BioSphere swallowed by sprawl

I was fascinated by the BioSphere back in the early 90s. Do you remember it? Financed by oil -illionaire Ed Bass, it was a self contained living space designed to need nothing from the outside. No air, no water, no food. People - I think they were called terranauts - were to live in there for two years, totally self-sustaining.


It's now going to be knocked down to make way for tract homes.

From the NYTimes article: "As it turns out, the real science experiment was going on outside, as development conquered vast swaths of the Sonoran Desert. The Biosphere, miles from nowhere when it was built in the 1980's, is now within the reach of a building boom streaking north from Tucson and south from Phoenix (and which some demographers say will eventually join the two cities, once 100 miles apart)."

The irony of this is just too much. Thousands upon thousands of houses and strip malls being dropped in like monopoly pieces, each sucking water and electricity and food through an asphalt umbilicus connected to the rest of the life-sustaining country. Displacing the very symbol of moving from dependence to sustainability.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/realestate/28nation.html