Victory City

Victory Cities will be built from scratch in the scenic countryside. The bulk of a Victory City's food supply will come from its own farms in the surrounding countryside just beyond the circular highway, as well as greenhouses, fish tanks and a poultry center next to the cafeteria kitchens. A single Victory City™ would be able to accommodate up to 332,000 people.

[A Tour of Victory City @ Victory Cities website]

Hat tip: Carrie, who picked it up from Metafilter

Orville Simpson II, the self-made millionaire who has been revising his childhood vision of Victory City since 1936 -- do I have your attention yet? -- seems like an interesting fellow. What fun to Think Big Thoughts like this and still manage to make a living.

Map of a Victory City - Orville Simpson II

We had to design planned communities for a 7th grade Civics class. Our teacher had read one too many books by Buckminster Fuller, and this is the same man who is ultimately responsible for triggering a mild obsession with design in me as an adult.

I remember it as one of the most entertaining projects I ever had to do in school, and maybe that's why this resonates with me.

A 24/7 downtown

Tarus (Down Under for the next few weeks) e-mailed me a link to a story he knew I'd love:

We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a "24/7" downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. Only when significant numbers of people lived downtown, planners believed, could central cities regain their historic role as magnets for culture and as a source of identity and pride for the metropolitan areas they served. Now that's starting to happen, fueled by the changing mores of the young and by gasoline prices fast approaching $5-per-gallon. In many of its urbanized regions, an America that seemed destined for everincreasing individualization and sprawl is experimenting with new versions of community and sociability.

Trading Places: The demographic inversion of the American city.
Alan Ehrenhalt, The New Republic
Published: Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Most livable cities - World edition

1. Copenhagen: out in front by virtue of its scale, a good airport, all those bike paths and handsome locals.

2. Munich: almost a winner, but it should have committed to building the Transrapid airport rail link.

3. Tokyo: the world’s best big city by far. Unfortunately, last week’s stabbing spree hasn’t done much for its public safety record.

4. Zurich: more relaxed neighbours would put it in first place.

5. Helsinki: a European capital with a foot firmly in Asia.

6. Vienna: one of Europe’s greenest cities.

7. Stockholm: the city wants to go vertical ­– a tricky mission.

8. Vancouver: the best of North America in a beautiful frame.

9. Melbourne: the best neighbourhoods in the southern hemisphere.

10. Paris: its visionary mayor has made the old dame internationally relevant again.

Financial Times: A league table of livable cities (13 June 2008)

Forbes: America's Most Miserable Cities

Imagine living in a city with the country's highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro.

Unfortunately, this nightmare is a reality for the residents of Detroit. The Motor City grabs the top spot on Forbes' inaugural list of America's Most Miserable Cities.

Forbes.com - Worst Places: America's Most Miserable Cities

And the complete top ten:

1. Detroit, MI
2. Stockton, CA
3. Flint, MI
4. New York City
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Modesto, CA
9. Charlotte, NC
10. Providence, RI

You know, I live very happily in New York City, and have enjoyed the time I've spent in Chicago, including a year living in the northern 'burbs.

And any methodology that objectively ranks Los Angeles as *less miserable* than NYC is inherently suspect in my book.