And yet it's all possible. A hill, yes. With villas around its sloping sides, yes. But here's the secret: the hill is artificial, hollow, and the interior houses all its commercial facilities and support services.
The homes themselves provide every resident with three valuable features: privacy, an uninterrupted view, and vertical airspace for a garden terrace, while also offering instant walking-distance access to the full range of urban facilities.
Privacy and peace are assured by the basic layout of homes and access, which places street passageways behind, rather than in front of the individual hillside residences. There are indeed a few outside 'ring' walkways where people can take a stroll and enjoy the views, and some residents, many retired or living alone, choose to live facing these outer walkways. But the majority enjoy their own unobstructed, totally private terrace and view, with their indoor access 'street' behind them. Once inside their homes, residents have complete frontal privacy, with privacy between next-door neighbours on the garden-terraces assured by the planted sloping dividing walls on either side.
The second feature of these homes, enjoyed by all hilltown residents, is the unobstructed view from their hillside garden terraces over miles of countryside, with its rolling hills and streams, clumps of woodland, and perhaps just the occasional glimpse of another green hilltown merging almost imperceptibly into the background scene.
The third feature is vertical airspace. The slopes of the artificial hills provide for every home a terrace garden open to the sky – as opposed to a high-rise apartment balcony which is open only to the front and perhaps the sides, with vertigo-views to the ground below! The generously-sized terraces are warm and sheltered miniature gardens, ideal for relaxing or for summer meals.
Since the terraces are sheltered, residents are able to grow plants and flowers that are even more exotic than those in the parks or public gardens. Terraces are generally paved in varied finishes and colours simulating natural stone, with ample space for seating and dining; large terracotta plant pots containing flowers or perhaps small fruiting trees will often be arranged on the paved surface, with more permanent flower beds built-in along the side walls. There are wide planters at the front of each terrace where people grow low bushes, flowers and trailing greenery. This planting at the front of the terrace provides essential privacy for the levels below, and enhance the impression of a natural, green hillside when viewed from a distance.
In a typical hilltown all of the main vertical dividing walls are set at least 40 feet apart, determining the width of the homes and their terraced gardens. There is nonetheless a choice of size in home and terrace; half the levels have single-floor homes with 30-foot deep terraces and the other half are two-story homes with larger terraces of 60-foot depth.
The single-floor homes usually have a 20-foot wide living room with two 10-foot wide 'personal rooms' at the side looking onto the same garden terrace. The two-story homes generally feature a living room and dinning area with an adjacent den/workspace at terrace level, plus anywhere between two and four 'personal rooms' on the upper level.
At the rear of the home, where there is no natural light other than that piped down through 'light-tubes' from the divider wall cavities, sound-insulated rooms offer ample workspace which can be used for storage or as work spaces. Since these areas are at the back of the apartment, some rsidents may choose to have windows looking onto the interior 'street', a facility appreciated by craftspeople like sculptors, artists, or musical instrument-makers. Passers-by can watch the work in progress or perhaps see a small display of the items crafted, and perhaps tempted to buy!
On a more practical note, cable tv, radio and phone are ready-installed, and most of the numerous activities taking place in the hilltown's interior theatres and concert halls, performance and lecture rooms can also be accessed in the home through cable vision. Shutes for various categories of recycling are instlled in kitchens, and river water irrigation set into planters. Services running between apartments are easy of access with their own maintenance-accessible ducting, all weather-proof, easy and cheap to maintain.
While most residences offer a completely private home with rear access, there are those who like a little more social contact. Their choice might be a home facing onto one of the two or three Promenades which run around the outside of the Hilltown, so they can 'potter about' in their front gardens and exchange greetings with passers-by.
Others might go for an area known locally as 'The Quarry'. Imagine that a section of the hillside has been cut away – just like a quarry in fact. This forms a little square, the 'quarry floor', which is flanked and overlooked by four or five vertical stories of single room apartments with balconies. The quarry apartments are popular with people living alone; some will be youngsters experiencing a new-found independence, others perhaps older people who no longer have a family around them.
The Quarry's own little square is treated almost like a private club by its surrounding residents. They can peer over their balconies or call down to see if anyone wants a game of chess; the square's flower beds are tended by a couple of local residents; and the café with its outside tables serves most of the residents as a communal dining/living or clubroom.
Here they chat, check the news, have a meal or a snack. The wide variety of ages makes for lively conversation, and from time to time a 'stranger' happens upon this little neighborhood square and is always made welcome. Indeed it is surprising how many 'secret' corners and alleyways there can be in a creatively, imaginatevly planned hilltown, both inside and out.
All hilltown homes would be leased or rented at low rates from the Community Corporation which oversaw the planning and construction of the hilltown and which has subsequent responsibility for its maintenance, though the work itself could be undertaken under competitive contract by specialized firms. The highest standards of cleanliness and general maintenance both inside the hilltown's public areas and in the surrounding parkland should always be expected. Rents and leases reflect the write-down investment and on-going maintenance and are thus stable, predictable, and affordable.
Privacy, a view, and vertical airspace: these are the requirements of a perfect home, features offered by virtually every one of the hillside apartments. But in addition to the requirements for the home itself, humans also have a social side: we need contact with others for work, trade, culture, entertainment, and simple conversation. And if these facilities are to be of any practical use they must be closely and conveniently to hand: a few moments' walk or ride away, not half-an-hour's stop-go drive through polluted air on a crowded road with parking problems at the end of it! Here again the hilltown scores on pure convenience, with all its commercial, professional, and recreational facilities concentrated right there in the hillside's interior core.
Indeed with such a wealth of attractive facilities so readily available, less time may well be spent in the home itself, mainly because there is so much going on around it. The numerous facilities inside the hilltown in and around the central atrium, the roof top promenade areas and the beckoning countryside provide plenty of incentive to be 'out and about'.
Residents can enjoy going out into the surrounding countryside with its numerous market gardens and fruit and nut groves to pick their own fresh produce. Commercially picked produce is always fresh, and is processed in the large and well equipped kitchens looking out over parkland at the base of the hilltown where prepared dishes are made for home or restaurant use, delivered in returnable boxes along in-built ducts and automatically bar-code sorted.
Equally important for residents are the facilities existing outside and around their Hilltown. Indeed as much attention should be given to the outdoor surroundings as to the design of the town itself, and the immediate countryside should provide a thoughtfully planned selection of facilities.
Access to the 'great outdoors' could not be simpler for the Hilltown residents. Periodic breaks in the housing units allow for public top-to-bottom walkways winding through treed and landscapes slopes. Or for quicker access the internal sloping elevators terminate at the base of the Hilltown permitting direct walk-out into the surrounding parkland. By its very nature and concept, this is a very compact town; there is no suburban sprawl gradually eating its way across those 'greenfield sites' so much beloved of developers! This town resembles the old fortified towns of medieval times: town on one side of the city wall, open country on the other!
The extensive park area immediately surrounding the typical Hilltown is laid out semi-formally for quiet relaxation, and people can be seen strolling along the paths enjoying the trees, the green grass and profusion of colourful scented flowers. The air is especially relaxing; for this the townsfolk can thank the many different species of pine trees which are known to give off beneficial emanations.
In one area several rows of chairs are grouped in front of an old-style Victorian bandstand screened by trees at its rear. An announcement states that a local youth orchestra will perform 'for your pleasure' during the afternoon. Many small pavillions offer cafés, sport facilities or garden and plant centers. In sheltered areas, glass houses, some small, others several stories high, provide the ideal climate for exotic tropical fruits available almost all year-round. Intelligent use of sun-screens and solar panels ensure cost-free climate control, with fine-spray moisture as required. Most are open for public visit, purchases, and enjoyment.
At its outer edges the semi-cultivated and formally planned Town Park gives way to wedges of informal parkland alternating with market-gardening agriculture or fruit and nut groves. Although the market gardens are supervised and tended by professional agriculturalists, much of the produce is self-picked by the town's residents themselves, who enjoy the experience of being amongst the plant life. The immediate availability of fresh produce, while minimizing enrgy-hungry transportation, encourages the healthy preparation of ultra-fresh ingredients. "Slow food" is the fashion, as opposed to "Fast Food"! Care in preparation of fresh ingredients is followed by more leisurely eating habits - after all, much commuting time is saved in this cmpact town.
There is quite a choice of footpaths leading off into the 'real' countryside, each one having a small signpost showing its destination, distance and walking time; some of the paths are designed as circular routes, again with walking times given for the circuit. Walking is a favorite leisure activity, particularly as there is so much beautiful countryside to enjoy and ample leisure time to enjoy it. Finally the real wilderness begins. Here, trails are narrow and 'as you find them', human artificats and 'management' are kept to an absolute minimum.
So much for the outside. How about a visit to the interior mall? Check Life in the Atrium. See you there!
Home on a Hillside: Minimal Footprint, Minimal Energy.
A home on the slope of a hill, a terrace-garden open to the sky, magnificent views stretching far into the distance, easy access to surrounding parkland and wilderness, fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables close by... could be a dream villa! Add to that magical formula, shops, cafés, restaurants, recreational and cultural facilities offices, professional services, healthcare, kindergarten in fact all the services of a sophisticated city, all within minutes' walk… no, it's too much to ask!
A Varied Hillscape
Surrounding Parkland
