A City That Never Was...!

Since this is travel Friday, I thought we would go some place in our minds only.

That is necessary because this place was never built. It should have been but sadly, it wasn't! I, for one, would love to live in a place like this!

Straight from the good folks at Listverse, here's one to think about!

Triton City

Buckminster Fuller was a brilliant visionary, scientist, environmentalist, and philosopher who, in the 1960s, developed a bold design. It was dubbed Triton City and was intended to be a floating utopia for up to 5,000 residents. His giant, floating city was designed to encourage people to share resources and conserve energy.

Fuller was initially commissioned by a wealthy Japanese patron to design a floating city for Tokyo Bay. He died in 1966, but astoundingly enough, the United States Department of Urban Development commissioned Fuller for further design and analysis. His designs called for the city to: be resistant to tsunamis, provide the most possible outside living, desalinate the very water that it would float in for consumption, give privacy to each residence, and incorporate a tetrahedronal shape which provides the most surface area with the least amount of volume. Everything from education to entertainment to recreation would be a part of the city. Fuller also claimed that the low operating costs would result in a high standard of living.

HUD eventually sent the plans to the U.S. Navy where they were dissected and analyzed even further. The city of Baltimore, upon hearing of the project, became interested and petitioned to have Triton City moored off of its shores in Chesapeake Bay. However, as municipal and federal administrations changed, the project languished and was never brought to light. Today, there are derivatives of Triton City, such as the artificial island Kansai and its airport in Osaka, Japan, but they pale in comparison to the scope of Triton City.

What an imagination it took to envision such a place! Too bad that some of old visions can't be brought to bear in this age of the commonplace!

Coffee on the patio this morning. Already hot, but it's gonna get worse!