The great cities that were never built (many giant images)

Snatching this post I made on a completely different forum, I wanted to post some of the great never built cities. A lot of these are late 1800's/early 1900's. Sources underneath each image.

The Woodward plan for Detroit. Looks like something you would see in renaissance Italy or France. I tried making this layout in google sketchup and was surprised to see that the squares pictured around only about 50 x 50 feet wide. Not very big buildings to be honest, though blocks could be combined to make some larger structures.

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whitewallbuick


Next up, the Burnham plan for Chicago. Partially built, but would have been pretty epic if it had been fully built. Also included a pretty massive central civic structure.

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Penn State Library
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Penn State Library


The Completion of Washington by Leon Krier. I mean its a crazy giant lake for a national mall. Its like Amsterdam and Washington DC had a baby. Now all it needs are canals everywhere.

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MOMA

Germania, a replacement for Berlin. Not so much the actual plan, which consisted of a giant dick-move by running people who didn't vote for Hitler out of their homes and building a giant city on top of the ruins. It did have some crazy grand looking architecture though. Kind of makes me think about how beautiful the Colosseum is, in spite of the whole "feeding people to lions" thing. Honestly though, it looks cool from a distance, but would have been horrible to live in due to a lack of human scale.

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imageshack, originally posted here

The London Elephant Plan
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thecarandtheel

A new plan for the Pruit Igoe site.

It totally abandoned the "tower in a park" concept and creates a much more attractive community. Designed by Samuel John Lima. Really awesome renderings.

I read that the architecture matches that of old St. Louis, anyone from St. Louis care to mention if that is true or not?

[url]http://samlimaarchitecture.blogspot.com/2012/06/pruitt-igoe-re-imagined-as-walkable.html



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All images from SJL

World Center of Communication

Lately I have been obsessing over this plan, a crazy city-beautiful plan for a massive imperial world capital!

Sorry the etching on the bottom image isn't legible. You can still clearly see the U shaped canal running through the city. There is actually another one closer to the stadium you can clearly see in the first image. The source for the first image includes a higher resolution.

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Spezialsammlungen Digital

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Cornell University
 
Seems like I remember reading somewhere that the Dome Hitler wanted in Germania would be so large that a) it probably wouldnt have been do able because of lack of internal supports and b) if it were do able it would have clouds in its upper parts (honestly I forget why) bc it was so massive.
 
Seems like I remember reading somewhere that the Dome Hitler wanted in Germania would be so large that a) it probably wouldnt have been do able because of lack of internal supports and b) if it were do able it would have clouds in its upper parts (honestly I forget why) bc it was so massive.

it wouldve had like alot of vapour from condensation and the berlin soil couldnt have supported it...though i doubt ti wouldve prevented him from trying
 
Oh hey, I thought my thread got ignored! Yay comments!

Those are some wonderful pictures. :eek:

What could've been...

Yeah I know, so much awesome and crazy stuff. If I wasn't so busy with other things, I would launch into an urban development timeline. I have a few different ideas going.

nice pictures, i wonder in homw many years, we will have a ecumenopolis

Probably never since the Earths population will likely top out at 9 billion according to some UN estimates. A lot of 1st world countries are having slowing population growth and a lot of formerly 3rd world countries are becoming 1st world.

Seems like I remember reading somewhere that the Dome Hitler wanted in Germania would be so large that a) it probably wouldnt have been do able because of lack of internal supports and b) if it were do able it would have clouds in its upper parts (honestly I forget why) bc it was so massive.

Yes, Berlin's soil couldn't support it. The clouds would form in the top of the dome and fall back down as rain because of the condensation from so many people breathing inside such a space. This is based off such a thing happening in zeppelin hangers.

it wouldve had like alot of vapour from condensation and the berlin soil couldnt have supported it...though i doubt ti wouldve prevented him from trying

Yeah, I feel like he would have tried making the ground able to support more. Though honestly I can also see him just moving the capital.
 
Yeah, I feel like he would have tried making the ground able to support more. Though honestly I can also see him just moving the capital.

i doubt it...he didnt just ant to make a new city, he wanted to make a symbol of the "german peoples"

just like what he did in Nuremberg, what he had planned for Linz and the transportation network....hes more likely to have tried filling in all the soil with cement rather than move the capital
 
i doubt it...he didnt just ant to make a new city, he wanted to make a symbol of the "german peoples"

just like what he did in Nuremberg, what he had planned for Linz and the transportation network....hes more likely to have tried filling in all the soil with cement rather than move the capital
And if he had been given the time to try, Berlin would probably be a mess today because of it. I can just see the half sunken victory arch, and the dome of the building caved in.
 
And if he had been given the time to try, Berlin would probably be a mess today because of it. I can just see the half sunken victory arch, and the dome of the building caved in.

Which would be an amusing testament to the Third Reich.
 
And if he had been given the time to try, Berlin would probably be a mess today because of it. I can just see the half sunken victory arch, and the dome of the building caved in.

Thinking about how Spain squandered so much wealth on its capital, I don't find it hard to believe that Nazi Germany might ruin itself by trying to build so much for so little point on such low quality ground.
 
Do we know where in BErlin this would have been built because I feel like the house I grew up in would be gonew because of this, meaning I wouldn't exist...
 

FDW

Banned
I'm surprised no one brought up San Francisco's post-1906 plans to pimp itself out with new boulevards and civic infrastructure.
 
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FDW

Banned
Leave it to us americans to build a grid system in superhilly San Fransisco.:D

Actually it's kind of an exaggeration that San Francisco is superhilly, it's just that the city is rugged (as in, not flat), but it's surprisingly easy to avoid major hills in SF. And most of the grid in the Burnham Plan is actually there OTL, what isn't is many of those boulevards that zig-zag all over the place.
 
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