Last night at a Town Hall event organized by Forterra's new magazine Ampersand (I have a short essay in the current issue that concerns urban density), I provided this answer to the question: "What's your one crackpot city building idea?"

I see a tower as tall (if not taller than) the Columbia Center that contains thousands of micro-units. The building would also be productive (small-scale manufacturing on certain floors) and have cafes, bars, sex shops, and play areas for children. The elevator would achieve the condition of public transportation in this building, which, nevertheless, would not aspire to self-sufficiency but would instead be a node that's radiant from the concentration of so many humans, so much activity. I see floor after floor of people living as closely together as possible. Here, the human as an animal finally is in the state that most exploits its species-being, its hypersociality. Our fear of crowding is ideological (the "behavioral sink" a mere fiction); our ability to cram together in large numbers and function perfectly is the animal we truly are.

The inspiration of this vision is, one, the Tower of David in Caracas (this unplanned experiment is coming to an end); and, two, the almost mythical Kowloon Walled City, a settlement that used to be right under low-flying passenger jets whose ready wheels were moments from landing in Hong Kong (this greatest of all unplanned urban experiments came to an end in 1994). My tower in downtown Seattle would bring together the corporate architecture of the former (but now as a symbol of the power of human sociality rather than market forces) with the density of the latter. At its height, Kowloon Walled City produced 80 percent of Hong Kong's fish balls—"the ultimate gourmet delicacy." What wonderful things might come out of the tower of my dreams?

Note: The fish ball fact came from a student, Frances Cheong, in a class I taught at Hugo House called Writing the City.