Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Roads in Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood named for people & places in Tolkien’s Middle Earth series

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times profiling award-winning Martian science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson piqued my interest in the ecological nature of Mister Robinson’s neighborhood, Village Homes of Davis, California. A seventy-acre subdivision designed in the 1970s to “encourage both the development of a sense of community and the conservation of energy and natural resources,” Village Homes features all kinds of neat features, such as the solar orientation of streets, bike paths, natural drainage, edible landscaping and open space. And, according to the neighborhood’s website, nearly all of the streets are named for people or places in JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth fantasy series!

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