Buckminster Fuller proposed such a self-contained pyramidal city as far back as 1967 but could never get any municipal planners interested, despite the obvious advantages, notably its energy efficiency and virtually eliminating the need for daily transportation to and from work, school, shopping, medical appointments etc. The main reason it didn't fly back then was that developers (who make their profit by converting low-cost rural land into sprawling subdivisions) would suddenly be out of business -- and in our town (and probably yours too) the developers have a lot of clout at city hall.
The day that some country decides to put a stop to the bulldozing of arable land to build more suburbs and expressways will be the day that a concept such as this one becomes a reality.

The Ziggurat in its purest form for a base where the huge slab rests firmly a series of huge arches where the operations owed to gravity fed sewage disposal would take a greywater operation through series of small iron polymer cubes until achieving blackwater status to then in copious amounts coat the nutrient hungry fauna to if done methodically in small batches with gentle force can create a green thriving zone for a desert or lets say a Tundra if in Canada !<p>
The size of the base and built eco communitty would have to scale down its population to achive success for people who demans comfort do not pay for it to live in phone booths and stuck to their neighbors instead roomy accomodations with a great arced powerful solar emitting fibreglass window backed by another set of windows to create a huge vortex of many contributory heated air sharing pockets of which sustain massive tropical and food plant species in all their splendour much like a mall sized earth ship only pyramidical but much lower and with straight arced window walls that will by nature if in hurricane or tornado prone areas in all probability through wind dynamics and proper emergency screening can divert air pressure due to design of ziggurat safety and pass under the large arch underground also this system does work !
Ontop of air zones that trap and release or use heat or solar power through special window polymer panes that can act as both and extra see through pane and solar panel would turn the great arced walls into massive solar wall windows for views and energies !
constructed over rivers the arched bottoms could easily support the roof of power dams and inverters below and at the same time serve as a promenade for cafes and outdoor venues shaded from the citadel ziggurat of pyramidical township no ?constructed along river systems can assist screening bad elements from rivers as a priority and either burning waste found or other ways such as reutlising such refuse and with an objective of cleaning through screening through silver gold and copper screens which clean to the microscopic levels and possibly new ways to boil water in larger quantities and identifying chemical contaminants machinatory shall come and shall !
As said to share river systems with other pyramidical ziggurat societies can form bonds with other people of the river to bring brotherhoods and sisterhoods together to save eachothers communities on and of a common river -Canada being an excellent four season venue for an experiment in this future project !!!
Also terrorism on pyramidical building is an entire new animal wherfe the low and long structural integrity of such a target would prove disastrous to an operation against a terrorist group unless they could fly into such an impossible arc mid air to crash into the ziggurat they would skim the vector of the walls and crash into the forest river lake forest desert far away in all probability the pyramis has history as a defensive and spiritual shape more than we understand unless we get smart and exploit the shape to create buildings of the future in this manner while building the deathtrap high rises in between to become a kind of lower guard against such madness where dignitaries and Gods alike have no respect for !
The exploitation of intelligent design must be taken advantage of due to the engineers and architects of the future will surely be doing leaving space and covered highways in our cities while exposing the world to the future of building technology instead of others i spoke my peace God Willing !

thelastprotagonist

I have I have two categoris of comments here. First is on the project itself. The place should be cheap to live in. It has economy of scale anyway. How much would be the cost per square meter? How sustainable is it? Where is the source of income for the residents? Second on Dubai. The best description of Dubai that I read so far is "creditopolis". The whole city was built on debt. Is it a good thing or a bad thing. In short term, it is a good thing... in the long term, it is a bad thing. It will just collapse. If this project will be build in "creditopolis" Dubai this project seemed to be debt driven too, Let me call this project a "debtarcology".