Arriving at Arcosanti, an experimental eco-city in central Arizona, I was acutely aware of my non-greenness. I had spent the morning expelling carbon on my flight to Phoenix. My rental car had empty soda bottles, a few plastic bags and a banana peel. A piece of paper with directions had accidentally escaped through the car window, floating off toward a patch of spiky cactus. With this kind of resume, would Mother Earth’s minions still let me inside?

“Hey, come join us,” a guy in a dress, belt and outsize personality beckoned. “Have a beer.”

The Californian artist was one of up to 80 residents living and working at Arcosanti, a pilot utopian community that champions sustainable living. After a long day of working on passive solar power, gardening and bread-baking, the group was tossing back a few. And for me, after a long day of emissions and gas-guzzling, a mixer with outre environmentalists was much appreciated.

Arcosanti was started in the 1970s by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a spitfire who seeks an alternative to a car-dominant, hyper-consumerist society. With his so-called urban laboratory, Soleri, 88, hopes to eliminate the automobile, promote frugality and create a functional metro center run on the Earth’s resources: food from organic gardens, power from the sun, air conditioning from the shade, building materials from the natural surroundings. Though still a work in progress, Arcosanti in theory offers residents the same amenities as, say, a Manhattanite.

“Arcosanti is both a success and a failure. A failure in that it is less than what its founder had hoped it would be, yet an extraordinary success in that it is actually there, inhabited and changing people’s lives,” said Susan Piedmont-Palladino, a curator at Washington’s National Building Museum.

Ironically, the only way to reach the eco-city is by car. Since Arcosanti is a working city, not a top-service resort, visitors are left to their own devices for amusement. The most obvious distractions are the hour-long tour (did that), the bakery (ate my treat) and the gallery (browsed the bells and even rang some). Before setting off for Phoenix, I attached a small Soleri bell to my rearview mirror.