Paolo Soleri has a vision for how cities could be built. The operative word is “pedestrian,” but by that we donʼt mean ordinary; we mean a place thatʼs walkable. Soleri thinks any society based on the automobile is ultimately unsustainable. So, as you may have already guessed, heʼs not a big fan of urban sprawl.

Aaron visits Arcosanti, Soleriʼs “urban laboratory” in the Arizona desert to talk with the Italian-born architect about community and the built environment we inhabit.

Robert Bruegmann thinks sprawl is neither good nor bad: just inevitable. He reminds us the word “suburbia” comes to us from the Latin “beyond the walls” and thatʼs a hint that subrban sprawl has been a fact of city life for almost as long as humans have lived in cities.