profusion of greenery that it was hard to believe I was gazing at a metropolitan area. Every spare inch of land seemed to be sprouting with vegetation. The streets were all lined with beautiful, healthy-looking trees of infinite variety, some in bloom or in fruit, others laden with cones. Low-spreading plants grew on rooftop gardens and made green borders on roof edges. Intensely cultivated fields and woods no bigger than a single-family home lot could be seen throughout the city. Large stacks and vents were built into what otherwise appeared to be normal residential buildings, apparently for some industrial facilities. Glass enclosed the south-facing walls of tall buildings, and there seemed to be greenery inside. “These are all passive-solar apartment houses,” Reuben said.

Traffic flowed smoothly along the streets beneath us in an ever-changing mosaic of multicolored electric buses, vans and trolleys. Bicycles, some with three-wheeled trailers or sidecars, carried people to and fro in great numbers along bicycle paths. Trolleys, evidently equipped with retractable tires, moved freely from rails to merge with street traffic. Lovely creeks meandered through the downtown area, traversed by footbridges and overpasses. The thickets along their banks gave them a native appearance.

To the east of the city was a small, double-fenced forest, interrupted by meadows etched with a footpath network. A pair of deer grazed in a glade, and a flock of cranes fed in a nearby small field. “Our municipal park,” Reuben said. “Only 20 years of restoration and we’ve got a facsimile of native forest. We put everything back, even microorganisms.”

As we stepped off the aircraft, I saw that what appeared to be green asphalt was a tough, spongy ground cover with tiny, broad leaves a quarter of an inch in height. I bent down and tried to pluck a leaf, but it was of a rubbery, rough texture.

“Runway plant,” Reuben said. “Like street plant, it’s genetically engineered. We prepare the ground, hydrospray the stuff on in a seed-and-fertilizer emulsion, and it quickly forms a dense, impermeable ground cover. Excludes weeds and never needs tending. In autumn, we mow it and process the clippings to extract complex hydrocarbons with which we fuel planes and make plastics.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Perhaps I am.”

From the airport we took a trolley tour of downtown landmarks, including the city’s Restoration Congress Hall, from which a working congress had launched the city’s restoration two decades earlier. Reuben explained: “Synergistic planning was our approach. We use the word to mean systems working together to their mutual enhancement. In Croyden we comprehensively redesigned our resource supply systems: food, water, energy, raw materials, transportation, communication, waste processing. Efficiency and self-reliance were our bywords, so as to minimize the strain on the natural resources that support us. Thanks to the co-design of these systems, virtually nothing is wasted.”

We strolled along a street closed to traffic and paved with turf blocks--hollow stone blocks filled with earth. “These paving blocks can support a fire engine and emergency vehicles,” Reuben said. “They allow the soil to soak up water, so runoff’s controlled. Water just percolates right into the ground. That eases the load on our storm sewers and municipal water-treatment plants. The water table’s up, too, and our trees are doing better.” The trees, indeed, were thriving everywhere, often protected naturally at their base by roses, berries or other thorny plants. “We simply replaced most ornamental plantings in town with ‘edible’ trees and shrubs, preferably natives. These marvelous plants,” he said, gesturing at some walnuts, “provide us with food and oxygen, and they support native birds and insects. The nuts are gathered and processed. The prunings are used for firewood or chipped and added to our compost piles or gasifiers. “

We came to a massive complex, which, in addition to apartments, housed many industrial, cultural and educational facilities. “Remarkable thing about this complex is that it’s sited above our first hot-rock geothermal energy plant; energy’s no problem here. Then there’s a small livestock-production facility near the roof and a great many other food-processing facilities.”

“You could live here and never have to leave,” I said.

“True,” Reuben agreed. “Travel as a necessity is largely outmoded. That has meant enormous energy savings for Croyden. Of course, we still indulge in travel for pleasure and education.”

In quick succession, we visited the food-production units on the 36th floor where a winery, a cheese-making plant, a bakery and a brewery were active. All but the cheese-making operation used locally produced products. Though Reuben had said that most Croydenites were vegetarians, small fowl were raised in an odor-free facility on the 37th floor, with wastes removed by a conveyor belt to a high-pressure spray cleaner where they were sluiced into a compact and well-isolated fertilizer-producing unit. “We Croydenites rely heavily on vegetable protein from soy and alfalfa,” Reuben said. “When processed, its many flavors and textures are indistinguishable from meat.”

Although the building’s roof was uncluttered, all its space was intensively utilized--from the sophisticated greenhouse to the garden plots and the large commercial fish tanks covered with floating aquatic plants. “These are the troutapia ponds,” Reuben said. I peered in at a fish resembling the tropical tilapia and the American brook trout. “Genetic engineering again,” Reuben said with a smile. “The fish adapts to crowding and cool water; yet it multiplies rapidly, grows quickly and thrives in the roof environment.”

We paused on the roof to admire one of the building’s wind turbines on a tower far above us. “Hydraulic shock absorbers dampen vibrations,” Reuben said. “We don’t need the power for this building, with all the geothermal energy we get here, but it’d be a shame to waste the electricity, wouldn’t it? So we sell it back to the municipal utility.”

We rested briefly at a small rooftop cafeteria, dining, under colored umbrellas, on smoked troutapia, house Pilsener, homemade Stilton cheese and miniature loaves of freshly baked wheat bread. Reuben enjoyed a piece of roast guinea hen from the 37th floor and some walnut butter made from nuts of the tree in the building’s courtyard. We then took a quick tour of one resident’s apartment, mainly to see the innovative way that water was conserved.

“Here in Croyden,” Reuben said, “waste water is partitioned into ‘gray’ and ‘black’ water--gray after it’s used for washing, black after toilet flushing. Gray water is all collected downstairs, filtered and given primary treatment before it’s recycled for uses that require only low-quality water--uses like washing the garage floor or flushing toilets. Black water goes to the composting toilet in the basement, where wastes are decomposed bacteriologically inside and toxins are destroyed; the refined organic product has many uses in outdoor revegetation.”

We next went down to the first floor to see the co-op market, where, Reuben said, “In your time, large appliances were labeled as to their energy use. Now, we label all important commodities with their embedded resource and energy values.”

Leaving the market, we rambled through a residential neighborhood. People there were bustling along the street or caring for their gardens. I marveled to Reuben at how settled the whole city looked. The people seemed amiable, and the neighborhoods looked safe and well cared for.

“A result of planning,” he replied. “People no longer move as much as they used to. We gradually but deliberately discouraged transiency because it contributes to a lack of environmental concern--an indifference to one’s surroundings. In publicly owned housing, we freeze people’s rents for as long as they stay put. That gives them a financial incentive not to move. Plus, we offer lower rents and preferential public-housing access to families without private cars and to families that work in the same neighborhood as the public housing. Obviously, that reduces commuting. We also impose differential property taxes on buildings according to the degree of resource- and energy-conservation practiced. Wasteful, inefficient buildings pay more. Because recycling and the use of efficient resources cut environmental costs, we rebate the savings to residents.”

We now walked back downtown, where the air was delightfully fresh and traffic flowed without congestion. I noticed that trolley rails could be slid in and out of grooves in the streets. Reuben explained that an entire track system could be modified overnight. Advanced electric buses that could be operated along fixed routes without a driver provided intercity transport and were controlled electronically through a guide rail. “Much of our long-distance travel now is by high-speed train. But in the city we rely mainly on bicycles and on ultra-light electric cars and carts. And, of course, there’s the free public transport you’ve seen.”

“You haven’t given up private cars entirely, have you?” I asked.

“We still use them occasionally. Each large apartment building has a few in a motor pool, and cars can be rented from stands on the street.

“Transportation is a major energy consumer, and private cars in the past sabotaged all efforts to make cities livable. Cities in the 1980s devoted up to 50% or more of their land to cars--for streets, gas stations, parking lots and so on. We saw we had to control cars or they’d control us.

“At first we tried incentives to keep cars out of town: free bridge toll lanes and express lanes for car-poolers and buses, free lottery tickets to bus and train riders. Next we restricted parking. Then we went for high taxes on private cars and fuel. We also raised tolls and parking fees. Finally, we even had to resort to inner-city permits to exclude most private cars. The penalties were traffic citations and fines.”

“How did you pay for all of the incentives?”

“We reordered our priorities a bit and moved environmental restoration and protection higher up on the list. Government has the resources to do that kind of thing if people demand it, you know.

“Restraining growth wasn’t easy. Capital for infrastructure reconstruction was often less available than it would have been for new highways. We financed our long-term urban development in part by ecological restoration bonds, in part on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

By this time I felt that I could scarcely absorb any new information. “It’s been a fascinating trip,” I said, too awed to say more.

“Yes, I thought it would be,” Reuben said. He then escorted me back to the Croyden Interchronological Airport, we shook hands and I boarded the jet, my head filled with dazzling visions of future cities.

Adapted from “Restoring the Earth, How Americans Are Working to Renew Our Damaged Environment,” to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. Copyright 1985 by John J. Berger.