EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – THE PROBLEM AND OUR SOLUTION
Human Civilization has been developing over the last 6,000 years. In the beginning our numbers were small and our technology was only starting to be discovered. Our impact upon the Earth was negligible. Since that beginning we have grown to vast populations that cover the Earth with more powerful technology. We now have the power to effect how the Earth functions. Unfortunately, we have not understood this powerful effect and are damaging the very environment that supports us.
Our technology has created generational advances in almost every field except one. I am referring to the organizational patterns of our cities. As cities grew larger there was little attempt to organize them into a more efficient mode that would improve operations. A big opportunity for change came in the late 1800’s with the advent of electricity. This clean, easily available energy source dramatically changed the shapes of our cities. Electric powered elevators allowed us to live and work above five stories tall. Electric lighting allowed shallower, deeper floors and eliminated the need for high windows. Electricity changed the shape of buildings, but not the patterns of their location.
With all of these improvements from electricity, cities are still the same as ancient times: little more than one to two story structures with roads connecting them. Cities are mostly laid out in grid patterns, a few radial patterns and some that display random angles and convergences that can be best described as “goat paths”. Nothing has changed in 6,000 years!
Two new technologies have given humans the best opportunity to change this rigid mold. The first is the computer that has allowed us to design much bigger and more complicated building designs. The second is improved building materials and assembly technology that allow the computer designs to be enacted. Together size and shape are not longer a constraint to Mankind’s imagination.
There is one last piece to this puzzle of new city design that must be enacted that allows us to build the City of the Future. That is the understanding and integration of ecology into this total new design. The environmental problems facing the world today are the result of humans separating themselves from Natural Reality and attempting to force that artificial world upon Nature. It is not working. It is now time for humans to re-organize their cities and lifestyles into a new pattern that harmonizes with Nature.
Developers, architects and urban planners have attempted to discover this elusive secret of life in the future. They take little steps while spending billions of dollars moving forward in uncertainty. The In-Harmony Foundation has been formed to provide the definitive solution so that Mankind can move forward with better way to enjoy our new knowledge and technology.
Utilizing a process called System Design Management we have completed a thorough analysis of the problems, found solutions to them individually and then sought a common denominator that simplified the final solution. The result of this dissertation is the creation of the In-Harmony System.