Michael E. Arth
Michael Edward Arth (also: Michael E. Arth, * April 27, 1953 in Burtonwood, Lancashire, United Kingdom) is an American artist, home, landscape and urban planner, futurist and author.
Art
Michael E. Arth has worked with a wide range of media; starting with rock concert posters in the early 1970s on engraving and screen printing up to drawings, paintings, photography and films. A large-format book of his works, Michael E. Arth: Introspective 1972-1982, released in 1983, he shifted his focus in 1986 on the architectural design, building and urban planning.. In 2007, he co-produced with filmmaker Blake Wiers his first feature length documentary.
Construction and urban planning
In the years 1986 to 2000, designed, built and designed Arth landscaped a number of private properties in Southern California, especially " Casa de Lila, " a seven-story Spanish villa in the hills of Hollywood Hills.
In 1999, Arth a strong pedestrian-and environmentally -oriented version of the New Urbanism, the so-called New Pedestrianism. His new approach is based on very dense built new cities and neighborhoods where planted in front of the homes and shops trees and pedestrian and bicycle paths are created and are provided at the rear of tree-lined roads. However, the idea of the pedestrian zone is not fundamentally new ( Examples of rear garages with front sidewalks in place and as a replacement of the existing roads, there were already 1910 in Venice, California ), but his passionate championing this solution as a panacea for the current problems draws its working out.
Arth claims that life in a so-called " Pedestrian Village " ( pedestrian city), coupled with dense, mixed or village center, reduce many problems would that brings the city life with it. Such buildings near a city center or housing development area reducing startup times in the car, thereby increasing the physical activity of the homeowner and also save energy. He claims that in new, more densely built towns and settlements, this new form of development would reduce the car dependency drastically, and the resulting village -like cities would serve both the aesthetics and increase quality of life. He is also campaigning for the creation of similar pedestrian-friendly facilities with which existing cities could also be retrofitted. Arths design and construction, Pedestrian Villages Inc., develops projects that follow the principle of the New Pedestrianism.
The Garden District
In 2000, Arth discovered while working on his documentary The Labors of Hercules: Modern Solutions to 12 Herculean problem, a small slum in DeLand, Florida, where he was able to test some of his ideas. He earned thirty dilapidated homes and commercial buildings, which he restored within six years. The expulsion of the drug traffickers and the reconstruction of the downtown district helped him support from the community and won him several awards. He changed the name "Crack Town" in "Downtown DeLand 's Historic Garden District ". Arth evaluated on the existing infrastructure by planting trees and walkways, gardens, courtyards and facilities for bicycles docked.
In 2004 he designed and secured planning permission for a major mixed-use building project in the Garden District, which serves as an example of the essential principles of New Pedestrianism. " The Palm Garden " will consist of twenty-eight shops, restaurants and health care facilities, which overlook a deeper tropical garden with swimming facilities and waterfalls - all this at a car-free promenade. Fifty-two apartments are planned over the small shops. Compared to be incurred " Palm Garden Cottages " from twelve houses which are located on a pedestrian street with garden and communal pool house. According to the principles of the New Pedestrianism the garages are located in the rear part of a highway, while the front houses overlook a with tree-lined, traffic-free pedestrian zone. These new projects have stagnated since 2007 due to the deterioration of economic conditions in Florida.
Solutions for homelessness
2007 suggested Arth a controversial national solution for homelessness before which the construction virtually car-free Pedestrian Villages ( pedestrian villages) provides instead of what he referred to as " instantaneous patch approach to the problem ." " A prototype, Tiger Bay Village, was for the area near Daytona Beach, Florida, is proposed. He claimed that this was a better therapy for psychological and psychiatric needs of homeless people, and would cost less than the conventional approach. working opportunities, including the construction and maintenance of the villages, and the creation of employment offices would help make the villages financially and socially viable.
New Urban Cowboy
New Urban Cowboy, a feature length documentary, will start in 2008. The film draws on Arths rehabilitation of DeLand 's Garden District and explains the philosophy behind New Pedestrianism.
UNICE
UNICE (Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities) is a vision of the future that Arth developed since 1969. He developed the concept of UNICE in the 1990s to explain the conscious intelligence ( conscious intelligence ) which he theorized as " soon on the earth emerging, hive -like interaction of computers, people, and the Internet ". Arth believes that UNICE, will launch both in their holistic and in its endless individual forms, a technological singularity ( Technological Singularity ), which could produce intelligent, non- biological life, which envelop the earth and then could expand into space. Arth working on a book and a documentary on this topic.