2 A Bottom-Up Design for an Agri-City

2.1 Sizes of Farms

"Farms" can be defined at 3 levels or sizes, such as

• Size 1 = 200 square meters = 2 ares
• Size 2 = 2,000 square meters = 20 ares
• Size 3 = 20,000 square meters = 2 hectares

The actual sizes to be used still need to be optimized according to the following criteria:

• Size 1 -- about 200 square meters as a first estimate

This size should allow a family of 4 to 6 people to grow a variety of garden vegetables and fruits in sufficient quantity to feed themselves at higher than a subsistence level with a reasonable amount of effort expended. It will assume appropriate soil of good quality, adequate supply of water for irrigation, as well as seeds and fertilizer as appropriate. It should be within 2 or 3 minutes walking distance from the home of the family if not directly adjacent to the home.

• Size 2 -- about 2,000 square meters as a first estimate

This size should allow a family of 4 to 6 people to grow a variety of garden vegetables and fruits for both

• supporting the requirements of the family for these vegetables and fruits and
• selling enough of these products to earn enough cash to pay for all other goods and services that the family requires to live at above subsistence level.

It should be within 10 minutes walking distance from the home.

This size should be large enough to occupy the manpower that the family can reasonably mobilize without wasting land as a valuable resource that they can not fully utilize. Depending upon the ages, health, and number of family members, different levels of manpower will be available for different families and therefore reasonable averages will need to be determined. Different mixes of plants and trees can be used, requiring different levels of manpower for the same surface area, with a balance between

• fruit trees, requiring little manpower per square meter, versus
• garden vegetables, requiring more manpower per square meter.

The income from sales should be high enough so that the family

• can pay rent for the house and plot of land provided,
• can pay adequate "taxes" for the overhead expenses of the infrastructure provided and
• can save money at an adequate steady rate.

If all excess products are sold through a cooperative of the project, then part of the revenues from resales can be deducted for such "taxes" and savings. Savings can be kept in an account, earning interest, and can be applied for either

• buying the house and plot of land from the Project when enough money has been saved,
• to make a down payment for obtaining a larger plot of land of size 3 for expanding their operations, or
• taking the savings in cash to start a new enterprise of their own in the Agri-City or elsewhere.

• Size 3 -- about 20,000 square meters as a first estimate

This size should be larger than a single family of 4 to 6 people can manage efficiently themselves, requiring them to hire some additional manpower as appropriate. With greater flexibility in how they use this land, a family should be able to earn substantially more than from a plot of size 2, thereby achieving a substantially higher standard of living for their own family. It should be physically adjacent to the home of the family. They would also be required to pay some "taxes" to cover the expenses of infrastructure and to make some steady savings.

Some low-intensity crops, such as grain, field corn, and hay may be grown. Animals and fowl may be raised; using the grain, field corn, and hay as fodder to produce milk, eggs, meat, and skins as products. Size 3 may be a variable size, depending upon the specialized purposes for which it will be used.

Models will need to be developed for the agricultural options and expected economic performance in order to optimize these 3 different sizes for plots of land.

2.2 Design for a Field of Size 2

Most of the fields will be of Size 2 and therefore their design is critical for the success of this project. Both

• the total area and
• the ratio between the lengths of the two sides

are critical design parameters. Both of these parameters should be carefully reviewed before any implementation is considered.

The tentative choice is for

• a total area of 2,000 square meters and
• a ratio of 25 meters to 80 meters for the two sides.

The tentative design within such a field, 25 x 80 meters, is shown in Figure 2-1 below, which also emphasizes the relationships among adjacent fields.

Figure 2-1: 8 Adjacent Fields of 25 Meters x 80 Meters = 2,000 Square Meters Each

These 8 fields are shown in two columns between two Streets, each 6 Meters wide. Fields 1-1 and 1-2 share a Double Tool Shed, where each is 3 x 2 Meters = 6 Square Meters. The tenants will be able to store tools, seeds, fertilizer, etc. in their own shed. Each shed will have a door that can be secured with a simple padlock.

These sheds can be constructed with pre-fabrication methods. A standard frame will be used for casting pre-mixed concrete for the foundation for the Double Tool Shed. Pre-fab walls and a slanting roof will be pre-cast in concrete at a central location. The concrete walls will be cast with pre-positioned plastic receptors for screws, for mounting shelves later. They will be transported by truck to the site and put into place by a crane.

The main utility supplied by mains under the adjacent street will be water for irrigation. This water may not necessarily be of safe drinking quality. Optionally, both electrical power and/or a telephone cable can also be supplied from the Street to the middle of the Double Tool Shed, where they can be split for the Tenants of the two halves. Electrical power could potentially involve two cables:

• one cable switched on during the night, feeding a street lamp mounted on top of the Double Tool Shed, and
• one cable non-switched, for using electricity at any time of the day.

Individual meters may be appropriate. Particularly for prototype development, it will be useful to measure how much water is being used to achieve given levels of production for different crops.

There should be a chain-link fence on the street side of each field -- to provide nominal protection from simple trespassing and theft. This chain-link fence will be broken by

• a door, 1-meter wide, for people to enter and
• a gate, 3-meters wide, for a vehicle to enter and park.

Both the door and gate should be lockable, using a simple padlock.

There should also be a chain-link fence separating the two columns of fields, i.e. Field 1-1 from Field 2-1, etc. An optional chain-link fence between adjacent fields in a column should also be considered. If tenants are assigned to a pair of fields in the same way that they are assigned to a Double House in the associated Village, as defined below, this could help to reduce risks of theft.

Water pipe will be installed along the boundary between alternating pairs of fields, such as between fields 1-1 and 1-2. There will be 3 water faucets at 20-meter intervals. In a low-cost version, there would be only 1 pipe along this boundary and one water faucet at each location. In this case, it would not be possible to measure the consumption of water separately for the pair of two fields. In a more-expensive version, there would be two pipes in parallel and a pair of water faucets at each of the 3 location, one on each side of the fence. In this case, with separate water meters, it would be possible to measure the consumption of water for irrigation separately for the two fields.

There would be a Path or sidewalk, 1-meter wide, on each side of this common border with the water faucets. It should allow the tenants to move a wheel barrow along this border and to use a 35-meter water hose, attached to a water faucet, to reach any point in the field.

A typical layout within a field is illustrated in Field 1-3. The first 10 meters are reserved for a working area. This allows a vehicle to drive into the field and park. A total of 140 rows of plants can then be planted with a separation of 50 cm. between rows in the remaining 70 meters of the field.

After deducting for the sidewalk, with an additional margin of 1 meter at each end, each row should be at least 22 meters long. If plants are separated by 20 cm. each, this would allow planting 110 plants per row, or 15,540 plants per field.

2.3 Requirements for Apartments and Houses

Each apartment and house will have connections for

• clean water of drinking quality, possibly to include a separate main for solar-heated water for a shower and washing,
• sewage pipe,
• electricity,
• telephone, possibly with an option of low-cost analog versus higher-cost ISDN, and
• cable television, possibly including high-resolution channels for multi-media education.

Each apartment and house will be equipped internally at a minimum with

• a bathroom containing a shower, toilet, and wash basin;
• a kitchen containing
  • an electric stove with small oven and at least 2 plates,
  • a small electric refrigerator,
  • a 2-basin sink, and cabinets for storing utensils and food;
• a living room containing
  • a low-cost AM/FM radio,
  • a low-cost TV,
  • an optional telephone,
  • a table for dining and/or writing, and
  • chairs;
• one to three bedrooms, with
  • beds, often one single bed over another single bed to save space, and
  • cabinets for storing clothes.

As high-tech options, the residents of each apartment or house will be able to rent or buy and then install

• a video player,
• a telefax machine, and/or
• a personal computer, connected with other personal computers within a local Intranet

in order to increase their own educational opportunities as well as opportunities for providing some high-level services for pay (such as accounting, word-processing, translations, and computer programming). An extra rent can be charged for such options.

A "house" will be one half of a single-story duplex house, consisting of 2 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a patio terrace. Each house will have approximately 60 square meters of living area on a plot of 120 square meters. It will be located within 1 kilometer of an associated plot of land of Size 2.

An "apartment" will have 1, 2, 3, or 4 bedrooms plus one living room, one kitchen, and one bathroom. It will be in a 2-story apartment building. At the rear of each pair of apartments, one above and the other below, there will be two gardens of Size 1, typically 4 x 5 meters each behind apartments with a front of 8 meters each. The apartment buildings could be designed with a larger or smaller front, depending upon the number of bedrooms, so that the gardens also have a larger or smaller width, but the same depth, yielding areas roughly proportional to the number of bedrooms and number of people residing in each apartment. The residents of apartments will not be primarily engaged in farming, but in other jobs or entrepreneurial activities of their own.

2.4 Design of Double Houses

One Double House in a "Village" will be assigned to each pair of fields of Size 2. Each Double House will be on a plot of 20 meters x 15 meters in a nearby Village, along a Path that is 3-meters wide. Each half of the Double House will be on a plot of 10 meters x 15 meters. The layout for each Double House on its plot of land is illustrated in Figure 2-2.

Figure 2-2: A Complete Double House, Showing Both Halves

Several Double Houses will be built next to each other along a common Path. The separation between Double Houses will be 2 meters, with 1-meter on each side of the separating boundary. The roofs of adjacent Double Houses will extend 50 cm. each, leaving a gap of 1 meter between adjacent roofs. This will act as a filter, allowing 50% of the sunlight falling on this 2-meter separation to pass through. At the back of each Double House, the two gardens face the two gardens of the next row of Double Houses, back-to-back.

Figure 2-3: Plot of Land for the Left Half of a Double House

Each Double House has an option for having either 2 or 3 bedrooms. Initially, it will be constructed with only 2 bedrooms, plus a Covered Terrace. This means that the foundations, floor, and roof will already be in place over this Covered Terrace, making it easy for the Tenant to build walls to convert it from a Covered Terrace into a 3rd Bedroom, of the same size as the Master Bedroom, if so desired.

The Left Half of a Double House is shown in more detail in Figure 2-3 above.

The total living area for half of a Double House is:

Figure 2-4: Kitchen in Left Half of Double House

The Kitchen for the left half is shown in Figure 2-4 above. Two standard 60-cm. wide countertops, 3 cm. thick, are pre-cut -- with cutouts for built-in cooking plates and a double-basin sink. These countertops will be high-enough to accommodate standard built-in components, such as an oven, refrigerator, and an optional clothes washing machine. It may be appropriate to increase the space between the Oven and the Refrigerator, for thermal separation.

All connections for water are on the front wall of the house, next to the Path with the water mains.

Figure 2-5: Bathroom in Left Half of Double House

The Bathroom contains a Toilet, Wash Basin, and a Shower. Both the Toilet and Washbasin are also on the front wall of the house, next to the Path with the water mains. It is shown in Figure 2-5 above.

Figure 2-6: Master Bedroom in Left Half of Double House

The Master Bedroom has a small Wash Basin with hot and cold running water on the front wall of the house, next to the Path with the water mains. It is dimensioned for a Narrow Double Bed, 150 x 200 cm. It also has a writing table and book shelves for studying and accounting. It is shown in Figure 2-6 above.

Figure 2-7: Children's Bedroom in Left Half of Double House

The Children's Bedroom has room for 2 multi-level single beds, with optionally 1, 2, or 3 levels. When both have 3 levels, this provides a total of 6 beds in this room. The ceiling is much higher than for the Master Bedroom, to provide a larger airspace for the larger number of people that may be sleeping in this room. This room also has 2 writing tables and bookshelves for studying. This room is shown in Figure 2-7 above.

Figure 2-8: Loft Over Front of Left Half of a Double House

Figure 2-9: Roof over the Bedrooms of Each Half of a Double House

Figure 2-10: Roof over the Kitchen and Living Room of Each Half of a Double House

A Loft will be created by installing a floor over the front part of each house, as shown in Figure 2-8 above.

It provides an extra 26.62 square meters of floor space as storage space and can be used for extra beds if necessary. It also provide thermal insulation between the roof and the rooms below it.

The Roof will have a slant, to provide run-off of rain water during rainy seasons. The Roof over the bedrooms is shown in Figure 2.9 above and the Roof over the Kitchen and Living Room is shown in Figure 2-10 above:

The role of the Loft is easier to see in the two preceding figures.

Because of the proximity to the Path and to neighboring houses, the Double Houses will only have 2 Windows that allow people from outside to see into the Double House. One such Window will be located over the Double-Basin Sink in the Kitchen (see Figure 2-4 above). While working in the Kitchen, Tenants will be able to view the Path in front of their house. The other such Window will be in the Living Room, giving a view of the Main Garden (see Figure 2-3 above).

The other rooms will also have Windows, located higher, that provide both natural daylight during the day and circulation of fresh air. Both Bedrooms will have at least 2 Windows each, on different walls, to allow cross circulation of air. All Windows will have screens to keep out insects. Both the Kitchen and Bathroom will have ventilation ducts and slotted ventilating doors.

The Double Houses have been designed for low-cost construction, while providing substantially more comfort than most of the foreseen Tenants have even dreamed of. Figure 2-11 shows how the use of water has been limited to the front wall as far as possible, to simplify the laying of water pipe.

There is a Double Utilities-Distribution Box in front of each house, as is shown in Figure 2-2 above and Figure 2-11 below. This Double Utilities-Distribution Box receives inputs from the utility mains under the Path for

• cold water for drinking and washing;
• hot water for cooking, washing, and showering;
• sewage drains;
• electricity;
• telephone; and
• cable television.

This Double Utilities-Distribution Box divides these two inputs from the mains for the two halves of the Double House, with separate meters for each half as appropriate.

Figure 2-11: Connections for Hot Water, Cold Water, and Sewage Drains

2.5 Construction of Double Houses

Pre-fabrication methods will be used as far as feasible to reduce costs while maintaining high standards of quality. A standard frame will be used for casting foundations of ready-mix concrete. Ducts for water, sewage, electricity, etc. will be inserted in this frame, before the concrete is cast. A thin layer will be cast across the whole floor, that will later be ground and polished as a terrazzo floor of durable quality.

The walls will be prefabricated as cast concrete slabs. The door frames, window frames, and ducts for electricity, cable television, and telephone will be mounted in the casting frames before the concrete is cast. Some thermal-insulation materials may also be included in these slabs, partially to reduce the amount of concrete required as well as the weight. These slabs will be transported on trucks to the site and will be lifted into position using a portable crane.

All walls are tentatively specified as being 15 cm. thick. This may correspond more appropriately for walls made out of bricks. For walls pre-cast out of concrete, it may be appropriate to use a larger thickness for outer walls and a thinner thickness of inner walls (with less thermal insulation included). As options, thermal insulation and protective covering can be added to the outside of outer walls later.

The roof will consist of 4 pre-cast concrete slabs. Initially, no insulation on the inside or surfacing on the outside will be necessary -- they can be added by the Tenant later. No eaves troughs or water drainage pipes will be installed initially, but may be added later.

Such Double Houses can readily be built with an assembly-line approach.

First, the utility mains are laid in the Path between two parallel lines of Double Houses. Connections can be made complete to the Double Utilities-Distribution Boxes for each Double House. Then, the Path can be surfaced, to support traffic by heavy trucks and mobile cranes.

Because the Double Houses are close to each other on Paths, there are relatively few connections to the utility mains. This feature is shown in Figure 2-12 below.

Next, the foundations for all Double Houses on both sides of a Path can be cast. Then, the Double Houses can be assembled from pre-fabricated components, rapidly one after the other. Finally, the detailed finishing, grinding and polishing the terrazzo floors, and installing the fixed furniture can be completed.

Earthquakes are not a serious problem in the regions under consideration here. Still, the Double Houses should be built for safe use over many years.

Figure 2-12: Connections Between Utility Mains and Double Houses

Each path has 8 Double Houses on each side of it. Therefore, each of the utility mains under the Path is tapped only 8 times, for serving 32 individual houses (halves of Double Houses). Each tap is split twice: first for both sides of the Path and second for both halves of each Double House. This reduces costs for delivering these utilities to the houses efficiently.

With 300 work days per year and 5 years for constructing a complete Agri-City with approximately 25,000 Double Houses, there would be 300 x 5 = 1500 work days. This would require 25,000 Double Houses / 1500 work days = 16 2/3 Double Houses that would need to be completed every work day on an assembly-line basis within this schedule. If the time frame is extended to 10 years for completing the Agri-City, this would involve completing 8 1/3 Double Houses per work day on an average. Once estimates are available for the number of man-days of work required per Double House, it will be possible to calculate how many workers will be required for meeting such production rates.

Once facilities have been established for manufacturing such pre-fab Double Houses on a large scale, individual Double Houses, or even halves, can be sold to other buyers, as a side product from this project.

Figure 2-13: Two Villages: Each with 160 Double Fields and 160 Double Houses

2.6 Definition of Villages

Plots of 2,000 square meters each can be configured as 80 x 25 meters each. This ratio is determined by making the length, 80 meters, as long as feasible without making the width, 25 meters, so small that it would cause excessive waste due to the need for a foot path on the side along the length. Lining them up pair-wise along streets within a distance of 1-kilometer walking distance to the next housing area or "Village", would provide a total of 1,000 meters walking distance / 25 meters front for each plot = 40 plots along one side of a street in one direction. With two sides each of two streets passing in parallel past a Village and in two directions from the Village, each Village could have 40 x 8 = 320 plots of 2,000 square meters each within 1-kilometer walking distance.

These relationships are shown in Figure 2-13 above.

This would generate a matching requirement for at least 320 houses to house the 320 families working the 320 plots of land. With an average of 5 or 6 members per family, there would be 320 x 5 or 6 = 1600 or 1920 people living in each such Village. If additional families need to live in the Village, who do not need to have a plot of land to work, this would increase the number of houses required per Village.

The width of a Village is defined as the length of two fields, i.e. 80 meters + 80 meters = 160 meters. Since each Double House is sited on a plot of land 20 meters wide x 15 meters deep, this means that exactly 160 meters / 20 meters = 8 Double Houses can be sited on each side of a Path. Therefore, each Path will have 8 Double Houses on each side, i.e. 16 Double Houses, with a total of 32 single Halves of Double Houses. Therefore, a total of 10 such Paths are required. These relationships are illustrated in Figure 2-14 below.

Using parallel streets, such villages would be separated from each other by only 160 meters plus the width of the streets. This will make it relatively inexpensive to provide lateral underground connections of water pipes, sewage drains, electricity line, telephone lines, and cable-TV cables between neighboring villages.

Figure 2-14: Section of a Village Between 2 Streets Showing 3 of the 10 Paths (Top View Showing Roofs)

The empty spaces between Villages, of the same size as Villages, will be used for recreational purposes. A typical layout for such a Recreational Area is shown in Figure 2-15 below:

There will be 4 Solar Hot-Water Heaters at the 4 corners of each Recreational Area. They will heat water for use in the adjacent rows of Double Houses. They will consist of flat tanks, with reflectors on both sides, that concentrate sunlight on the top side of these tanks to quickly and efficiently heat water in these tanks, which will then be stored in insulated tower tanks. By manually rotating the reflectors on both sides, it will be easy to control the maximum temperature of the hot water.

Each Recreational Area is large enough to have a complete regulation soccer field in one half. This gives a feeling for the space available in the other half for other recreational facilities, such as: children's playgrounds, basketball courts, tennis courts, gardens, etc.

Figure 2-15: Recreational Area of 336 x 160 Meters Between Two Villages with 160 Double Houses Each

A Village Center or Village School can be included in the middle strip of each Recreational Area. This could be in an alternating pattern, with a Village Center in one Recreational Area, a Village School in the next Recreational Area, etc. The Village Centers can contain post offices with post office boxes, one for each half of a Double House. Such a post office would serve all 320 halves of Double Houses in each of the two Villages on each side of the Recreational Area, i.e. 640 post-office boxes.

Each Recreational Area can also contain at least 4 x 40 = 160 parking spaces of 2.5 meters x 5 meters each. This would amount to one parking space for each Double House, i.e. for 50% of all individual houses. Tenants should not be encouraged to own cars themselves, but rather public transportation as buses running efficiently along both vertical and horizontal streets should meet most of their transportation requirements.

Distribution boxes for feeding utilities to the Paths in each Village will also be placed in these Recreational Areas. In particular, there will be fire hydrants located there, so that fire trucks can drive into any of the Paths and draw water from a fire hydrant at either end of the Path.

If each plot for a duplex house is 15 meters deep on each side of each Path, the depth of each Path would be 2 x 15 meters = 30, plus the width of the Path itself. If this width is 3 meters, the gross width per Path will be 33 meters. Two Paths in the middle, the 5'th and 6'th Paths will be 6-meters wide each, i.e. Streets. They will allow horizontal transportation through Recreational Areas to adjacent Villages. Most utilities will follow these horizontal Streets through Villages and Recreational Areas.

The vertical Streets, also 6-meters wide, will carry the mains for irrigation water to the fields of Size 2. The horizontal Paths and Streets will carry the other utility mains delivering utilities to the Double Houses.

All Streets will be paved and will be operated as one-way streets. This allows them to be used by pedestrians, farmers with wheel barrows, trucks picking up produce and delivering supplies, and buses.

2.7 Definition of the City Center

The City Center of each Agri-City will be located in the geographical middle of the Agri-City. It will contain:

• a "City Hall" containing all administrative functions for managing the Agri-City to also include:
  • a large public theater that can also be used as an assembly hall,
  • an attractive park, and
  • parking spaces;
• facilities for providing and distributing communal services and utilities, including
  • at least one bank,
  • telephone services,
  • a central post office,
  • the cable-TV programming and distribution center,
  • a central library,
  • possibly a central hospital,
  • possibly a central high school,
  • Agri-City police force, and
  • voluntary fire department;
• competing privately-operated facilities, including
  • at least 2 small hotels for official guests of the Agri-City,
  • at least 2 restaurants,
  • at least 2 cafes,
  • at least 2 discotheques,
  • at least 2 cinemas,
  • at least 2 large "department stores", and
  • a market place with many small stalls; and
• buildings for rent to local residents and entrepreneurs with
  • small shops on the ground floor and
  • office space on higher floors.

A local bus service will provide ready access to the City Center for all residents of the Agri-City from wherever they live and work.

2.8 Design of the Agri-City with Its City Center

We start with the design goal of having approximately 25,000 Double Houses, i.e. 50,000 single halves of Double Houses in the Agri-City. With 160 Double Houses per Village, this will require about 25,000 Double Houses / 160 Double Houses per Village = 156.25 Villages.

A Rectangular Grid can be defined with 5 rows of Villages and 32 columns of Villages for a total of 160 Villages in the Grid. Each Village, including associated fields and streets, is 332 meters x 2,335 meters. Therefore, the outer dimensions for the Grid are 32 x 332 meters = 10.624 kilometers and 5 x 2,335 meters = 11.68 kilometers.

We can take out the 2 middle Villages, in row 3 and columns 16 & 17, for the City Center. In addition, we can take out one column of fields in columns 15 & 18 on each side of the City Center. This widens the City Center from 2 x 332 meters = 664 meters by 2 x 80 meters = 160 meters, for a total width of the City Center of 664 + 160 = 824 meters <197> not including the vertical Streets. This also means that these two neighboring Villages will have 80 houses without the missing 80 fields, for a total of 160 individual houses without fields. This means that these houses can be rented to people working in the City Center who are not working their own fields.

The City Center will then have a size of 824 meters x 2,335 meters for a total surface area of 1.924 square kilometers. This does not include the two vertical Streets on both sides of the City Center, but does include all streets within the City Center.

From the original 160 Villages in the Grid, 2 have been removed, leaving 158 Villages. They will have a total of 320 houses/Village x 158 Villages = 50,560 houses -- slightly above the original design goal of about 50,000 houses. The total number of fields of Size 2 will be 50,560 - 160 = 50,500 fields of Size 2.

The Rectangular Grid is shown in Figure 2-16 below. The City Center is shown with only its nearest Villages as neighbors in Figure 2-17 below.

Figure 2-16: Rectangular Grid with 5 Rows and 32 Villages per Row in a Rectangle 10.624 Kilometers x 11.68 Kilometers and Showing Agri-City Center in the Middle

Figure 2-17 City Center, Surrounded by Villages

2.9 The Water-Purification Facility

The Water-Purification Facility will pump water from the river, upstream from the Agri-City, at the highest elevation adjacent to the river. It will purify this water to safe drinking standards and add fluorination to prevent cavities in teeth. It will then distribute this water throughout the Agri-City for drinking, cooking, washing, showering, and flushing toilets.

This Facility will also pump additional water from the river and mix the purified water from the Waste-Processing Facility below to create a nutrient-rich water that it will distribute throughout the Agri-City for use only for irrigation.

This Facility will consist of approximately 16 identical modules. These modules will be installed one at a time, as additional capacity is required. It may also install one additional module as a reserve, such as for down-time when maintenance is being performed on another module. This modular approach will minimize capital expenses during the gradual development as the Agri-City is being developed over a period of 5 or more years.

This Facility should be located near the highest point on the tract of land for the Agri-City, so that purified water will flow downwards across the Agri-City, requiring minimal pumping to maintain pressure in the water mains.

2.10 The Sewage-Processing Facility

All sewage from the houses, apartments, and other buildings in the Agri-City will be fed by drainage pipes to the Sewage-Processing Facility, downstream from the Agri-City, because it will have the lowest elevation. This Facility will process this sewage into two components:

• a solid component for use as fertilizer and
• purified water for mixing by the Water-Purification Facilities with water pumped from the river for use as a nutrient-rich water for irrigation throughout the Agri-City.

No sewage or waste from the Agri-City will be dumped or pumped into the river! Some of the water used for irrigation will seep into the ground water and eventually return to the hydrological system of the river, after it has been filtered and purified by natural processes.

The Sewage-Processing Facility will also implement a system for collecting garbage throughout the Agri-City. However, most of the residents will be involved in farming activities and they will be encouraged to dispose of their bio-degradable garbage onto their own compost piles and to use the resulting fertilizer for their own gardens and/or farms. The use of plastic and other packing materials will be discouraged within the Agri-City, thereby minimizing the total amount of non-bio-degradable garbage generated there. Milk, soft drinks, local wine, and mineral water will only be sold in returnable glass bottles.

This Facility will also consist of approximately 16 identical modules, that will be installed one at a time as additional capacity is required.

This Facility should be located near the lowest point on the tract of land for the Agri-City, so that sewage will flow downwards across the Agri-City, requiring minimal pumping to maintain flow in the sewage mains.

2.11 Summary of Land Utilization

This first detailed estimate of 130 sq. kilometers fits into the original guideline of requiring a tract of land approximately 10 x 15 kilometers = 150 sq. kilometers, leaving a comfortable reserve to draw upon as appropriate.

2.12 Definition of an Agri-City

An Agri-City has the following components:

• approximately 50,000 units for one family each consisting of
  • one-half of a Double House house and
  • a separate plot of land of Size 2 for farming purposes,
• approximately 5,000 units, mainly for individuals and families working at various jobs, rather than primarily farming activities, including
  • one apartment with from 1 to 4 bedrooms and
  • one plot of land of Size 1 each,
• approximately 20 larger farms of Size 3, with a larger single house on each,
• a City Center,
• various manufacturing facilities and warehouses on the periphery,
• a Water-Purification Facility, on the upstream side,
• a Sewage-Processing Facility, on the down-stream side, and
• a public Sport Stadium on the periphery.

An Agri-City differs from conventional cities in the following ways:

• An Agri-City has intensive farming activities distributed uniformly throughout the whole area of the Agri-City, except only for the City Center and the periphery where there are some small manufacturing and warehouse facilities. Individual farmers live with their families in standard houses in clusters defined as villages within the Agri-City, within walking distance from their fields.
• An Agri-City is a closed city, where
  • residents must apply for, obtain approval, and sign contracts for living and working in the Agri-City and
  • visitors must be sponsored by a resident of the Agri-City, such as for business purposes or relatives on short visits.
• An Agri-City is designed primarily as a temporary place of residence and work for very-poor people and their families to get their feet on the ground again as private entrepreneurs in equilibrium with nature before going on to either conventional urban or conventional rural occupations.

< Chapter 2 >  

© DACO - DAvies COnsulting GmbH 1997

[Note for writers: Bookmarks are installed at the beginning of each section, i.e. 2.1 - 2.7, and for each figure, i.e. fig2-1 - fig2-3.]