In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Los Angeles mega buildings complex, we are interviewing Roger Morgan, the designer of the super buildings.

We understand that you prefer the name "Green Houses" to describe the buildings. Can you tell us why?

The buildings are vertical cities. People live and work in the same buildings. When you compare the energy and pollution costs of commuting in the horizontal cities and comparing that to the equivalent activity in our green houses, you end up with at least a 75% reduction in energy consumption and a 90% decrease in smog causing pollutants.

There are also systems within the buildings that internally reduce the consumption of energy and water to levels much lower on per capita basis than on the outside.

In addition, all the energy that is used in the complex is produced within a few kilometers of the buildings. We have set up thermal wind generator farms to create all the energy we need. And on good days, we even have surplus energy to sell to the rest of Los Angeles.

For those who are not familiar with the green houses, can you give us a brief description of what they are and how they came to be?

If you look at how much housing space a city of 20 million uses and then add in all the schools, businesses, hospitals, offices, retail stores, etc. , you will find that an area of slightly less than 40 billion square meters would easily contain it all. A single building of 300 floors with a little bit more than 6 kilometers on a side would be big enough to house the entire city.

For aesthetic and logistical reasons, we chose to build five smaller buildings that had the total area needed rather than the one large building.

And all of the activities of a regular city happen in your green houses?

Most but not all. We can handle residential, light manufacturing, warehousing and the normal retail and office environments. Anything more than that still has to be done outside the buildings.

How does commuting within your green houses differ from the horizontal city?

Naturally we have vertical and horizontal elevators in each of the buildings. Each floor of each of the buildings is connected by tubes to the equivalent floor in the other buildings. These tubes are used by the traffic pods to get people from building to building.

The system was designed so that no person would take more than 30 minutes to go from any point in any building to the furthest point in another building even under maximum traffic loads. Our testing over the last 20 years has shown that at least 75% of our inhabitants commute 15 minutes or less.

This compares to the normal commute on the outside that starts at an hour and goes up from there.

Exactly.

There has been much criticism over the economic impacts of the surrounding cities wherever the green houses are built. Can you address that?

During every major economic shift, there are winners and losers. Obviously some of the big losers here are the auto and related industries. Auto ownership is less than 10% for our residents, so this is an industry that has taken a big hit.

Any retail or service company that is still only operating on the outside has had a massive loss of potential customers. And, lastly, the city governments are slowly being consolidated as their tax base (the citizens within their cities) continues to drop.

On the positive side, it costs the local governments much less per capita to operate in the buildings than on the outside. Police, fire & other emergency services are much cheaper because of the compact distances. This is the main reason for the massive subsidies that the regional governments have paid to get the buildings filled up.

As you know, the large government subsidies that make these projects work are another major area of criticism. How much of the total project costs are covered by the subsidies?

I can't speak for all the projects around the country, but for this one, it was roughly half. Back 20 years ago, the buildings cost roughly 650 billion dollars to build. This was borne by the private corporations that built the structures. They are making their money back by selling homes and offices and by ongoing fees to maintain the infrastructure.

The state government has spent about the same amount buying up homes and businesses on the outside and giving the sellers an equivalent amount of space in the buildings. If a person sold a 1,000 square meter home on the outside, that person would get 1,000 square meters residential space in the buildings. And the government would pay off the bank loans and demolish the outside home so no one else can use the property.

The ultimate goal of the government is to move 20 million people into the buildings and have a maximum of perhaps a million or two people left in the outer city.

For a variety of reasons, some people can't or don't want to live in the buildings. For them there is still housing and some jobs on the outside.

You spoke about how home owners and business owners are getting subsidies to move to the buildings. What about the non-homeowners? Is there anything available for them?

Anyone who has a job in the buildings has the opportunity to get subsidized mortgage payments (even those who only earn the minimum wage). Right now less than 5% of the residents are renters. Everyone else is a homeowner in some form or another.

But what about the people who are unemployed or handicapped and can't work?

The government is researching different options. They haven't come up with a solution yet.

So in the meantime, they stay outside?

Yes.

Speaking of governments, what kind of governments are administering the buildings?

There was a fear in the beginning that since private corporations were creating the buildings, they were in effect establishing corporate towns that they would then control. In reality, each building is a separate city with leadership elected by the residents. The corporations are paid by the city governments to maintain the buildings and keep the infrastructure running smoothly. The only other function the corporations have is to sell the remaining unsold space in the buildings.

And you have a leadership position in one of the buildings, don't you?

Yes. I am the General Manager of the city called Astra (which is one of the five buildings). That is equivalent to a mayor in the outside cities.