First City on Mars

Montsechia

The conceptualized first Martian city, can teach Earth cities about strategic adaptive sensory evolution – where an urban area evolves by design that is both planned and co-created.

Montsechia: Detail of First City on Mars

THE FIRST CITY ON MARS: INFORMS EVOLUTION FOR CITIES ON EARTH

The Montsechia: Adaptive Sensory City on Mars project pioneers urban design from a completely new lens. This concept design for the first city on Mars sets forth a vision for a city that blossoms like a flower to help humans thrive even in Mars’ extreme atmosphere. This futurological design project seeks not only a first vision of what human urbanization from zero to one million in population would become on Mars, but it also serves as case study by which to reverse-engineer lessons from this first Martian city to guide the evolutionary urbanization of cities on Earth to adaptively optimize for sustainability and thrivability.

AN INTERPLANETARY URBAN VISION: ADAPTIVE SENSORY MODULAR GROWTH

Montsechia, as the conceptualized first Martian city, can teach Earth cities about strategic adaptive sensory evolution – where an urban area evolves by design that is both planned and co-created. The concept for Montsechia innovates adaptive sensory modular growth for urban design to solve for the following question: What if a city on Mars can grow radially to allow for its modular vertical urban areas, known as City Pods, to remain walkable, protected from Mars' harsh atmosphere, and always optimized for citizens' well-being so they can thrive? Capabilities like water creation and recycling, food farming, transportation networks, City Pods with Second Skies, Radial City Blocks, and Vertical Forest Parks are all integrated to design Montsechia as a Martian city that is optimized for human life to go beyond comfort, to establish deeper well-being for humans on Mars. Conceptualized as a city that grows adaptively like a flower, Montsechia teaches that the design and evolution of urban areas on Earth can become more biophilic while pulling from biomimetic lessons learned from nature. The key is for cities to change, grow, and evolve adaptively and sensorially – allowing for a new type of co-creation between built environment, natural environment, and urban inhabitants. For example, it is not enough to simply house people within a dense urban area. Such citizens must be nurtured by the built and natural environments in ways that foster actualization of joy, health, safety, and peace.

THE BLOSSOMING CITY: FORMING SYNERGY WITH NATURE

This concept design for the first city on Mars is named “Montsechia”, paying tribute to the first flower on Earth that lived approximately 130 million years ago. But the link between Mars’ Montsechia and Earth’s cities does not end there, because the main question that this Martian city poses for the future development and evolution of Earth’s urban areas is: Can cities on Earth blossom so each forms an ecosystem that takes part in a three-way beneficial synergy between a planet’s natural atmosphere, including weather patterns at both micro and macro scales, and inhabitants? This question is of prime importance to humanity today. The Montsechia project is a trailblazing step toward the bridging between what cities are now into what they can become if designed to blossom.

MARTIAN CITY INNOVATIONS: DESIGN FOR HUMAN THRIVABILITY ON MARS

Montsechia is designed with City Pods that position city “blocks” vertically and organically to provide Martian city nodes for 15,000 to 30,000 Montechia citizens per pod. Each pod is equipped with Second Skies that act as adaptive sensory skins to both filter and protect human inhabitants from Mars’ harsh atmosphere while also serving to sensorially stimulate citizen well-being with Earth-like virtual nature that layers into the Martian sky atmosphere. Self-enclosed water creation and recycling that extracts water from the soil on Mars (1), as well as food farming that uses Second Skies to protect plant growth from radiation are both harvested within the Montsechia city design. Furthermore, transportation networks are designed to expand with growing citizen needs and goals as the Martian city’s radially aligned City Pod Rings modularly increase: first with the Pioneer Phase Growth Ring, second with the Citizen Phase Growth Ring, and third with the Natives Phase Growth Ring. Each growth ring marks a phase in Montsechia’s city expansion, much like the rings found within a growing tree trunk here on Earth. Other Montsechia city designed features include Exoskeleton City Pod Skins that protect and nurture Vertical Forest Parks that feature new kinds of nature for the human Martian population.

AN INTERPLANETARY HUMANITY: URBANIZATION THAT CARES FOR MARS AND EARTH

The Montsechia: Adaptive sensory city on Mars is truly innovative because it futurecasts options for the exploration, research, and habitation of a humanity on Mars. But this does not mean that humanity’s responsibilities with Earth are abandoned. This conceptual urban design serves to disrupt how cities are developed and evolved by presenting a concept that inspires, amazes, and delights while also challenging humanity to care for the planet we call home – whether on Mars or on Earth.

Reference:(1) Mars One. “Will Astronauts have enough water, food, and oxygen?”.