The rise and fall of California City
Envisioned in 1958 as the largest development in US history, California City was intended for the empty expanse of the Mojave Desert, north of Los Angeles. The master plan by Community Facilities Planners entailed six towns anchored by an urban core with a total projected population of 1 million. Ov...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | Architecture and the housing question / edited by Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim |
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| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Format: | UnknownFormat |
| Sprache: | eng |
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2022
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Tag hinzufügen | Zusammenfassung: | Envisioned in 1958 as the largest development in US history, California City was intended for the empty expanse of the Mojave Desert, north of Los Angeles. The master plan by Community Facilities Planners entailed six towns anchored by an urban core with a total projected population of 1 million. Over the years, the speculative marketing yielded over 100 million dollars subdividing and selling parcels to individual investors. Instead of tract-home construction, typical of the time, the developer concentrated on building communal architecture and infrastructure: roads, an eighty-acre park with artificial lake, facilities for retail and recreation, a church, and a lakeside pavilion. Although this program left housing development to individual owners, they had to comply with strict design guidelines. The ideology of "total design" was wielded to prop up a mirage to generate further investment, just as architecture acted as a material sign of global investment under Late Capitalism. The housing development ultimately, and perhaps inevitably, failed to materialize. California City remains to this day a surreal "paradise"—an oasis of leisure surrounded by absentee landowners in the desert. |
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| Beschreibung: | Illustrationen |
| ISBN: | 978-0-815-39602-4 |