The 6 Most Insane Cities Ever Planned

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The 6 Most Insane Cities Ever Planned


Jan 16, 2011

By Dwayne Hoover

Read More: http://www.cracked.com/article_18947...r-planned.html

#6. Triton City: If It's Good Enough for an Aquaman Villain, It's Good Enough for You!

In the 1960's, Buckminster Fuller (the geodesic dome guy) was commissioned by Matsutaro Shoriki, a wealthy Japanese patron, to design a city in Japan. This architectural marvel was to be a tetrahedron that measured two miles on each side, capable of housing one million residents, and would be located in Tokyo Bay. Not along Tokyo Bay, but in Tokyo Bay. Floating.

The tetrahedron shape provided many benefits as well, like maximizing the availability of outside living area, and protecting residents from potentially fatal falls off of the tall buildings (guard rails were not to be invented until 1992, by Sir Preston Guardrail, of the Oxford Guardrails). Unfortunately, Shoriki died in 1966, which brought an end to the plans for the gargantuan artificial floating pyramid.

Until the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development caught wind of the idea. So Fuller went to work on a scaled-down model for the US, called Triton City. Triton anticipated a lower maximum population of just over 100,000 people, and was also to be the first fully organic city, complete with a desalination system to re-circulate ocean water.....

#5. Metropolis: Where Everybody Is Your Neighbor. Literally!

http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/gillette.htm

Metropolis isn't just a fictional city ruled by a power-mad Aryan Ubermensch. It was originally a real place -- or at least it was going to be. Just prior to the turn of the 20th century, King Camp Gillette (yes, the shaving guy) had a slightly different idea for Metropolis: "Under a perfect economical system of production and distribution, and a system combining the greatest elements of progress, there can be only one city on a continent, and possibly only one in the world."

No more Chicago, Miami or L.A. Just one gargantuan city, home to everyone in North America, and maybe, eventually, the entire planet. Sure, there would be other, smaller areas scattered throughout the country for people to work for temporary periods of time, and even others to vacation in, but Metropolis would be "home to the people." All 6,075 square miles of it, located directly over Niagara Falls.

Gillette's plan was to use the falls not only as the main source of water but also to power the city. The design and layout of the buildings themselves were so brutally efficient that we wouldn't see their likeness again until the pod towers of The Matrix.....

#4. Roadtown: Liberating Women With the Power of Straight Lines.

http://www.trivia-library.com/b/hist...own-part-1.htm

magine you're standing on the Great Wall of China. Now, imagine that instead of endless miles of inert brick, you're instead gazing upon a long, thin line of bustling city. Welcome to Roadtown, Edgar Chambless' idea for a two-room-wide, two-story-tall technological utopia. The uppermost levels are reserved for the recreation area of the roof promenade, the apartment levels are below that and the employment levels below those, and underneath it all is a three-level underground railway system, which is good, because when everything is located along one long, straight line, it's going to take fucking forever to get anywhere. It's basically Traffic Jam: The City.

The problem with the early 1900s city designs, Chambless figured, was that land was being underutilized because of a lack of transportation. And like most terrible ideas, his started off being absolutely right: That was the biggest problem of the early 20th century. But where the rest of the world proposed building up (thus the popularization of the skyscraper), Chambless instead proposed building out, in a long, continuous line. He thought that transportation and utilities would be improved by running things linearly, which would allow services like heat, water, electricity, phone and public transportation to be universally available and easy to maintain.....

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http://www.cracked.com/article_18947...#ixzz1BEdLBKAl


#1. BoozeTown: A Community Devoted Solely to Drinking

http://www.drunkard.com/issues/55/55-boozetown.html

Like all men named Mel, Mel Johnson loved to get hilariously shitfaced. But Johnson didn't love drinking like we do: Like a secret lover, made all the more tantalizing by the taboo of visiting them in the daytime. No, he loved it like a religious zealot loves the Lord: With complete and total devotion. He was so passionate about drinking, that he felt there should be an entire city devoted solely to it. So, in 1950 he began his elaborate plan to build this "lush" paradise. Mel set out to establish BoozeTown.

BoozeTown was to come about in three stages. First, it would be built as a vacation spot with practically nothing but 24-hour bars and hotels Mel hoped to establish BoozeTown as the exclusive spot for celebrities to overindulge with impunity. Then, once enough revenue was raised from the tourism stage, the next step would be to build an elaborate transportation network, including an electric trolley system to eliminate drunk driving and moving sidewalks to assist the stumblers- because drunk people have no problem mounting moving sidewalks; everybody who's gotten drunk in an airport bar can verify that. Finally, with his vacation spot in full tilt, Johnson would establish the residential communities and focus on growing BoozeTown's full-time population. If that sounds too crazy to believe, keep in mind the concept has already been proven sound, just with a different vice: Gambling.....