
Alaska that never was: Seward's Success (2011) - zeristor
http://historicalaska.blogspot.com/2011/02/alaska-that-never-was-sewards-success.html
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archgoon
Huh; well, it's not mentioned in the article, but "Seward's Success" is a play
on the original purchase of Alaska. When it was first purchased from Russia,
the US Secretary of State, William Seward, was ridiculed by opponents of the
purchase; nicknaming the purchase "Seward's Folly".

Random historical context.

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zeristor
OP here, its a shame that I missed this posts moment in the sun.

The Wikipedia article, which I also posted to HN, but missed the limelight
discusses why it was called Seward's Success:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seward%27s_Success,_Alaska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seward%27s_Success,_Alaska)

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Animats
This looks much like Walt Disney's original plan for EPCOT. And similar to the
one part actually built, the Contemporary Hotel at Disney World, with a
monorail through the interior.

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qubex
I came here to say this: the artist’s renderings of the housing and monorail
look _exactly_ like the Contemporary resort at EPCOT.

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schoolornot
Besides Disney are there any other examples of "futuristic" cities?

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qubex
Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, springs to mind. The 1930s World Fairs held
in New York and San Francisco. I’ll probably have a facepalm-why-didn’t-that-
other-one-occur-to-me moment after I hit ‘submit’, but that’s what’s come to
mind so far. I’m a bit addled this morning.

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culturestate
Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is probably the closest modern equivalent to Epcot’s
original vision, though it's debatable how much of the master plan will
actually be built. Songdo (near Seoul) is less sci-fi-ish but much farther
along in development.

As an aside, Niemeyer's buildings in Brasilia - particularly the cathedral and
the palace - are _phenomenal_ pieces of civc architecture.

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high_density
songdo is nice to live in, but it didn't have good enough public transit /
highway to seoul...

(1 / time-to-reach-seoul == your house price)

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mojomark
The concept art looks eerily reminiscent of the buildings in Logan's Run (1),
or perhaps vice versa.

1\.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/)

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zeristor
Also the Usborne Book of the Future had its Future Cities section with a
picture of a Domed City albeit on The Moon.

This came out in 1977, I'm not sure if there was a ground swell perhaps
inspired by the Montreal Expo 67 which had a large Buckminster sphere:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Biosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Biosphere)

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rmason
I think the basic idea could be done for a fraction of the cost. Assuming the
island didn't have cars you could have conventional buildings with narrow
streets that would be used by snowmobiles in the winter and bicycles in the
summer.

Ever been to downtown Montreal? They have all the buildings inter-connected
either with tunnels below or skyways above. It all works pretty well in a
region with long, cold winters.

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aww_dang
I often wonder what would happen if some of these remote areas adopted special
economic zone policies for the development of a new city.

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082349872349872
Even more optimistic was the technique used to sell lots in the Coachella
Valley. Someone once had a theory that several seasons of agriculture would
somehow "terraform" the region into a paradise, and realtors eagerly seized
upon it.

Compare "Apple Valley" and "Lucerne Valley", both of which I remember as
having been convenient places for geology, as there was very little of the
elsewhere common inconvenient interposed layer of biology.

(Because the valley floor soils had accumulated for thousands of years without
having any nutrients washed away, the first several harvests upon irrigation
were bumper with very little fertiliser input. Later harvests ... less so.)

"Fish, and plankton. And sea greens, and protein from the sea."

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boring_twenties
OT, but if you ever find yourself in Seward, AK you owe it to yourself to eat
at The Cookery. The oysters are half price between 5 and 6pm.

