It's very different. Much of this is due to the fact that it's a very small population (fluctuating between 60-100 people during the time I was there) living about 35 miles from anywhere remotely consequential. So much of its flavour is due to simply to being relatively deeply embedded in nature. When I moved back to a "regular" city (in this case, Phoenix), the two biggest shocks were the loss of the night sky, and the fact that "regular" cities are straight-up engineered to kill you. The failure to look both ways before crossing the street is a death sentence; this made walking around a city feel like an exercise in continually dashing between some cold-war-era Berlin-wall no-man's land. Took me years to become habituated to this, and it still bugs me if I think about it.
In many ways, Arcosanti is like any other small, rural, company town. Everybody is always up in everybody else's business; the politics of the company are all-pervasive and often petty; and if you want to achieve aspirations which aren't within the scope of the official agenda, you leave. On the other hand, living there is extraordinarily easy: the pay is low but the expenses are practically nil. The average American spends 2/3rds of their earnings on housing and transport; at Arcosanti, those things cost $150/month. I earned minimum wage and could still afford to go skydiving every other weekend. I've never had so much leisure time or disposable income since.
It's a place of weirdly limited and expansive horizons. Like I said: if you wish to do something other than what the company is doing -- start your own full-time business, take your concept of "arcology" in a different direction, etc. -- then you can't do that there. It's not a real city: it's a company town. On the other hand, it attracts a constant stream of quite high-calibre, globally-connected people; late night conversations around the fireplace can be pretty special experience. I recall getting into good-nature drunken arguments with folks like Stephen J. Gould, Jaron Lanier, and Terry Riley. Not a bad place for a teenage hacker to grow up.
I recall reading about it in Omni magazine, many years ago.
What are their goals these days? If I recall correctly, originally it was to be a proof-of-concept for a new way of building cities, to demonstrate that you don't have to have suburbs to have a livable home.
In many ways, Arcosanti is like any other small, rural, company town. Everybody is always up in everybody else's business; the politics of the company are all-pervasive and often petty; and if you want to achieve aspirations which aren't within the scope of the official agenda, you leave. On the other hand, living there is extraordinarily easy: the pay is low but the expenses are practically nil. The average American spends 2/3rds of their earnings on housing and transport; at Arcosanti, those things cost $150/month. I earned minimum wage and could still afford to go skydiving every other weekend. I've never had so much leisure time or disposable income since.
It's a place of weirdly limited and expansive horizons. Like I said: if you wish to do something other than what the company is doing -- start your own full-time business, take your concept of "arcology" in a different direction, etc. -- then you can't do that there. It's not a real city: it's a company town. On the other hand, it attracts a constant stream of quite high-calibre, globally-connected people; late night conversations around the fireplace can be pretty special experience. I recall getting into good-nature drunken arguments with folks like Stephen J. Gould, Jaron Lanier, and Terry Riley. Not a bad place for a teenage hacker to grow up.