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Architects Joseph Moore and David Tai Wai Pak believe that the future of urban design will be found in the interdependence of expansion and mass transit systems. In California the directionless sprawl of its largest cities has created a culture of cars, pollution and commuting. Continual independent growth was solution that provided great comfort and freedom while land and resources were available. However, California’s population has grown exceedingly in the past fifty years and it cannot sustain its current growth within this old system. Los Angeles’s population in particular has increased from 4.7 million in 1950 to a staggering 16 million in 2008 and it is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to continue to grow to a total population of 24.6 million by 2050. To deal with this future population increase, Intension proposes to relocate any further expansion of California’s major cities towards a linear urban plan. The catalyst for this proposal was California Department of Transportation’s development of a high speed rail that will link major cities from Sacramento to San Diego.

Intension will create linear cities along this path.  Clusters of Living Towers are interconnected through a series of circulation pathways that support; commercial, industrial, and mass transit stations. Intension limits the ecological footprint by elevating the programmatic space 26 feet above grade, allowing the areas below to develop on its own natural accord.

The parallel integration of the project to the mass transit system will allow for a constant exchange of culture between new and existing metropolitan areas.

Intension’s living units are an open source program that will allow its residents to virtually manipulate the space they will inhabit. Six modular units could be transformed to allocate any program desired. These units will fit into an existing structural system and create a network of linear cities. Its residents will be able to update and reconfigure their environment with an open source spatial program that allows its design to adapt over time.

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