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Unbuilt New York- Part 1

Pneumatic transit in NYC is so my jam, not only is it conceptually very sexy it also features in Ghostbusters II.
 
It's incredible how many people through history have looked at large bodies of water and gone "yeah, damming and draining that would be a piece of cake and completely worth the effort". It's almost the circle-squaring of armchair architecture.
I suppose if you consider "what is more difficult, reshaping the natural landscape or persuading a bunch of NIMBYs to move" as the dilemma...
 
It's incredible how many people through history have looked at large bodies of water and gone "yeah, damming and draining that would be a piece of cake and completely worth the effort". It's almost the circle-squaring of armchair architecture.

To be fair, that's because it's so frequently been achieved. Just look at the Netherlands, or the Fens, or the Fucine Lake in Italy.

Some plans are a bit barmy however. Like this one for the Thames from the 1930s. Yes that is the entire stretch from Westminster to the Tower being converted into a huge boulevard.
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I do have to say that the Wood design for St. John's sort of reminds me of the Sagrada Familia in that sense of it being towers on top of towers and probably needing as long to build.
 
To be fair, that's because it's so frequently been achieved. Just look at the Netherlands, or the Fens, or the Fucine Lake in Italy.

Some plans are a bit barmy however. Like this one for the Thames from the 1930s. Yes that is the entire stretch from Westminster to the Tower being converted into a huge boulevard.
View attachment 30114

I do have to say that the Wood design for St. John's sort of reminds me of the Sagrada Familia in that sense of it being towers on top of towers and probably needing as long to build.
Like the whole thing about eugenics, that makes me think of the point that some of the things we think of as uniquely megalomaniacal about the Nazis are actually just "They got the blame for everyone being a bit mad in the Thirties on top of all the actual specific evil they did, so everyone else could pretend they were never like that".
 
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