Michael E. Arth

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Michael E. Arth
Born	April 27, 1953 (1953-04-27) (age 55) Burtonwood, Lancashire, UK
Nationality	United States and United Kingdom
Field	Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Animation, Film, Photography, Architecture, Landscape Design, Urban Design

Michael E. Arth, born on April 27, 1953, is an American artist, home/landscape/urban designer, futurist, and author.

Contents 1 Art 2 Building and urban design 3 The Garden District 4 Solution to Homelessness 5 New Urban Cowboy 6 UNICE 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Art

Michael E. Arth has worked with a wide range of media; From rock concert posters in the early 1970s, to original prints like etchings, serigraphs, and lithographs, to paintings, and photography. A large format book of his work, Michael E. Arth: Introspective 1972-1982, was published in 1983.^[1] He shifted focus in 1986 to home and urban design. In 2007, in collaboration with filmmaker Blake Wiers, he produced his first feature length documentary.

[edit] Building and urban design

Arth designed, built, and landscaped a small number of private residences in Southern California from 1986 to 2000, most notably "Casa de Lila," a seven-story Spanish style villa integrated into a mountain ridge in the Hollywood Hills.

In 1999, Arth founded a more pedestrian and ecology-oriented version of New urbanism called New pedestrianism.^[2] His new approach calls for very compact new towns and neighborhoods where tree-shaded, pedestrian and bike lanes are in front of all residences and businesses, with tree-lined automobile streets at the rear. While the pedestrian lane idea is not entirely original (examples of rear loading garages with front sidewalks that replace streets were built in Venice, California, as early as 1910), his fervent emphasis on this as a panacea makes his work distinctive.

Arth claims that living in what he calls a Pedestrian Village, coupled with a compact, mixed-use neighborhood or village center, will ameliorate a wide range of problems related to urban living. Having such a development built near a downtown area or newly-created village center reduces the amount of travel time that would normally be spent in an automobile, thus increasing the physical activity of the homeowner and saving energy. In more densely built new towns or developments, he claims that this new form of housing would greatly reduce the dependency on the automobile and the resulting village-like towns would vastly increase both aesthetics and quality of life. He also promotes the creation of similar pedestrian amenities that can be retrofitted to existing towns. Arth's design and development company, Pedestrian Villages Inc., develops projects that follow the principles of New pedestrianism.^[3]

[edit] The Garden District

In 2000, while working on a book and documentary, The Labors of Hercules: Modern Solutions to 12 Herculean Problems,^[4] Arth found a small slum in DeLand, Florida, where he could try out some of his ideas. Subsequently, he purchased 32 dilapidated homes and businesses, which he restored over an seven-year period. Running out the drug dealers and rebuilding the downtown neighborhood won him the support of the community and a number of awards. He changed the name of "Crack Town" to Downtown DeLand's Historic Garden District. Arth enhanced the existing infrastructure by planting trees and by building pedestrian lanes, gardens, courtyards, and bike facilities in the district.^[5]

In 2004, Arth designed and secured local planning approval of a major mixed-use development in the Garden District that exemplifies the major tenets of New Pedestrianism. "The Palm Garden" was to consist of twenty-eight shops and restaurants and a health facility overlooking a sunken tropical garden complete with swimming pools and waterfalls - all on a car free promenade. Fifty-two residences were proposed above the retail space. Across the street, the "Palm Garden Cottages," was to consist of twelve houses facing a pedestrian lane with a garden and community pool house. The garages are located at the rear on an automobile street with the houses overlooking a tree-lined, car-free pedestrian lane in front, according to NP principles.^[6] These new projects were on hold as of 2007 due to a downturn in the Florida economy. ^[7]

[edit] Solution to Homelessness

In 2007 Arth proposed a controversial national solution for homelessness that would involve building nearly carfree Pedestrian Villages in place of what he terms "the current band-aid approach to the problem."^[8] A prototype, Tiger Bay Village, was proposed for near Daytona Beach, FL. He claims that this would be superior for treating the psychological as well as psychiatric needs of both temporarily and permanently homeless adults, and would cost less than the current approach. It would also provide a lower cost alternative to jail, and provide a half-way station for those getting out of prison. Work opportunities, including construction and maintenance of the villages, as well as the creation of work force agencies would help make the villages financially and socially viable. ^[9][10][11]

[edit] New Urban Cowboy

New Urban Cowboy, a feature length documentary, was released in April 2008. The film chronicles Arth's rehabilitation of DeLand's Garden District and explains the philosophy behind New Pedestrianism.^[12][13][14]

[edit] UNICE

UNICE (Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities) is a vision of the future that Arth has been developing since 1969. He coined the term UNICE in the 1990s to describe the conscious intelligence that he theorizes "will soon emerge on Earth from a hive-like interaction of computers, humans, and the Internet."^[15] Arth believes that UNICE, in both its collective and endless individual forms, will herald a Technological Singularity, which may produce intelligent, non-biological life that may envelope the Earth and then spread outward into space.^[16] Arth is working on a book and a documentary about this subject.^[16][12]

[edit] See also

• New pedestrianism
• New urbanism
• Labours of Hercules
• DeLand, FL
• Eschatology
• List of urban theorists
• Transhumanism
• Technological Singularity
• Homelessness
• Principles of Intelligent Urbanism

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Michael E. Arth's website
• Information about UNICE
• Producer of "New Urban Cowboy"
• New Urban Cowboy site
• Online version of The Labors of Hercules
• About New Pedestrianism