Looked around a bit more about “autarkic city blocks” and some interesting stuff came up:
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In more mainstream urban development, the concept is called “sustainable city”. That article also contains examples from around the world, but nothing as extreme as the proposal above
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The main authority in this area seems to be Vicente Guallart. He was Chief Architect of Barcelona City Council until 2015, and has an architecture studio in Barcelona. He wrote resp. edited two relevant books:
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Regarding practical examples of self-sufficient city / apartment blocks, the only one I found was eventually not built: in 2009, there was a design competition by the city of Dallas and a design studio called “Re:Vision Dallas” about a self-sufficient city block, and a design called “Forwarding Dallas” by Atelier Data and MOOV (Lisbon, Portugal) won. Construction was meant to start in 2011, but for reasons I could not find out, the project location is still a parking lot. Can’t find the project on the atelier’s website, either.
In total, focusing on the renovation of an existing apartment complex or city block seems a much better way in for urban radical self-sufficiency systems than to approach cities directly. What sets the proposal above apart from all other self-sufficient city blocks is that it does not just care about energy, water and food but also integrates circular economic production of most items of day-to-day use.
I still don’t see a clear way to actually make such a project happen, but maybe somebody else has an idea. @hazem, maybe you find this interesting … esp. since you’re living in the same city as Mr. Guallart now …