Modern megacities in arid and tropical climates are approaching an architectural scalinglimit: maintaining habitable conditions requires increasingly intensive imports of energy,water, and food through spatially distributed networks, where thermodynamic losses,vulnerability to failures, and infrastructural inertia inevitably grow.Analogous structural constraints have been previously identified in computing and transportsystems, where the distribution of physical gradients over large distances leads toasymptotic degradation of system efficiency.This work proposes an integrated linear urban life-support architecture deployed alongtransport corridors, functioning as a distributed thermodynamic interface between solarradiation, atmosphere, and urban fabric. The system combines coaxial solar distillationloops, vertical agricultural modules, photovoltaic surfaces, and passive climate regulationmechanisms within a single physical framework with high functional density.It is shown that localization of phase transitions, cascaded use of energy flows, andsegmented architecture provide reduced exergy destruction, linear scalability of resourceproduction, and resilience to partial infrastructure degradation. Order-of-magnitude estimatesindicate that at 15–20% coverage of urban road networks with such nodes, stable cooledcorridors may form, peak near-surface temperatures may decrease by 5–9 °C, andsignificant fractions of domestic water consumption and fresh food can be provided withindense urban environments.Thus, integrated linear nodes are viewed not as isolated engineering objects, but as a newclass of urban infrastructure where transport corridors transform into active elements ofclimatic, energetic, and resource regulation. The work formalizes architectural scaling lawsfor such systems and establishes a physically verifiable framework for the next generation ofhigh-density cities functioning not despite environmental conditions, but by directlyharnessing them.
Roman Goncharenko (Wed,) studied this question.