Basic Information
Arcosanti is a site founded in 1970 as a model town in Arizona near Phoenix. It was envisioned by Paolo Soleri, the inventor of the concept of arcologies, as a showcase of how urban living conditions could be improved while the impact of human habitation on the environment could be minimized.
Originally intended as a community of 5,000 people, Arcosanti is still not finished, and only 50-150 people are on the site at any one time (this number includes many students and volunteers). Furthermore, the town has struggled with funding throughout its history. When it tried to hold festivals as fund-raisers, a grassy field used as a parking lot during the first festival caught fire and over 300 cars were destroyed. At the second festival, a flash flood carried of the tents, exhibits, and kitchen. Currently, Arcosanti derives almost all of its funds from the sale of bells.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- The half-built town should make for great scenery for all sorts of scenes, whether action or expository.
- Especially if you want to emphasize themes like "failure", "shattered dreams", and so forth.
- Similar attempts at "model towns" might make great scenery for other worlds and settings for similar reasons.
- Perhaps the town, if completed, could have been more than an architectural masterpiece - perhaps Soleri included occult elements in the layout of its building as well, turning it into a magical city - maybe even into the New Jerusalem.
- In an Alternate History game, it might be the mission of the PCs to see the community built and succeed - whether for mystic or mundane reasons.
- Is there some sinister reason why the town has faced such terrible luck?
- Perhaps a cabal of business leaders fears that a successful community will threaten their own interests
- If Soleri did indeed have a mystical underlying purpose in his design, perhaps rival occults wish to thwart his goals.
- Then there's always the traditional "Built-On-An-Old-Indian-Burial-Ground" curse.