For a time Soleri designed several interesting Arcologies for space travel. The relevance for doing this was that inhospitable environments are particularly ripe for the development of Arcologies. Indeed if we were to consider a serious consideration for Arcology type engineering and design it would be in the research of how to build a space Arcology.
While this can be seen as still being some time away from practical reality, the larger idea of developing Integrated habitats with self-sufficient life support systems was the premise for Ed Bass funding Biosphere 2 to the tune of 150 million dollars.
Thus we can consider that the concept of highly integrated, compact and sustainable systems rolled together into a enclosed and partially sealed built environment with a large solar envelope as the possible way forward if we decide to proceed on Arcology development that takes a R&D focus for building self contained living units for inhospitable environments like the Sahara, the Arctic and undersea/underwater habitats. Such Arcologies built for corporations extracting minerals or other resources in otherwise uninhabitable lands could be a possible source of revenue moving the vision forward towards a more large scale human application that could include eventual space colonization.