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Planned communities, organized by the rich and powerful around the latest and greatest in technology or political change, are not novel in the slightest and cer

Planned communities, organized by the rich and powerful around the latest and greatest in technology or political change, are not novel in the slightest and certainly not unique to tech billionaires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community We've been doing this for about the history of humankind, and many of the world's capitals are planned cities. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. For example Brasilia was a planned utopia built around the great innovations and delights of the 20th century - such being planned around motor traffic. And upon reaching a state of overpopulation, it became well known as a dystopia instead.

thesuitonym 6y ago
I'm reminded immediately of the EPCOT, which never manifested due to Walt Disney's death, but was a city planned around transportation. I don't know about the PeopleMover as a means of public transit but I love the hub and spoke ideal that the original plan had. I wish a pedestrian first city would happen in the US. Imagine how much more quickly Florida's light rail may have manifested if we had a city that was already rail-centric in the 60s?
JamesLeonis 6y ago
Brasilia is a case study in the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. It's a great book that digs into the whole thinking behind such grand plans and why they often fall apart. EDIT: The quote at the start of chapter 4 (The High Modernist City) captures the Ideology of these blank-slate planners. > Time is a fatal handicap to the baroque conception of the world: its mechanical order makes no allowances for growth, change, adaptation, and creative renewal. In short, a baroque plan was a block achievement. It must be laid out at a stroke, fixed and frozen forever, as if done overnight by Arabian nights genii. Such a plan demands an architectural despot, working for an absolute ruler, who will live long enough to complete their own conceptions. To alter this type of plan, to introduce fresh elements of another style, is to break its esthetic backbone. — Lewis Mumford, The City in History

thesuitonym 6y ago

I'm reminded immediately of the EPCOT, which never manifested due to Walt Disney's death, but was a city planned around transportation. I don't know about the PeopleMover as a means of public transit but I love the hub and spoke ideal that the original plan had. I wish a pedestrian first city would happen in the US. Imagine how much more quickly Florida's light rail may have manifested if we had a city that was already rail-centric in the 60s?

JamesLeonis 6y ago

Brasilia is a case study in the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. It's a great book that digs into the whole thinking behind such grand plans and why they often fall apart. EDIT: The quote at the start of chapter 4 (The High Modernist City) captures the Ideology of these blank-slate planners. > Time is a fatal handicap to the baroque conception of the world: its mechanical order makes no allowances for growth, change, adaptation, and creative renewal. In short, a baroque plan was a block achievement. It must be laid out at a stroke, fixed and frozen forever, as if done overnight by Arabian nights genii. Such a plan demands an architectural despot, working for an absolute ruler, who will live long enough to complete their own conceptions. To alter this type of plan, to introduce fresh elements of another style, is to break its esthetic backbone. — Lewis Mumford, The City in History