Anyone else see shades of War of the Worlds here? Those machines did the same thing - tore up everything in their path so they could plant an alien weed...

At first I thought this was a late April Fool's joke, but maybe Andrew doesn't think so. I think Andrew is forgetting that when our civilization self-destructs all of the urbanites will be left without any food or water, while the rural and suburban dwellers will be able to hunt, forage and plant new gardens...

This reminds me of Cory Doctorow's short story There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now is the Best Time of Your Life, which had robots that ate the entire world and scanned the destroyed contents in order to create a parallel virtual world, thus saving the earth. They were even created by the radical greens :-)

Or, we just could just make cars a lot more efficient. 100 MPG anyone? Check out X Prize Cars.

Thanks for the link, Lloyd! I thought Andrew's responses were pretty interesting/thought provoking/hilarious - so I'd definitely recommend that people check them out on ArchitectureMNP [I'm biased tho, obviously].

In response to Doug the original, the project is obviously satirical [altho not an April fools joke] - but your assumption that suburbanites will go hunt and forage is just as silly as those robots. Rural areas supply the city, true - but the 'burbs are just another drain on everything from the economy to the environment. They produce mostly nothing.

No more suburbs [less cars, more public transit], more urban areas, and some urban farming is what we all need.

Speaking of which, I'm writing up a review of Yona Friedman's 'Pro Domo' which will be discussing all of this in further detail [minus the kick-ass robots]. Come on over to ArchitectureMNP when you're done here on Treehugger and check it out.

You don't really need robots, you just need trees. If we weren't so diligent about exterminating the local flora (usually referred to as "weeds"), it will quickly take over without anyone's help. Nature is like that.

Unfortunately, that looks like a pretty urban place the robot is destroying. It should focus on vegas and phoenix, not what looks more like berkeley to me!

Guy's work looks very cool - and incisive.

Suburbs have chewed up a lot of prime farmland, well located near cities and other major centers. It's a real loss. As energy becomes more expensive, and more people need to eat, we're going to miss all of that good, fertile soil.

The building of suburbia has made it very hard to reclaim the natural landscape and put it back to productive uses. In many places all but 2" of topsoil is systematically bulldozed and removed to be sold, reducing the ecological viability of the remaining land.

Unlike older farms and towns that tended to melt away back into the landscape without long term degradation of the environment, the leavings of modern society are long lived and will contaminate the environment with metals and chemicals, and non-degrading plastics for eons. It will take some serious work to undo the damage.

This project is obviously rather fanciful and polemical, but it points to a greater truth.

Thanks for bringing this fellow wider attention!