[Image: An otherwise unrelated photo of Playas, New Mexico—a different kind of "test city"—taken by Steve Rowell for CLUI].
A private consulting firm in Washington D.C. is developing a "test city"—one "with no permanent population"—in the New Mexico desert, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It will be "a privately financed, small city on 20 square miles in New Mexico for testing and evaluation of new and emerging technologies," run from afar by Pegasus Global Holdings.
This as yet unnamed location will be devoted to the "'real world' testing of smart grids, renewable energy integration, next-gen wireless, smart grid cyber security and terrorism vulnerability," making it a life-size trial for private sector urban management—Cisco's city-in-a-box and IBMurbanism wrapped in one.
I'm inclined to ask what it might look like if other corporations were to launch their own "test cities" in the desert somewhere—an REI city, complete with artificial whitewater rapids, campfires, and outdoor climbing walls; a Playboy city, complete with unlockable shared doors between neighboring bedrooms; an AMC city, with screens and streetside auditoriums, and massive projectors on cranes like new constellations in the sky.
What if the city you live in is simply an immersive product demonstration for a group of private companies? Or is that what cars did to the American city long ago?
I'm particularly impressed by the image of the test city. It looks like two images taken of the same site in different temporalities and light conditions. Did they set up a giant mirror on a moutain facing de valley?
Field test by British academics marks first step towards recreating an artificial volcano that would inject particles into the stratosphere and cool the planet
It sounds barmy, audacious or sci-fi: a tethered balloon the size of Wembley stadium suspended 20km above Earth, linked to the ground by a giant garden hose pumping hundreds of tonnes of minute chemical particles a day into the thin stratospheric air to reflect sunlight and cool the planet.
But a team of British academics will next month formally announce the first step towards creating an artificial volcano by going ahead with the world's first major "geo-engineering" field-test in the next few months. The ultimate aim is to mimic the cooling effect that volcanoes have when they inject particles into the stratosphere that bounce some of the Sun's energy back into space, so preventing it from warming the Earth and mitigating the effects of man-made climate change.
Hacking the planet - potential geo-engineering solutions
Ocean nourishment
Billions of iron filings are deposited in the ocean to stimulate a phytoplankton bloom. The aim is to enhance biological productivity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Many experiments have been conducted, including fertilisation of 900 square kilometers (350 sq miles) of the Atlantic. Results so far are disappointing.
Space mirrors
Giant "mirrors", made of wire mesh, could be sent into in orbit to deflect sunlight back into space. But the scale needed, the expense and the potential unintended consequences are so great that it is widely considered unrealistic. In the same league as the idea to mine the moon to create a shielding cloud of dust.
Cloud whitening
The idea is to increase the water content in low clouds by spraying sea water at them. This makes them reflect more sunlight. It would be pretty harmless, and cheap but would have to be done on an immense scale to have any global effect. Backed by Bill Gates.
Artificial trees
Proposed by climate scientist Wallace Broecker who imagines 60m artificial "trees" dotted around the world, "scrubbing" the air by capturing CO2 in a filter and then storing it underground. The trees could remove more carbon dioxide than an equivalent-sized real tree.
Carbon dioxide is collected from coal or other fossil fuel power plants and is then pumped underground. Works in principle but it is expensive and increases the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant by 25%-40%. More than 40 plants have been built with many others planned.
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