Translated material
City of the Sun
The first eco-friendly community will be built in Florida
Recently, a plan for the construction of the first city, the life of which will be fully powered by solar energy, was announced in the United States. This environmental project will be implemented in Florida, one of the sunniest states in America.Babcock Ranch, which will be the name of the planet's first 100% environmentally friendly city, will rise in a few years on the Gulf Coast near Fort Myers. It will house 49 thousand residents. The city will be fully supplied with energy by a photovoltaic station, the construction of which will cost $300 million. Sunlight collected by thousands of solar panels with a total area of 1.6 square meters. km, will be converted into electrical energy.
"Babcock Ranch will become a true living laboratory for the new energy economy," says Sid Kitson, president of Kitson & Partners, the construction company that will build the city of the future.
According to plans, 19.5 thousand homes will be built in Babcock Ranch. All premises, both residential and commercial, industrial and public, with a total area of 560 thousand square meters. m will receive energy from a solar power plant. Moreover, water will not be needed to generate electricity. It should be noted that a conventional power plant of the same capacity, running on fossil fuels, consumes 6 million barrels of oil per year and emits 61 thousand tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Babcock Ranch's environmental impact won't be limited to clean energy alone. All buildings will be constructed from energy-saving materials using appropriate technologies. Plants to create an urban park landscape will be grown here in the city.
Everything in the “sunny” city will be imbued with the idea of careful use of energy. The streets are supposed to be illuminated with special lamps, which should reduce light pollution and save energy.
There is no need to say that the citizens of the cleanest city on the planet will travel by electric vehicles, which are planned to be recharged at special stations, or on bicycles.
Homes in Babcock Ranch are both multi-family and single-family. All of them will be controlled by computers to use energy more efficiently. “You can program an alarm to turn lights on and off, raise blinds or draw curtains, and wake you up with music downloaded from the intranet,” says Sid Kitson. -- On the way home, you can go to a nearby store with a computer-generated list of necessary purchases, or entrust everything to your “smart home.” He will perfectly place the order on your behalf and agree on the delivery time.”
More than half of the entire area of Babcock Ranch will be dedicated to forest parks, gardens and flower beds with grassy lawns.
Florida is eagerly awaiting the start of construction of a “solar” city. It should also help the state's economy, which has been hit hard by the crisis. The Babcock Ranch will bring 20,000 jobs to state residents.
The city of the future will be built by Kitson & Partners together with the state's largest utility company, Power & Light. If the authorities approve the plans of the builders and architects, then construction of the photovoltaic power plant will begin at the end of this year, and residential buildings and buildings will be erected in 2011. The cost of the entire project is estimated at $2 billion.