Monuments of architecture and creators of the transcendence - Doomsday Structures (Part 3)

(All images sourced from the public domain)

There is probably not much we can do to reverse climate change, the most significant effect would be to lessen the damage already done to ecosystems, that have maintained an equilibrium of balance within the natural environments, but our society, despite the outcries, is still very much obsessed with cars, aeroplane travel and perpetual tourism.  Fueling interconnected trade markets – all of which are booming.  With all this concern, and rightly so, of climate change, the most harmful contributor to global warming are jet engine planes.  And the reality, in someways, lies hypocritical sentiments, there are the obvious concerns that are of a scientific relevancy, but, unfortunately, the persuasions are interfused with catchphrase idealisms and feel good bias.  Which, in its retrospection tend to become lost in digital feedbacks.  Beyond changing the current lifestyles to make a difference, which is to alter the financial ambition of the middle class, maybe a hard lesson not many are willing to partake.

 The underlying issue is that our society in its current 21st Century manifestation, has embraced a certain era, that not by design, but as an aspiration of stability, is 1950s traditional values ala the reemergence of the 'new' nuclear family, that as an interesting take on mid century and traditionalist desire, has become a recopying or simulacrum of its societal imprint, that wealth and ambition could be leveled out.  Embracing the core aspects of mainstream and institutionalized concept of society from the Universities, fast paced digital technology through to corporate metric sales charts and the current marriage boom.  This modern version of the nuclear family, even though it has accepted marriage as a hallmark of stability, curiously, within its markable inclusions, has removed faith and the Church out of the equation.  If we look back at the 1950s as a template, in respect to the great American Author Mark Twain once said, history doesn't repeat it's self but it often rhymes, and this on a global scale, with climate change now front and center as a news item to what is occurring today throughout the world, within its technological consumption – very much like the 1950s of the belief that new technologies would liberate the working class. In light of this crisis there maintains the growth of families, property values and investment rising exponentially – new cars and the habitual overseas trip every year.  What is evident, is the underlying greed that is the motivation of expansion and it was this greed set within the precedence over 60 years ago, that exasperated itself into a economic and social collapsed pre 1960s.  What is important to correlate, is that it has very little to do with political ideologies of the both right and left, rather it has become its own idealogical perspective.  And when the counter culture was born of that period in real-time – only diluting itself in the decades that followed, its purpose, despite ad hoc sentimentalization was to break down the ideology of the middle class family unit, except as novel as it was in its early manifestations or rebellion, what we have today are just replayed romanticisms with their associated posture.  The imprint of a society that is clinging to the suburban dream and whatever sensibilities they can muster in its justification.  Is very much set in place.

If the main doomsday scenario or concern, of a societies middle class is the environmental issues that in turn may lead into an economic malady, a cataclysmic shift, away from the safety of what seemingly is a new traditionalism – it is not a direct critique of values associated with suburbs, families and the growth of cities.  Yet, one cannot dismiss that overpopulation is a key problem for city environments.  Which, if that is the case and there has been an encouraged population boom globally.  It will be that sourcing of ideas of structural design, that could be set in place to offset our overpopulated cities.  Rather than token activism per se. As In the late 1960s, after the boom of the 50's, a series of environmental crisis began to galvanize the publics attention as a major concern, particularly in America at the time.  By 1970, there was 100 million vehicles on American Roads, which in turn produced half of the country emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.  Air pollution began to be a persistent problem for Los Angeles and New York, with a lapse in environmental controls, American industries contributed to the ground level ozone effect, produced only by human industries, known as Smog.  By the early 1970s, the American government acted on reducing industry impact of air quality, improvements were seen in New York and Los Angeles, but, recently Smog has made a comeback more so soot pollution, which is far deadly – contributed, despite the strict air quality control for companies, by a growing population and its changing topography of the major cities; which means more cars are on the road. The main culprit Ozone pollution. 

If the mentioned sociological aspects of our society are entrenched and maintained by population expansion, even though there is awareness of a environmental doomsday. What if, there is a proposal put forth in developing a city that separates itself from the natural environment – as a created and enclosed environment.  Protected and self sufficient in its construction.  An ecological concept that means reducing impact from the overreaching of resources and expansion. An induced contraction of a societies imprint, without the economic pain attached, but instead a withdrawal back into the basic aspects of city living.  Confined in its own world within the natural world.  This idea was devised at the height of the cold war and environmental crisis throughout the 1950s 60's and 70's.  To what was known as the Dome Cities.  Very much a futuristic idealism or prelude to the doomsday structures that were a reminder of a nuclear war, but rather than a dystopian cold war expression of concrete and steel.  They were by its concept and design Utopian cities.