California City

What was the developer thinking with this place? It's the middle of the desert. Probably the most inhospitable place in all of CA for a new city without an obvious economic purpose.

(Do you also read BLDGBLOG?)
 
If Wikipedia is to be believed, over 12,000 people live in this place. Where, I can't figure out, as I see no buildings. The Wikipedia article also says;

California City had its origins in 1958 when real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn purchased 80,000 acres (320 km2) of Mojave Desert land with the aim of master-planning California's next great city. He designed his model city, which he hoped would one day rival Los Angeles in size, around a Central Park with a 26-acre (11 ha) artificial lake. Growth did not happen anywhere close to what he expected. To this day a vast grid of crumbling paved roads, scarring vast stretches of the Mojave desert, intended to lay out residential blocks, extends well beyond the developed area of the city. A single look at satellite photos shows the extent of the scarred desert and how it stakes its claim to being California's 3rd largest geographic city, 34th largest in the US. California City was incorporated in 1965.
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oooo a failed exurb of the mojave/colorado deserts. then there are the not so failed exurbs. It's southern california's frontier. migrant agricultural communties, working class suburbs, desert trailer parks, hippie communes, resorts, drifters, loners, snowbirds, meth for all, secretive military bases, gorgeous landscape. if anywhere in southern california is still somehow "romantic" it's there ... unless you're stuck in a 2 hour commute to anaheim. could spend forever exploring.
everyone should make a destination of slab city. or maybe the integratron. or just joshua tree NP. none of these are representative.
 
Desolation Row.

And they could have had Thames Town.
 
That stretch between Las Vegas and LA is full of towns like these.
 
jass said:
Who approved this crap?
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What difference does it make? Some faceless bureaucrat approved because it was as-of-right. I knuckle under to this kind of crap from time to time; this doesn't look too deviant from what is standard almost everywhere, thanks to zoning.
 
The Florida example is at least a dense grid pattern, not in the desert, and could become a habitable place if built out.
 
Ron Newman said:
The Florida example is at least a dense grid pattern, not in the desert, and could become a habitable place if built out.
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Exactly. This is actually not that bad -- no cul-de-sacs and roads to nowhere.
 
jass said:
What an environmental disaster.

Who approved this crap?
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Lehigh Acres started in the 50s, but turned out to be completely overambitious even for the boom of the time. It was almost completely empty until 2000, and started filling out during the real estate faux-boom of Bush's first term. Cut to now and it's the epicenter of Florida's foreclosure crisis and "America's worst suburban slum". Obama toured it in February, with echoes of Carter's visit to the South Bronx in the late 70s.

You get a great view of it flying out of Ft. Myers airport; it's literally a swamp with a grid on top and some very lonely houses.

NYT article with telling photos:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/us/08lehigh.html

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bdurden said:
Exactly. This is actually not that bad -- no cul-de-sacs and roads to nowhere.
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Zoom in....while it looks like a grid, most streets are dead ends. Use streetview and youll see theyre all cul de sacs (well, some of them have enough pavement to show the intention)
 
Looks like many of the street interruptions are caused by irrigation canals -- left over from the area's previous use as farmland?
 
Looks more like dry river beds (there is a technical term for this that escapes me ATM) rather than man-made canals (though I could be looking in the wrong place.) I don't think this was ever farmed land.
 
A dry river bed is a "wadi", but these are much too straight to be natural.
 
Wadi is the Arabic word for valley, though it's often used for this purpose in the Middle East. "Wash" or "arroyo" are better terms for dry riverbeds.
 
Salton City is truly amazing... a sea-side metropolis/resort town planned in the environmentally happier days of California's Salton Sea. Of course, dead fish washing up by the hundreds onto the "beach" and into the "marina" explain why so few people actually moved here.

Again, sattelite and street view...
 
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