Hi,
Wasn't meaning to be overly critical in my response. My apologies if that's how I presented myself.
I found the degree of self containment to make the building a nice case to use to explore questions of sustainability. The complex is not truly self contained, since a lot of the people that live there go outside the building to work, and because the building must rely, to a degree, on resources brought from outside.
The self containment does blur social stratification, including the separation of government from the governed. Or at least, that's what I'm imagining. I could be very off on that, with the building being owned and managed by folks who live far away, and the government might be largely located elsewhere. In either case, we can explore what that means using the building as a simple case.
E.g., without a long term plan, the people of the building must eventually leave, since the build will eventually fail. Then, we can use that as a metaphor for how people are treating this planet as a whole, and, unlike the people in the building, we have no-where to go. Or, if there is no long term plan, what does that say in regards to whether people will be able to deal with environmental and other global issues. That is, what hope do we have if this small enclave can't see to making a plan for sustainability?
Of course, I could be very wrong about that too, and they have made clear plans for the future. I'm very curious now about how the community is addressing these issues.
Thx!
TomB