"The theme of this year's Burning Man gathering in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is Metropolis, a fancy way of saying city planning. The festival seems an interesting forum for such a consideration since every year its Black Rock City rises up out of the desert and disappears, as mandated by the Bureau of Land Management, without a trace. Thousands of people have to get in and out with their supplies, so traffic flow is also a serious consideration.The organizers have provided a retrospective of how the temporary city came to have its customary design. Are there particular design elements that make Black Rock City a model green city? Certainly not the kerosene lamps and generators. But a few things come to mind: The focus on community space at the center of the city gives everybody a a personal investment in making the city work as planned. Of course, the self-selective nature of the event differentiates it from real cities, but the idea of a civic-minded city center still applies. New York and San Francisco both have such a center; although Los Angeles doesn't, it's also a pioneer of greener urbanism.
The organizers have insisted on leaving a massive vista onto nature, so that participants can't forget the natural state of the environment in which they are existing. Rather than rejecting the dramatic desert weather as an thorn in the side of the human interactions, the culture of Burning Man has — rather miraculously — accepted the heat, dust, wind and lightning as a positive part of its ethos." Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=71185#ixzz0zha2fVIp
