Democracity a planned community of the future (1939)

https://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/worlds_fair/wf_tour/theme-7.aspx

by samclemens • 4 years ago

52 16 4 years ago

1939nyworldsfair.com

NY Public Library has a video on the exhibit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kulk7IPTL10

burlesona• 4 years ago

Lots of cool ideas, but the people of that era had no idea how poorly the auto-oriented pattern would scale, nor how expensive it would be to build and maintain. Notice for example, where are the parking lots and gas stations in this plan?

You can see the appeal of their vision, especially in light of the condition of cities they were used to. But instead we got stroads and snout houses for all :/

Lammy• 4 years ago

Notice for example, where are the parking lots and gas stations in this plan?

There's a hand-wavey section about it on Page 18:

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"One of the reasons the traffic jam — with its fretting of nerves and honking of horns — has vanished is that parking in the streets has vanished… Magically you [sic] car has found a place for itself, convenient for you, out of the way of traffic.

Because this central city is planned to do certain things, because space doesn't have to be wasted on things the other cites [sic] do better, there is ample room here… Every office building is on a park and on a parking lot as well.

Every time you put a desk into an office building, you provide space for a car outside. For department store, theaters, the sports arena, and other places where people gather in tremendous numbers, you make special arrangements… underground parking in one place, overhead in another… It can be done… with methodical precision…

Trucking also has almost disappeared from the hub, vast quantities of goods come in, chiefly by boat or train… shoes and food and furniture… motor cars and fountain pens and clocks… for this is the distributing center of the entire area… But the goods are lifted from the boats and the train platform by carriers… and they are distributed by a carrier system to the proper warehouses, and never come into the crowded area."

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They really tell on themselves there with the description of how their ideal community has freight trains but conspicuously not passenger trains, RE: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-end-of-the-african-ame... for example.

"From 1890 to 1900 the African American population in Manhattan grew by 41 percent from 25,674 to 36,246. Behind these numbers was the growing exodus of blacks from southern states. Seeking to escape racial violence, declining economic opportunities, and legalized segregation, African Americans moved to northern cities like New York in increasing numbers.

A few years after the 1900 riot [in which whites attacked blacks in midtown following the stabbing of an undercover police officer by a black man], as Harlem land values increased with the first subway line nearing completion in 1904, the black residents, once sought as renters in Harlem, became the targets of an organized removal effort by some white Harlem property owners.

The [New York Herald] article also suggested that a rent increase “which the parlor car porters[0] could pay, but their colored inferiors could not,” had previously been used as a strategy to remove the undesirable tenants. According to The Herald, the owners’ target was the “colored inferiors,” but the “wealthy railroad porters” were also caught in the net of the eviction effort."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_porter

See also: when people use the dogwhistle "Manhattenization" to describe city growth as a bad thing.

every• 4 years ago

Perhaps a prototype Brasilia...

Regular-Former• 4 years ago

I'm not sure if prototype is the correct word, but it certainly had a major influence upon Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, who designed the Brazilian pavilion at that fair:

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

andai• 4 years ago

Why does the past seem more futuristic than the present?

crooked-v• 4 years ago

Because anything seems more futuristic when you ignore the actual logistical constraints you'd need to build it.

throwaway13337• 4 years ago

Ironic that these designs seem to most closely resemble soviet town designs.

A lot of things didn't work out but some places seem to have had great urban planning. Particularly - look at that picture of the Estonian city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning_in_communist_co...

goodpoint• 4 years ago

Where's the irony?

exikyut• 4 years ago

I have to admit I read this as "democracy a planned commodity of the future" and promptly imagined some sort of 1984-esque (post-)dystopian universe with... an altogether depressing quantity of tropes taken directly from the present day real world :/

Animats• 4 years ago

The scale is interesting. 1 million people in 11,000 square miles, with a city, town, and farms more or less self-sufficient. That's the area of Massachusetts with the population of San Francisco.

archhn• 4 years ago

Incidentally, the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner published "An apparatus for the study of animal behavior" in that same year.

nikolay• 4 years ago

Reminded me of Jacque Fresco...

plebianRube• 4 years ago

Pleasantville, Millville, Terminus, even the parks remind me of SimCity and placing residential, industrial, commercial, rail, road and shipyard areas.

totetsu• 4 years ago

The architectural style reminds me of Kyoto International Conference Center https://www.google.com/search?q=%E4%BA%AC%E9%83%BD%E5%9B%BD%...

sparkie• 4 years ago

Looks like a "pile of concrete", similar to Brutalist architecture. It's very ugly

Democracity a planned community of the future (1939)

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