Abandoned Sprawl Projects

palindrome

palindrome

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I saw this thread on skyscrapercity the other day, and found it interesting. Look at all the roads with nothing. An abandoned sprawl.

Lehigh Acres, FL.

 
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Those aren't just small projects, they're massive. I too would like to know what stopped those. I'd assume lack of demand and a down market in the Florida one; maybe the same for the California one, but it looks like waterfront (is it a significant body of water?) property which usually holds value pretty well and keeps in demand.
 
You can't embed Google Maps here. You know that "Test" thread in General? That was the point of it and it failed.
 
The Lehigh Acres development in Florida was one of those buy Florida real estate deals that had infomercials that starred the great Eric Estrada. If I remember correctly the area was near Fort Myers and was partially devestated by a hurricane a few years back. The Salton City development was built in the 50's or 60's at the bottom of the Salton Sea in California. It was for a time developing into a major tourist attraction for people living in the Los Angeles area. Due to the poor irrigation policies of the time the Salton Sea became so salty it became toxic to the point where all the fish and birds died. The high salinity of the lake brought on an extinction level event and the area was for the most part abandoned. There are plans to divide the lake into three zones and pump as much of the toxic water into the zone furtherst from this area. The one benifit of this disaster was that it made us re-examine the consequences of our land use policies.
 
Wow, I remember flying out of Fort Myers' airport and seeing this ceaseless plain of sprawly roads...I just assumed it was preparation for massive expansion. It also explains why Fort Myers' street grid fills out to something like 5000th St.
 
these places are where you go to pop someone in the head and leave em there. come on people look at the benefits. You have roads to drive on instead of taking your caddy off road in the desert.
 
Why is no one making independent films/surrealist art out of these places?! They're fantastic.

It's like the most iconic depiction of the emptiness of the American Dream since Gatsby.
 
^ wow, your so right. Gatsby is my favorite book...
 
Photographer Emmet Gowin has dealt with this sort of subject matter (poisoned, abandoned landscapes, eco-disaster) in his aerial photographs since the early '80, wen he visited Mt. St. Helens. Here's a piece from the NYT from 2002 on his work.
 
Hm, eco-disaster is a different sort of beast. I'd probably compare this more to Chris Jordan's garbage dump critiques of wasteful consumerism:

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