History Main / Arcology

* The TropeNamer is Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a forerunner of the ecological movement and architect of "Arcosanti", the first attempt at a functional, definitive arcology. He created the portmanteau word for the concept behind his eventual goal, and after forty years it has had varying degrees of success. By this point, it's a combination tourist attraction, education center, and oddity outside Phoenix. For more information on Soleri, check Wiki/ThatOtherWiki for information [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri here]]; for more information on the concept itself, look [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology here]].

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''':

* On the WretchedHive side there used to be Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, a huge apartment complex that got turned into a semisealed, somewhat self-sufficient environment for around fifty thousand people. For a long time it was effectively unpoliced and so an unsafe, unsanitary haven for all sorts of criminal activities; in the eighties the government decided to police it more seriously and its situation improved considerably, though the reputation never waned. It needed interaction with the outside world for acquiring food, but other than that it had everything - shops, maintenance, services and even basic medicine and dentistry. The ''quality'' of what it provided was highly questionable, but for many people it was preferable to a life in the slums. Kowloon Walled City no longer exists, the government having had enough in the nineties and deciding to demolish it, but it probably remains the closest the world has ever had to a typical cyberpunk-type arcology.

This trope tends towards either extreme [[SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hard or soft sci-fi]], since the full explanation is pretty complex. It's either going to be [[InfoDump explained in detail]], or it's going to be [[HandWave handwaved]]. Depending on who we ask, we may or may not currently have the technology required to make an arcology work in the real world. What is certain is that we don't yet have the political pressure and economy of scale to build one with any reasonable payoff; with current population densities, such a project would be AwesomeButImpractical, thus a fully functional arcology in fiction often requires some AppliedPhlebotinum until TechnologyMarchesOn comes into effect.

* ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' describes futuristic Earth cities that are explicitly referred to as arcologies. Considering the [[ShownTheirWork detail]] and [[SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness scientific realism]] of the series, the descriptions of the cities' inner workings is pretty much spot-on. However, many of the arcologies are not a single building, but simply cities which were covered in [[DomedHometown large, overlaid domes]] to protect them from the armada storms raging across the surface of the planet. Newer arcologies are described as being much more monolithic.

This trope tends towards either extreme [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hard or soft sci-fi]], since the full explanation is pretty complex. It's either going to be [[InfoDump explained in detail]], or it's going to be [[HandWave handwaved]]. Depending on who we ask, we may or may not currently have the technology required to make an arcology work in the real world. What is certain is that we don't yet have the political pressure and economy of scale to build one with any reasonable payoff; with current population densities, such a project would be AwesomeButImpractical, thus a fully functional arcology in fiction often requires some AppliedPhlebotinum until TechnologyMarchesOn comes into effect.

* ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' describes futuristic Earth cities that are explicitly referred to as arcologies. Considering the [[ShownTheirWork detail]] and [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness scientific realism]] of the series, the descriptions of the cities' inner workings is pretty much spot-on. However, many of the arcologies are not a single building, but simply cities which were covered in [[DomedHometown large, overlaid domes]] to protect them from the armada storms raging across the surface of the planet. Newer arcologies are described as being much more monolithic.

%%* ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'': Genom Tower is a gigantic truncated cone reminiscent of both Mount Fuji and the TowerOfBabel.%%How is it an arcology?

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': The Vaults were designed to be underground arcologies capable of sustaining a population through the lingering effects of the nuke fight that was WorldWarIII. [[BlatantLies And that was their only function.]]

Because they are so insular and answer all of humanity's material needs, arcologies are a great setting for a WretchedHive masquerading as a ShiningCity, if not just playing the LayeredMetropolis disgustingly straight. If the arcology ''is'' actually a ShiningCity, and a sympathetic character hails from it, expect it to look like a DoomedHometown eventually. Broken arcologies tend to be the breeding ground for [[ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight all]] [[{{Morlocks}} sorts]] [[EvilEvolves of]] [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier nasties]], too, since they are no longer fit for human habitation, there's a chance at least some of the sustenance systems still work, and there are at least millions of hiding places. In some CyberPunk settings, an arcology may be a ShiningCity in the middle of a WretchedHive, the arcology's walls forming a neat divide for UrbanSegregation.

* ''Creator/FrankHerbert'''s novel [[Literature/Hellstrom'sHive]] features a society that patterns itself after social insects and has constructed a tunnel city beneath a small valley in Oregon that contains roughly 50,000 individuals. Special farming and recycling techniques are used to help conceal the Hive's existence from the outside world.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}}'' is set in Dharma Tower, a single massive towering complex and the last refuge of humanity after an apocalypse.

** ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' features [[https://maxis-ville.kloppenborg.net/sc2000/Arcos.gif four different types of arcologies]], each one invented fifty years after the last.

* ''Creator/FrankHerbert'''s novel ''Literature/Hellstrom'sHive'' features a society that patterns itself after social insects and has constructed a tunnel city beneath a small valley in Oregon that contains roughly 50,000 individuals. Special farming and recycling techniques are used to help conceal the Hive's existence from the outside world.

* ''LightNovel/ShangriLa'': Atlas is a superstructure built to shelter the lucky from the fallout of the runaway greenhouse effect, but some can move into it if they win the lottery. [[spoiler: But it takes more than just technology to keep the structure from crumbling.]]

* Genom Tower in ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'' is a gigantic truncated cone reminiscent of both Mount Fuji and the TowerOfBabel.

If the arcology has space engines, it's a GenerationShip. Shares blurred lines with the MegaCity, which need only be huge, but sometimes an example of one is an example of both, especially the arcoplex variation. Contrast HubCity, which offers everything you need ''but'' a place to call home. [[CitadelCity Citadel Cities]] that also qualify as arcologies function extremely well under siege conditions, since dwindling supplies are no longer an issue. Compare and contrast with LayeredMetropolis, CityOnTheWater, CityInABottle, UndergroundCity, SkyscraperCity, and DomedHometown. Even though most of the tropes above are [[SubTrope sub-tropes]] of the MegaCity, technically the Arcology is not, since one can exist ''inside'' a city without actually being one, itself, even though it usually works out that way. Lastly, see ShiningCity, which is what an arcology is trying to be from an ecological standpoint, whether it succeeds or not.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': One of the [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-07-08 footnotes]] explains that in the 31st century many cities on Earth are based on arcologies and measured in cubic kilometers instead of just square. Dom Atlantis alone has a population of 4.62 billion and takes up almost half a million cubic kilometers. Much of that is underwater, accomodating the large population of aquatic races (uplifted cetaceans and octopi mostly).
-->'''Narrator:''' There are other ways to fit 200+ billion people on a planet, but this is one of a very few ways to pull it off while still having it be useful as a planet.
[[/folder]]

* In ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' the various mega-cities are composed of multiple arcologies called city blocks. A city block is a single building that houses tens of thousands of people and has various decks dedicated to things like maintenance, public utilities, public services like education and employment, entertainment, healthcare, law enforcement facilities, etc. Appropriate to the comic book's cynical tone, this living arrangement is a magnet for trouble, with many storylines involving when something in a city block goes wrong and the entire population of it goes crazy. There's even a phenomenon called block wars, in which one city block will beef with another one and it explodes into actual warfare.

* ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace''. Annika-709 is from an arcology that held the entire population of Greater Germany -- "the builders had to fill in the North Sea just to provide parking space." Unfortunately it was [[SpaceBrasilia so depressing]] the residents voted to commit mass suicide. She's now CEO of the B.O.R.G Megacorporation whose headquarters is a vast cubical structure.
-->"The B.O.R.G. arcology is five kilometers in three dimensions, with a projected thousand year lifespan in the fourth. It houses over 100,000 staff and their familial subunits in a self-sustained city-building. Everything is provided here: living units, video-schools, movie-piping, babytoriums, relaxeries, communal kitchens, super-markets, love-a-trons, sensurround chambers — thus sparing our employees the daily inconvenience of commuting by personal helicopter. Most of them never go outside the arcology, except on their annual two-month leave."

* In ''Film/{{Dredd}}'', the 2012 film adaptation of ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'', most of the action takes place in perhaps the best visual representation of a residential arcology in an arcoplex so far. Even the car chase opening through the streets of Mega City One shows multiple levels of automotive arteries all over the city, which is a hallmark of the arcoplex concept. The buildings are almost completely self-sufficient. They have self-defense systems that allow them to withstand a nuclear blast, only the people inside can choose whether any communications can go inside or out, and the main villain of the movie has been operating in secrecy to the outside world for so long that she has ''every last citizen'' who lives in the complex under her thumb. As Judge Dredd progresses his way up to the top, he ends up traveling through shops, factories, people's homes, and classrooms. Even the distance from the top floor to ground level becomes a minor plot point.

* ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'' and its sequel ''Literature/TheNakedSun'' both involve a protagonist who lives in an almost entirely enclosed future version of New York and who is visibly disturbed whenever he's forced to be even just slightly outside it.
* ''Literature/TheSleeperAwakes'': All evidence points towards the TropeMaker being Creator/HGWells, as the structures that stand where the cities used to be in ''The Sleeper Awakens'' are the earliest description of what would eventually be labelled arcologies.

** ''Literature/OathOfFealty'', co-written with Creator/JerryPournelle. The arcology of Todos Santos is just outside Los Angeles and has a somewhat hostile relationship with the city. In this case, Todos Santos really ''is'' fairly utopian, at least in comparison to Los Angeles, which is depicted as being like, well, ''Los Angeles''.
** ''Literature/TheCaliforniaVoodooGame'', co-written with Steven Barnes. The title Dream Park game takes place inside the MIMIC (Meacham Incorporated Mojave Industrial Community), which was built during the 1990s. It was so badly damaged by The Quake that it had to be abandoned. It was later acquired by Dream Park and used as the basis for the Barsoom Project--the {{terraform}}ing of Mars.
* ''Literature/StrengthOfStones'', by Creator/GregBear, is set AfterTheEnd in a depopulated world where mobile arcologies roam the land, moving whenever they deplete the resources in a particular location. They're devoid of the very humans they were designed to take care of after concluding that ALL humans were harmful and driving them out to survive on the desolate world they were intended to colonize.
* In ''Literature/CitiesInFlight'', by Creator/JamesBlish, cheap and easy anti-gravity and faster-than-light technology leads to most of Earth's major cities converting themselves to arcologies and setting off for the stars.
* ''Literature/{{Inside}}'': The 3 km-tall "urban monads" that house 800,000 people each were inspired by Paolo Soleri's earliest elucidations of the concept.
* In ''Literature/{{Anachronauts}}'', a web novel series, arcologies figure into several key plot points, especially Una's hometown experiences growing up in Arcology [=#BE12=].
* ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' by Creator/PeterFHamilton describes futuristic Earth cities that are explicitly referred to as arcologies. Considering the [[ShownTheirWork detail]] and [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness scientific realism]] of the series, the descriptions of the cities' inner workings is pretty much spot-on. However, many of the arcologies are not a single building, but simply cities which were covered in [[DomedHometown large, overlaid domes]] to protect them from the armada storms raging across the surface of the planet. Newer arcologies are described as being much more monolithic.
* ''Literature/TheNightLand'' (1912) has an early version of this in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Land#The_Redoubt the Great Redoubt]] (more than seven miles high, holds millions of people) and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Land#The_Lesser_Redoubt the Lesser Redoubt]] (more than a mile high). They're both sealed off from the outside world by necessity and are completely self-sufficient.

** Arcologies are mentioned as part of the backdrop in ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', although the story doesn't involve any of them.

* ''Literature/{{Metatropolis}}'' has arcologies, but most of the stories focus on other types of future city. A couple stories feature a group of eco-nuts who convert a semi-abandoned skyscraper in Detroit into a self-sufficient residence with farms and solar power.
* ''Literature/TheWorthingSaga'': One story goes into some detail about the creation of modular arcoplexes designed to be expanded upon as the population grew, and link to one another if two should meet. Despite their creator's protests that "huge tracts of unspoiled land" would be set aside, after hundreds or thousands of years, eventually ''all'' of them met, creating a CityPlanet (and utterly destroying the natural environment, of course, making it a major {{subversion}} of this trope).
* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': Urithiru is a legendary 100-story city carved into the side of a mountain, meant to permanently house thousands of the Knights Radiant. It's described as each floor having massive balconies with self-sufficient gardens growing from them. It's worth noting that most of Urithiru's support mechanisms no longer function by the time characters rediscover it, and they are having little success figuring out how to get it working again.
* ''Literature/HiveMind2016'' is set in a future where humanity apparently lives almost exclusively in arcologies called Hives. The main characters live in Hive England, a hundred-million-person enclosed city that provides almost all its own food, water, power, and other needs. They do trade stuff with other Hives, but not for much -- the only trades we see on-page are for extremely advanced medical technology.
* Several of the future "human" species in ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'' build arcologies, some of which are ''extremely'' large (both tall ... several miles in some cases ... and wide, with the bases of some exceeding twenty miles across). The concentration of population density in the arcologies allows vast swathes of land to be left as pristine wilderness parks, despite a high total population.
* Become a feature of the ''Literature/AgentG'' series by Creator/CTPhipps by ''Assassin.'' After the Long Winter and Eruption, Black Technology is used to rebuild the world's largest cities to house the massive populations of displaced peoples. Rather than become ecological paradises and self-sufficient trading hubs, they rapidly become hellish prison with 'Refugee Zones.'

* New Jerusalem from the ''Literature/BookOfRevelation'' is a massive (as in, it would be the 7th largest country in the world by area, between Australia and India) flying, city-sized palace where all Believers will dwell after Judgement Day. Its citizens being [[TheNeedless sustained purely by God's glory]] will solve all the problems of an arcology. Including, presumably, the need to breathe; it's just as tall as it is wide, and inhabitants would be able to look ''down'' at the International Space Station ... from a point less than a quarter of the way to the top.

* ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech'' arcologies are all over the place, but most of them aren't described in much detail. They are a necessity, though, since the local StarfishAliens and the multiple ReligionOfEvil cults roaming the countryside have essentially made small towns tantamount to suicide. One common feature, however, is that New Earth Government arcologies are [[CitadelCity highly defensible fortresses]].
* In ''TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'' arcologies replacing cities is mentioned as one result of cheap cybershell labor. India has a few "bioarks" made from living materials.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberspace}}'': One possible origin for characters was being raised in an arcology. The average population of an arcology is less than 10,000, and they tend to be oriented toward environmentalism.

* ''VideoGame/BeneathASteelSky'' takes place mostly in an arcology. It is interesting to note that the most dangerous and unhealthy levels are those on the top floor; thing gets better as one progresses towards the ground.
* ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'': Half of Cairo is now an arcology. The class warfare taking place between the arcology and the old city is a significant plot point.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'': Midgar is [[MegaCorp Shinra Electric Power Company's]] greatest acheivement: A three-layered, city-sized structure powered by no less than seven Mako reactors (MagiTek nuclear power plants) with most of the corporatocracy's population living there. It doesn't even ''try'' to look like a nice place to live, being choked with urban blight above and below, with the lower levels not even getting sunshine. Shinra also plans to build an even bigger, better version, Neo-Midgar, once they find the Promised Land, [[spoiler:which doesn't actually exist]].
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'': The floating world of Cocoon is a textbook arcology, albeit one created and run by [[PhysicalGod physical gods]] instead of designed by scientific techniques.

** ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' features [[https://maxis-ville.kloppenborg.net/sc2000/Arcos.gif four different types of arcologies,]] each one invented fifty years after the last.

* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'': A possible industrial tech that increases the population capacity of colonies.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': The Vaults were designed to be underground arcologies capable of sustaining a population through the lingering effects of the nuke fight that was WorldWarIII. [[BlatantLies And that was their only function.]]
* ''Baron Wittard'' is set in an abandoned mega-building that was ''supposed'' to be this trope, but was never completed.
* In ''Videogame/StarRuler2'', megacities are available as a mid-game research item. Megacities are vast metropolises that stretch from the sky to the mantle and can cover entire continents. One of the {{Big Dumb Object}}s you can discover is the Arcology upgrade, which permanently increases planetary population capacity by ten billion. In [[VideoGame/StarRuler the original game]], cities could become mindbogglingly dense jungles of steel as the LensmanArmsRace progressed, resulting in more and more efficient forms of urban planning, causing population density to skyrocket.
* ''VideoGame/NexusClash'': The city of [[ShiningCity Laurentia]] gives us the Olympic Tower. It was ''created'' as one of these, but as the world grew more dystopian and the city grew more technocratic, it got converted into a home base for a sprawling [[SinisterSurveillance security apparatus]] and closed off to the general public. The parts that players can get to are still a polished, futuristic contrast to the [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] warzone that is the rest of the city.
* ''VideoGame/LegendOfLegaia'' featured the city of Sol. A city built inside of a single tower with advanced technology including modern electricity when most of the rest of Legaia was at the medieval level.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': Megacorp the Arcology Project ascension perk allows one to convert planets covered with city districts into {{City Planet}}s with Arcology districts that house a lot of [=POPs=].
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect'': It's [[FlavorText mentioned]] that Earth is entering a GoldenAge and the wealthier cities are becoming [[ShiningCity Shining Cities]] filled with arcologies... the cities in wealthy countries at least. Poorer regions are still [[GaiasLament overpopulated, polluted]] [[SoiledCityOnAHill slums]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}}'' is set in Dharma Tower, a single massive towering complex and the last refuge of humanity after an apocalypse.
* ''VideoGame/ResonanceOfFate'': Bazel is a massive ClockPunk tower housing several cities on top of it. It not only provides food, water,and electricity, but LifeEnergy to the inhabitants-to the point that if their specific SoulJar burns out prematurely, they drop dead as a rock. It also works to clean the land of an apocalyptic amount of pollution.
* ''VideoGame/Earth2160'': This is how Lunar Corp builds their bases, with a Foundation module supporting living quarters, factories, defenses, resource storage, etc.
* Titan in ''VideoGame/Destiny2'' has several large abandoned arcologies floating on the methane sea and one of them is explored by the players. The arcology looks like it was a fairly nice place to live in, with smooth walkways and a large park in the center of the structure, though since it's overrun with the [[ReligionOfEvil Hive]] in the present only a fool (or a [[PlayerCharacter Guardian]]) would dare to enter it.
* The tutorial map in ''VideoGame/{{Dystopia}}'' has you enter an abandoned, underground arcology to retrieve sensitive software. Your CO will remark on some parts like a room having an artificial sky and another case where [[GaiasVengeance a tree has grown through solid concrete]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Ayuri}}'' starts with the characters in one.
* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': One of the [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-07-08 footnotes]] explains that in the 31st century many cities on Earth are based on arcologies and measured in cubic kilometers instead of just square. Dom Atlantis alone has a population of 4.62 billion and takes up almost half a million km3. Much of that is underwater, accomodating the large population of aquatic races (uplifted cetaceans and octopi mostly).

* ''Podcast/MetamorCity'' is a LayeredMetropolis centered around an arcology known as The Citadel, which was expanded from the old Literature/MetamorKeep whose GeniusLoci still has control over at least part of it, aside from her duties as monarch of the Empire of Metamor.

* The TropeNamer is Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a forerunner of the ecological movement and architect of "Arcosanti," the first attempt at a functional, definitive arcology. He created the portmanteau word for the concept behind his eventual goal, and after 40 years, it has had varying degrees of success. By this point, it's a combination tourist attraction, education center, and oddity outside Phoenix. For more information on Soleri, check Wiki/ThatOtherWiki for information [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri here]]; for more information on the concept itself, look [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology here]].

* The TropeNamer is Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a forerunner of the ecological movement and architect of "Arcosanti," the first attempt at a functional, definitive arcology. He created the portmanteau word for the concept behind his eventual goal, and after 40 years, it has had varying degrees of success. By this point, it's a combination tourist attraction, education center, and oddity outside Phoenix. For more information on Soleri, check Wiki/ThatOtherWiki for information [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri here.]]

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'''s infamous [[CityPlanet Hive Worlds]] are covered with thousands of arcoloplexes, though they're not actually self-sufficient: They rely on importing food from nearby agri-worlds. Given that they are often perpetually exporting contributions to the [[ForeverWar eternal Imperial war effort]],[[note]](weapons, tools, refined materials and fuels, [[{{Conscription}} people]], etc.)[[/note]] they necessarily need raw materials imported to replace the material they lose. Some sources state that only the upper classes on such worlds can afford real food from off-world, the masses live off of [[FutureFoodIsArtificial nutrient paste]] and [[HumanResources Soylens Viridians]].

* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'': Of the many space stations present, one of them is actually called the Arcology, which is anchored to an asteroid, in orbit around a planet. True to the idea, it is a hippy's ideal home, being [[GoodOldWays significantly older than most of the featured stations on the show, complete with substandard technology]]. It also happens to be the largest, and [[ZeeRust looks quite]] {{steampunk}}.

* in ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'': Of the many space stations present, one of them is actually called the Arcology. True to the idea, it is a hippy's ideal home, being [[GoodOldWays significantly older than most of the featured stations on the show, complete with substandard technology]]. It also happens to be the largest, and [[ZeeRust looks quite]] {{steampunk}}.