I just came upon this – amazing proposition — looking for post industrial (and post-slurb) utopianizers:
…Calvin Chiu’s Frog’s Dream, which proposes to re-establish a sustainable relationship between city and suburbia by transforming foreclosures (’McMansions’) into wetlands and natural water filtration systems for urban centers. The idea maker speaks of a ‘Living Machine’ of eco-water treatment machines, in which a “micro-ecosystem of plants, algae, bacteria, fish and clams are present to purify the water. A micro-wetland ecosystem will be formed around these mansions to sustain larger wetland animals and plants.”
Chiu won the Grand Prize of the competition, Reburbia. Hurrah. I was palpitating and flushed when I saw this image.