
A $10B Experimental City Nearly Got Built in Rural Minnesota (2018) - aww_dang
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-10-billion-experimental-city-nearly-got-built-rural-minnesota-180968617/
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spankalee
I would love to see a city like this built today, but with a little less
emphasis on experimental and more on starting with the best practices we know
today, and designing for a large scale from the outset like China does. Things
like being designed around pervasive rail-based mass transit, and that being
cheaper to build when you don't have to put it in an existing city. Pedestrian
optimized streets with much less parking than today's cities. Little-to-no
single family zoning, replaced with missing-middle apartment and mixed used
neighborhoods. Large parks. Plazas and outdoor dining. Buried utilities.
Either rooftop solar, or green roofs everywhere. Modern underground trash
collection. Cut-and-cover highway tunnels.

There's a lot of space in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakaotas, and we'll need more
space for population there as we have to migrate north.

~~~
headcanon
The vast majority of cities are where they are for a _reason_. Usually that
reason means proximity to some form of transportation infrastructure, whether
that be a river, highway, railroad, or ocean. This is true even for Las Vegas,
which which some consider to be "built in the middle of nowhere". Any city
without a solid economic reason for its existence quickly withers and dies.
Sadly, Flint Michigan is an example of this, as are many now-ghost towns in
the far west that died after the interstate system was built in the 50s and
60s.

You can't just plop down a fully-furnished city on some unpopulated plot of
land and expect anyone to move there. China as you say is trying this, but
some of these are basically ghost towns on arrival, despite the massive top-
down planning and investment. [1]

Any realistic plan for urban development reform is going to have to work with
what exists currently. If you want to create a "demonstration" city from
scratch, much faster and cheaper to do it virtually and simulate it.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTDU8MZRYw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTDU8MZRYw)

Edit: wording

~~~
the_reformation
What's the reason for Las Vegas?

~~~
reaperducer
Las Vegas was a water stop for steam powered trains going between Los Angeles
and Salt Lake City.

When Boulder Dam was built, the government built Boulder City to house the
workers. Being a government city, gambling wasn't allowed. But Vegas was just
over the hill and filled that desire for the workers.

When the railroads switched to diesel and didn't need the water stop anymore,
Vegas was already established as a gambling destination.

The spring still flows, and is part of a tiny state park in downtown Las
Vegas.

And Boulder City is still the only place in Nevada where gambling is illegal.

------
shiftpgdn
This is remarkably similar to Walt Disney's EPCOT plan:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_\(concept\))
. I wonder what was in the water in the 60s since the Astrodome actually got
built in 1965:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome)

~~~
Johnny555
I came here to make the same comment, I'm surprised they didn't mention EPCOT
in the article. Many people don't know that Disney's vision was for EPCOT to
be a real city (well, maybe "town" is more appropriate for 20,000 citizens),
not a theme park.

~~~
bagacrap
didn't he actually build a utopian community called Paradise?

~~~
Johnny555
The Disney company (under Eisner) did create a planned community called
Celebration, but it didn't really follow Walt Disney's EPCOT plan. It still
exists, but has since been sold off to a private developer, so has no real
connection to Disney.

------
Merrill
A more modest, but no less idealistic, example is Arcosanti north of Phoenix.
I visited it in the late '80s when it was just getting started. There was not
a lot then, but at least work continues. Paolo Soleri's visions were much more
ambitious.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri)

~~~
bulletsvshumans
Arcosanti was discussed recently on Hacker News here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066193)

~~~
Merrill
Thanks. That's a good thread.

I was there only part of a day. Had a day off in Phoenix, and a colleague and
I drove to Flagstaff via Arcosanti and Sedona. Discussion on that thread gives
a lot of information about what has happened since. The book I bought in their
store had a lot of ideas about huge cities built as monolithic structures,
unlike what is on the ground now.

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mc32
Looks like there was local resistance to the project. Here's a synopsis of the
retrospective documentary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbArKOxg2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbArKOxg2w)

~~~
azdle
It's also available to buy DRM free:
[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/183222](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/183222)

I found it rather disappointing though. It didn't really go into any detail
about what it was supposed to be, just "dude had this idea, got other people
to sponsor some research, locals didn't like the idea, also there were funding
problems so it never happened".

------
eof
Same thing here in Winooski, Vermont! I don't think it would be fair to say it
"nearly" got built, but it was considered!

[https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/18/archives/dome-may-
shelter...](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/18/archives/dome-may-shelter-a-
whole-town.html)

[https://unofficialnetworks.com/2013/02/02/entire-vermont-
tow...](https://unofficialnetworks.com/2013/02/02/entire-vermont-town-covered-
giant-dome/)

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mark-r
$10 billion in 1967 dollars? No wonder it never got built!

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renewiltord
Haha, when the sci-fi writers of the past imagined our Cities of the Future™
they never stopped to wonder about zoning. We're never going to have spires
and shit. It would never get approved.

------
GNOMES
Surprised they would built it up North near Duluth and Park Rapids, and not
further South. Imagine a city this large between the Twin Cities and Des
Moines.

I am curious if the taconite mines would have blocked or endorsed this. One
one hand it's more labor in the area, on the other it's potentially unminable
land if surrounding area prospers.

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pengaru
R.Buckminster Fuller was an interesting character. I ran across this youtube
video not long ago and it kind of blew my mind not having any knowledge of him
beyond a vague link to the geodesic dome.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsOvE-
ReX2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsOvE-ReX2g)

------
tomcam
From the comments:

> Apparently they had pretty good weed in Minnesota, even back then.
> Thankfully this never was tried, or poor people of Aitkin Co. would be stuck
> with a huge, crumbling ghetto, at best, or an EPA superfund site. Utopianism
> has (and will) never worked because people will never follow like sheep. One
> will figure out a way to get more, then others will follow, Some groups will
> rise, others will fail, Then, voilà, right back where we started. Except now
> there's a crumbling ghetto in Aitkin County. Oh well, at least it's not
> where the libs can see it.

> Fortunately the rural citizens of Minnesota were smart enough to see this,
> They could tell that the folks who were pushing this sure as hell didn't
> want it anywhere close they lived. "Lets foist this planning joke on some
> poor folk that can't do anything about it."

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BariumBlue
I wonder if putting a semi transparent white dome or covering over a city
could effectively cool it by reducing net sunlight. Kinda like permanent
artificial clouds

~~~
entropicdrifter
It'd probably heat it up because of the greenhouse effect, just from the hot
air coming from all the cars and people not being able to escape, let alone
heat from sunlight not being cooled by breezes/convection

~~~
cogman10
It'd be interesting to see if there were some economies of scale for heating
cooling.

For example, I could imagine that a nuclear power plant in the center of the
city could provide the whole city with both heat and power at a fairly low
cost for both.

On the flip side, you might be able to do city wide geothermal cooling.

It'd be an interesting experiment to say the least.

~~~
Nasrudith
Europe already has utility heating. I know I first heard of it from Cities
Skylines and my first thought was "That sounds like a silly excuse to add
another utility." Then I looked it up and found it was a real thing. NYC has a
steam network which has remarkable versatile functions - in addition to
heating, resturant dish cleaning, and humidity control.

~~~
imtringued
Silly excuse? What else are you going to do with the waste heat?

~~~
entropicdrifter
I think that part of the comment was specific to the game Cities Skylines.
Like, "Oh they added another utility to manage... wtf is this? I haven't ever
heard of cities doing this." But then they looked it up and found out it's a
real practice.

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tintor
What was the reason for the dome over the city?

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LargoLasskhyfv
Logan's Run!

------
ilaksh
I love coming up with ideas for future cities. I have previously even hired
digital artists/CAD developers to help me illustrate my ideas.

To me there are lots of obvious structural things that are outdated about
cities. And it is fun to think of out-there concepts to radically change or
maybe improve things.

Recently I was in Gravity Sketch making a 3D model in VR of part of my idea.
That 3d model looks terrible now and has only about 40% of the concepts
included. Right now it is a series of connected enclosures, sort of like domes
but sort of not like domes.

Basically there will be like a grid of these enclosures that are connected by
two or more levels of roadways for small autonomous cars (pods) -- most of
which will be for single passengers.

Each megastructure is a little bit like a tree inside of an egg. Spiraling
along the internal edges will be roads for traversing the levels. There will
be something like 7 or 8 vertical levels, each of which is maybe 4 or more
stories tall. The branches of the tree are steel holding up platforms.

Each main level has two sub-levels: one for infrastructure, and one for people
and buildings. The infrastructure level contains the roadways for the
autonomous pods, as well as things like water, electricity, sewer, networking,
and basement/cargo reception.

The main level contains multistory buildings, walking roads, and a significant
amount of space set aside for a type of permacultural-landscaping. So there
will be zoning requiring that space to be developed as for example food forest
with aquaponics built in. This will be on all levels and platforms. So in the
city charter or whatever is this requirement to dedicate a certain amount of
space to this type of agriculture which is also landscape. The idea is not to
realistically produce all of the food or even a great proportion of it, but to
enable some fresh produce to be at hand and to ensure that people are
connected with food sources. The idea is that by making agriculture a more
integral part of the city, there may be more attention placed on agriculture
by ordinary people and there may be more attention placed on making it more
sustainable or something. Also it seems wasteful to just use landscaping for
decoration.

Another aspect is that I would like alternating bands of facade on the egg. So
there will be strips of something like glass but which will permit UV B
(required for Vitamin D production) in a double layer. And then strips of a
thick insulated layer with an energy-harvesting sheathing that incorporates
solar panels and ducted wind turbines sort of embedded in tunnels in the
solar-cell-covered undulating surface.

It seems that you would need strategies for passive and active heating and
cooling. Such as automated shading, opening and closing ventilation, and heat
recovery ventilators. Etc.

It would be nice if some type of glass could be used largely for central
walkways in order to increase the penetration of light.

Anyway I have a bit more that I wrote up before.

Multi-Level City Concept

In a high-density urban core, many skyscrapers exist in a relatively small
area. This makes it possible to house many people and support many businesses
in that small footprint.

However, in these areas, while most buildings may have 50 or more floors,
there is only a single level containing public infrastructure: the ground
level, which contains all of the vehicle transportation, water, sewer,
electricity, and communication.

In this scenario, there is actually more private infrastructure in the
buildings themselves than infrastructure in the public level. This is because
each structure is a self-contained, privately designed and privately
maintained entity. So transportation (elevators), electricity, communication,
water, sewer must all be facilitated by each private structure. In addition,
each of these is connected to the public infrastructure on only one level.

This presents multiple problems.

Problems with Single-Level Infrastructure in Many-Level dense Urban Cores

Since vehicle traffic can only move on one level, congestion can be extreme.

Multi-Level Public Inter-Building Public Infrastructure for Dense Urban Cores

Supporting Autonomous Passenger and Cargo Delivery

Suppose that there was a way to build a type of multi-level skeleton for a
city. So instead of a single roadway at only ground level, there were several
different roadways at different floors of a superstructure. This
superstructure would be designed to support the installation of modular
construction.

With this system, delivery of goods by small autonomous vehicles could, for
example, proceed directly from the back cargo door of a restaurant on level 8,
to your front door on level 2 a few blocks away, strictly over the public
roadways which connect not only different buildings but also at different
levels. Vehicles could traverse levels over graded roadways or perhaps some
type of small vehicle elevator system.

\---------------------------------------------

Another _totally different_ idea that I had quite awhile ago was
[http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/)

