HYDROPONIC MEGALOPOLIS

 "Le plus beau désert du monde" The most beautiful dessert on earth. Uruk, today known as Warka, is the oldest city on earth - built circa 5000 BC along the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. A turning point and key innovation in human history. Fertile soil at the river banks allowed the development of an extensive irrigation systems and with that the domestication of local grains and vegetation. Controlled food production became a reality and with that the emergence of agriculture and empirical science. 

Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydro-culture which involves growing plants, crops or vegetation for medical use, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in an artificial environment.

Hydroponic Magalopolis is a city in the future which covers either vast desertification or flooded regions subject to climate change and with that rising water levels (average for 2022 was 101.2 mm) due the combination of melting of glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of sea waters as it warms. Food production will be localised and distributed possibly a return to wet markets in public squares or along streets, walking paths or canals. Met consumption would have nearly disappeared not due environmental nor ethical concerns but due it exorbitant production cost.

Thus, Hydroponic Megalopolis will localise its functions and livability in self-contained districts, villages or 15-minute walking cities, as a poly-centre city rather currently prevailing mono-centred.

Guillermo Aranda-MenaⒸ2024