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The most important place to start is Arcosanti. This summer, again keeping with the theme of Freedom and Pursuit, I spent a short time visiting some friends staying at Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti Arcology Project.

Acosanti was one of the most utopian atmospheres I have ever encountered. Paolo Soleri defines the uptopian as:

...the emblematic example of the great deception of self-sufficiency. It is the parochial pretending to be the catholic, the fragment to be the whole.....And even when unpretentious it shows an arrogant sort of blindness toward the reality in which it is inescapably nested in.

The perfect community, the Garden of Eden, a just and loving reality, all floundering presumptions fatally flawed and prime causes of suffering and cruelty. Good intentions, catastrophic results.

In his words, the utopian is the denial of reality, in which its "blindness" to the rest of the world will ultimately mark its demise (spiritually, emotionally, and physically). There were multiple occasions when my traveling buddies and I sat down and discussed whether or not we wanted to leave, and if we shouldn't just spend one more night (which we did for a few days), debating if this might not be the place for us to stay for a good couple of years. Besides for all of the fatally poisonous and somewhat deadly insects and animals, it was a mecca of leisure. Swimming all day and night, delicious food, perfect weather, celebration, many rounds of "The Manifest Destiny" (an alcoholic drink made from the juice of prickly pear and saguaro fruit that we picked), singing/dancing, "crawdaddin'" (which more or less is extreme and very loud intoxication while submerged in water), fresh picked hickory bark, free store, sunsets, amazing vegetation, etc. etc. etc. All of this seemed too good to just leave, and for Cincinnati of all places. But looking back I realize that this is the flaw of utopian ideas, the inability to face what is yours, and what you are native to. It would have been easy to stay there, but much harder to bring it back home. How can all the wonderful experiences and details of this model be put into action elsewhere? And how can the effects of communities like this be implemented in a "real world" situation (Yes, I am saying that Arcosanti exists outside of the real world). What and how is the Cincinnati Arcology?