Living Small in the City

We've looked at tiny houses for the past few days, and they are wonderful.  However, in the interest of urban density, which is needed to preserve habitat and drastically lower carbon emissions, which is paramount to reigning in climate change, let's move on to what a "tiny house" would look like in the city.  These apartments are too big by some standards to qualify as tiny per se, but, at 590 square feet, they are still quite modest.  I like that the architects Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores have designed this building around the concept of community, with the understanding that social interaction is a key ingredient in our happiness.  I also like that all of the apartments have balconies for the residents to enjoy outside space.  It's nice that there is a courtyard with plants and a fountain, because this will create a wind-free, moderate micro-climate from which people can benefit, even if it's just by opening a window.  It's nice, too, that a "low rent" community gets to live somewhere so beautiful.  This looks like some of the high scale luxury apartment complexes I've seen, yet it's a reasonable and low-impact place to live.

Tokyo's Sky City: Not for the faint of heart

The Tokyo Sky City vision (it's in the design phase now with no plans for construction yet) looks to me like the designers are trying hard to come up with helpful solutions to overcrowding and resource management, and I get why they're thinking along these lines - it's very creative and solution-oriented.  Building up rather than out has a lot of advantages when it comes to creating less carbon emissions, and urban density has a lot going for it in the realm of sustainability, though I understand the impetus behind this project is land pricing.  However, this idea of the Sky City looks to me like one big security fail.  Any skyscraper of course bears the burden of emergency preparedness, but I can't imagine what would happen to the people in a building that fits a whole city of 100,000 people in the event of tragedy.  Perhaps I have more to learn about this design concept, but my gut reaction is that I'd never want to live there.  If I'm being honest, though, I'd love to visit if this plan ever becomes reality.