This 1925 vision of the city of the future always fascinated me. Why bother with one boring ground-level street system with an underground train at most leading off into the suburbs when you can turn a metropolis into one massive labyrinth of tunnels, warrens and terraces that no one ever leaves in their lives because everyone is hopelessly lost.
As they found out with the zeppelin mast on top of the Empire State Building, the tunnel-wind effect between the high-rises rather militates against docking airships anywhere close to the city's center.
ReplyDeleteDitto for airplanes. Curiously enough, the only writer of the era who seems to have realized this was John W. Campbell; you can find it in "Piracy Preferred", the first of his Arcot, Wade & Morey stories.
As for the underground streets helping to "solve congestion problems", they would. Unless their ventilation systems are very good, the number of vehicles shown would put out enough exhaust that CO levels would go up faster than a loaf of bread made with quick-rising yeast.
No people= no cars = no congestion, all right.
cheers
eon
These sort of pictures always get me thinking about the meaning of "street level".
ReplyDeleteIf you are going to extend levels of buildings and streets down into the ground why not also build them up? Why not slap a roof on the street level and add another road there? Sort of seems easier than digging under an existing road and messing with the foundations of existing buildings. If we can go down we can go up and up seems a lot easier.
Brandon...
ReplyDeleteI was about to say that.
Move the main entrance to the 10th floor, but also have elevators to the subway and truck levels.