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Stunning Images Of The World's Planned Cities, As Seen From Space
Most planned cities probably aren't designed with the view from space in mind, but, as Wired.com's Betsy Mason notes, some of them create incredible patterns on the landscape that can only be truly appreciated from above.
Planned cities are laid out all at once and built from scratch. They are designed with a purpose in mind: to optimize traffic flow, or to maximize access to green space or to keep everyone in their proper place. They are born from many different inspirations. Some are a compromise between two cities vying to be their country's capitol, built in between in neutral territory on previously undeveloped land. Some are built to keep workers near a nuclear power plant or copper mine in the middle of nowhere. Some are intended to be a utopia -- with public gardens, promenades, throughways and harmony -- to cure the "urban disease" rampant in most ad hoc cities.
These cities, towns and communities can be found all over the world and throughout history, hundreds of years into the past and several decades into the future. Here are some of the best views of planned cities from space.
Brasília, Brazil
NASA's EO-1 satellite took this natural-color image in August 2001.
Brazil's capital is one of the best known planned cities in the world. From space it looks like a bird, or a plane... or Superman.
Brasília was almost entirely built in 41 months, at great expense, and opened in April 1960. It was intended to be a more central, neutrally located capital for the country whose previous capital, Rio de Janeiro, sits on the southeastern coast in the midst of much of the country's commercial activity. Today, Brasilia's greater metropolitan area is home to nearly 4 million people. It is one of the largest cities in the world that was built since 1900.
Canberra, Australia
Above: Google/GeoEye, taken Sept. 26, 2011. Below: Close up of Canberra's Capital Hill. GeoEye.
At the end of the 19th century, Australia's two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, were vying to be the capital of the country. The compromise was to build a brand new city in between the two, and in 1908, Canberra was chosen as the site for this new planned city.
A competition was held to decide who would design the new Canberra, and in 1912 the plan of American architect Walter Burley Griffin (right) was chosen.
"I have planned a city that is not like any other in the world," Griffin famously said. "I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city -- a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future."
Griffin was eventually ensnarled in bureaucratic infighting and was kicked off the project in 1920 when barely any construction work had been done. The legislature did not move in to the city until 1927. The city continued to be expanded for decades. Today it is home to more than 350,000 people.
In the image above, Griffin's Parliamentary Triangle can be seen straddling the artificial Lake Burley Griffin. In the southern corner is Parliament House on Capital Hill, in the eastern corner is the Defence precinct and in the north is Market Centre.
Palmanova, Italy
Image: Google/Digital Globe, taken Apr. 2, 2006.
This nine-pointed fortress is perhaps the best example of a planned city from the Renaissance. Palmanova was built in 1593 and is located in the northeastern corner of Italy near the border with Slovenia.
It was intended to be home to a completely self-reliant utopian community that could also defend itself against the Ottomans. It had three guarded entrances, ramparts between each of the star points and eventually a moat. Sadly, nobody was willing to move there. Eventually it was used as free housing for pardoned criminals. Today it is a national monument, a tourist destination and home to around 5,000 people.
El Salvador, Chile
Images: Google/GeoEye, taken Feb. 11, 2010.
El Salvador is a small town in the middle of nowhere in Chile (see below). After discovering a huge amount of copper ore in 1954, the Anaconda Mining Company had to build a self-sustaining town to house its workers. Designed by an American architect, it is supposedly built in the shape of a Roman helmet. The town was finished in 1959, the same year that the El Salvador mine was opened. The city was home to as many as 24,000 people but today has around 7,000 and is still an active mining town.
La Plata, Argentina
Image: Google/Geoeye, taken Nov. 15, 2011.
In 1880 Buenos Aires became the capital of Argentina, leaving the Province of Buenos Aires in need of a new capital. The governor of the province decided a new city was in order and in 1882 La Plata was founded.
The square city is dominated by diagonal throughways, while every other street is on a square grid system with a park every six blocks. In 1884 the city was the first in Latin America to have electric street lighting. In 1952 the city was renamed Eva Peron City, but reverted back to La Plata three years later. Today the city is home to around 700,000 people, the largest church in Argentina and two buildings designed by Le Corbusier.
Washington, D.C.
Images: Above: Google, taken Aug. 28, 2010. Right: Library of Congress. Below: GeoEye.
In 1791, after the location of the country's new capital city had been settled on, George Washington chose French-born American architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant to design plan the city. L'Enfant centered the city on Jenkins Hill where the Capitol building would stand. He laid the streets out in a north-south, east-west grid with larger diagonal avenues cutting through the city. Where the diagonals intersected, there were circles and plazas with open space.
L'Enfant subsequently had a falling out with the rest of the city planning commission and was dismissed. Andrew Ellicot took over and made a few changes resulting in the plan that would form the basis for the construction of the city (right). In 1800, the government moved in.
The National Mall (shown below during President Obama's inauguration in 2009) was later designed and built on the broadest road in the district, which had been designed as a 400-foot-wide grand avenue.
Jaipur, India
Image: Google/GeoEye, taken Nov. 13, 2011.
Jaipur was based on the principles of Vastu Shastra, the ancient Indian science of architecture. It was planned to be a new capital of India's Rajasthan state and built in four years beginning in 1727. It was made up of huge blocks separated by 111-foot-wide streets and surrounded by walls. At the time, the design and architecture was very advanced. In 1853, the entire city was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales, and today the avenues are still painted pink. Today the city has grown beyond its walls and is home to more than 3 million people.
Adelaide, Australia
Image: Google/Digital Globe, taken Dec. 31, 2007.
When you have a lot of open space, it can be tempting to plan and construct new cities. Three of Australia's biggest and best known cities were completely planned in advance: Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide.
Once South Australia became an official British colony in 1836, its surveyor general set out to plan a brand new capital city. Like many planned cities, Adelaide was built on a grid system. But what sets it apart is the wide swath of parklands that rings it.
Today the urban sprawl has outgrown the planned city center and Adeliade is the country's fifth largest city, with a population of more than 1.2 million.
New Haven, Connecticut
Image: Google/USGS, taken Mar. 31, 2008.
New Haven was the first planned city in the United States. It was built on a plan of nine squares with the central block comprising a 16-acre park. The city is now a National Planning Landmark and has more than 800,000 residents.
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Image: Google/Digital Globe, taken July 19, 2006.
Like many planned cities, Belo Horizonte was planned and built to be a new capital city -- in this case to replace Ouro Preto as the capital of the Brazilian state, Minas Gerais.
The city was built in the 1890s, and the planners are said to have taken cues from the planning of Washington, D.C. Today it is the third largest metropolitan area in the country, with a city population of around 2.5 million.
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Tedious
landing lights...
What's with the Pentagram in DC?
http://i.imgur.com/8kdUB6U.png
0_0
Ah, but whats at the center of the pentagram?
Listen,
This was "STUNNING", absolutely stunning.
this is a capture from the next sim city video game ?
brazil.... fully planned city my ass, same planning deforesting maybe ? to make more room for other buildings ?
anyway,i just don't give a fuck :)
Sacred Geometry. Perhaps you all also noticed the Whitehouse sits in the middle of an Owl. The Owl often revered in occult circles for it's ability to see in the dark and to move it's head 360 degrees. There's a bunch of other symbols hidden in DC layout as well.
I'm thinking this post was very intentional. Someone wants people seeing this perspective and recognizing their masonic works as we move into a new age and a new world order.
I'm surprised Astana wasn't in there:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Astana+020000,+Kazakhstan/@51.1230098,...!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x424580c47db54609:0x97f9148dddb19228
NWO Headquarters?
I find myself more stuned than stunned.
K Street makes up the bottom horizontal line. So douche bags? The pentagram is full of douche bags.
"The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." - Alberto Brandolini
I must own that avatar?
That's classic! Head Banger would be envious.
That little death star Jpeg is priceless.
The word placement should tell you all you need to know:
"George Washington
Freemason
and
First President"
http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/images/George-Washington-Freemason.jpg
Not quite the first president... More like number 8...
Pentagram in DC? Here you go: http://tinyurl.com/37lxjt
yup, that's about right.
http://share.pho.to/7Foiz there's more
Curious love with the penta-structures. They already have the Pentagon. In CPUs, we used to have 286, 386, 486, then they suddenly stop at Pentium (there was never Hexium or Septium).
that's because they realized there was a lot of work to be done on system boards and bus speeds, at some point you go greater capacity but the neck of the bottle dont let beer out any more quickly.
theres a point when you summon the devil, one of the points of a pentagram. that point is where the presisident stands when innaugarated.
'nuff said?
its all superstitious bullshit, but masons like using peoples superstitions against them
This video is rather long, but the first 30 minutes or so is Washington DC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L777RhL_Fz4
I think this has a lot in it about D.C's layout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L777RhL_Fz4
Masonic influences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Eastern_Star
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kfut3tn.jpg[/IMG]
the downwardly pointing pentagram has always been a whole-some symbol of family fun. hope you've been long empire the last 200 years. ;)
Agenda 21.
And, by the way, Philadelphia was a "planned city" more than 200 years ago. Look at what a shithole it turned into. Plan all you want. I'll take a small group of highly motivated individuals over the best planned utopias riddled with corruption any day.
There's a valley in Canada. Hard to get to but that is sorta the point.
Lat/Lon coordinates, please. I'm very resourceful. I'll find my way.
Armstrong Station Ontario
What about some aerial shots of the FEMA camps?
I saw one in person once. Completely by accident, it was on the edge of a small town in rural Iowa. No fences; it's designed to be mobile.
Cities suck.
nop, not necessary, i would say instead that people inside cities suck.
Left out the Pentagram in DC. Dedicated on September 11, BTW
And this photo essay always cracks me up, right on the Pentagonal lawn
Introducing the amazing new Penta-Lawn 2000!Penta-Lawn 2000.... now with the immediate magical Boeing 777 parts eradication system.
"Looks like a plane never ever even crashed here... and just minutes after the disaster!"
- Dick Cheney
Jeff Davis would be proud of what a certain central planner did to DC.
The Cross of St. Andrew ;-)
Now you've got me curious and scratchin' the old noggin.
Ellicott?
I hear Detroit looks quite impressive (in a steaming pile of dog shit kind of way) from space. It has even been said that you can actually smell Detroit from space. I'm a little shocked that it did not make the list..........
{All---Seeing---Eye}
Detroit aerial photos of the water shut off crew would be appreciated.
Where is the Skull & Bones house in New Haven?
If only Timothy McVeigh had chosen that house....
Images for Skull & Bones meeting House Yale College
And that's about all there is to say about New Haven.
Systematic irrationality.
Why are they showing Shit Haven CT?
Washington DC does look like a living abortion.
How do they look with Ebola?
What about Soweto, South Africa? It was planned too.
District 9
I'm with knukles. Alien, shrimp-like creatures eating cat food. I mean, why not?
Theatre of the obsurd cubing itself at every possible moment.
Will there be a sequel?
Planned ?
Afro-engineered is more like it.
The USD is caving in again. The Asian markets (small central banks) cleared their throats, and tossed the ponzi USD out the window.
This financial tornado is spooling up.
Cities built from scratch according to plan is something that can only be accomplished in the last stages of great empires, which alone have the resources, the surpluses, and the hubris to conceive such a thing. The grid pattern in city planning is a symptom of the end. It is necessarily a terminal stage of organization, for from here on out cities are cut off from any further organic development and are only capable of greater and greater quantitative agglomerations. The megalopolis, the cosmopolis, becomes a world in itself at the pinnacle of a civilization—the only world that the denizens thereof can imagine. The city and its characteristic concomitants of money and socialist politics is the theater for the epic clashes of drunken mobs and soldier-emperors whose petty campaigns for the spoils of power end up destroying the form-filled world of the culture which preceded them. These grid cities, excogitations of the pure intellect unconnected with place or time or milieu, are merely the barracks of the human hordes who answer to the call of panem et circenses.What they are in concrete and asphalt, the modern mind is in its tastes and activities. Any man of worth today feels deeply ill at ease in the presence of these cities and the city-mobs which inhabit them. There, written plain as day but nonetheless incomprehensible to ordinary spirits, is embodied the tragedy of our time.
Spengler, is that you?
You are fabulous..
I loathe these cities. They are the place where the weak go to find peace...like an addict does with a fix.
Lots of chicks.
...with dicks
No worries. In the future, what's left of us will live in sardine-like cans in the megacities.
Pack me in oil please...with just a touch of dill.
In other news:
Ebola Nurse Boyfriend Reportedly Admitted With Ebola SymptomsOCTOBER 14, 2014 BY CHARLES C. JOHNSON
An email sent out to the Alcon staff by its CEO reportedly said that the ebola nurse’s boyfriend was admitted into hospital with “Ebola-like symptoms.”
Gotnews.com has received word from two different Alcon employees, both of whom asked not to be identified.
Alcon’s U.S. headquarters are in Fort Worth, Texas. It is an opthomological pharmaceutical company.
Requests for comment from Alcon were not returned.
http://linkis.com/gotnews.com/jRJRE
No one else has confirmed yet. About 20 mentions on Twitter.
But wait! There's more!
What about Burning Man's Black Rock Desert city?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/31/article-2196151-14C1DDD2000005...
nice, like Sun City AZ
https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+city+aerial+view&client=firefox-a&hs...
That's actually a pretty interesting place. I'm no self help GURU but was pleasantly surprised.
It looks like a "box of rocks" before you actually tour the site.
Plamanova, Italy (circa 1593) takes the cake in my opinion.
The Grays must be studying our de-evolution with keen interest.
Someone was telling me how New Haven is a godforsaken dump.
New Haven is one of the poorest cities in America. It is also one of the most violent and dangerous. I lived in CT until 2013, and channel 3 in Hartford had permanent news people stationed in New Haven to cover the daily shootings between the blacks. If you step one block off the Yale campus, you are in a combat zone.
The barbarians are at the gates everywhere you look.
If is wasn't for Yale NH would be worse than Bridgeport, CT which is getting as bad as Camden, NJ.
Pentagram in the District of Criminals says it all.
DC Symbolism -
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/chapter3/
Where is Park Forest, Illinois?
Joe I lived in Indiana and Chicago. The burbs
I respect your thoughts.
Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map? Leopold.
No matter got ebola licking its chops as it enters each one of those photos.
Nothing compares to "the Northwest Territories" (current States of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minniseto with the State of "Chicago" thrown in.) designed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison it pretty much has stayed true to form even today. The purpose was to create the "yeo farmer archetype" without any barrier between City and market. Real estate prices in Chicago are still the best anywhere in the world...and the place really is a "breeze" to get around.
The gold standard for urban existence remains a subway in my view. DC has by far the best. New York City's...the world's largest...has by far the worst. Once DC "breaks free" and completes the Silver Line (all the way to Dulles Airport) there is no limit to the size or consequence of "underground railroads" in the USA.
I think the days of airport building are pretty much done. Those things destroy real estate values.
The dumbest idea ever is above ground high speed rail.
The best idea ever are City Buses. Maxwell Technolgies which makes super capacitors for these big rigs I think are going to be a huge game changer...lowering the cost of mass transportation to very near zero. Stock had a good day today...along with OSK which which has been selling this technology to the Army for quite some time.
I would have thought that Nagasaki, and Hiroshima would have made the list.
the first two images look like a pathogen. New Haven, Ct, lived there, what a 3rd world shyt hole w/ the Eliteist Yale pigs living their entitled lives behind secure walls and security personnel.
The perfect metaphor for our current malaise.
And perfect place for Skull and Bones tomb.
Google Earth - Baghdad...zoom in, Anunnaki Space Craft, you're welcome.
Rusty, no fucking shit! I'm still freaked out over that story you told us 4-5 months ago.
The one about the Russians going insane and eating each other, for that experiment during WWll.
I know the story is fake. It's the way you told it that scares me?
Looks pretty boring from above
Crop circle cities. Certain proof of something nefarious probably involving the Rothschilds.
Very enlightening to fly over a third world country, where property boundaries are evolutionarily determined in a manner that takes greatest advantage of the local topography and resources, and the roadways are determined by the most practical access routes between destinations. Ancient old world cities are determined/evolved in a similar manner ..
Then fly over the the United States, where everything is mindlessly gridded out into rectangles, regardless of topography or natural constraints, but more in terms of what is cheapest and easiest to survey in order to tranche out for sale.....( bankers
in control, even in the US of the 1700's)
The grid survey system is a true triumph of early Federal Government constraining how everyone in the US should live.. Originally proposed by Thomas Jefferson, the land was surveyed in this mindless grid coordinate manner so the Government could sell land as an easy way of raising money...
for a general introduction, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System
I much prefer grids to fucking rabbit warren cul-de-sacs where you have to travel a mile instead of 30 metres because some developer decided that an extra housing block was more important than a thorough-fare.
And I'm not too happy about "unplanned" cities with narrow, over-crowded roads and a labyrinth network that in no way reflects the idea that later inhabitants would decide to build sky-scrapers that would require transit of large amounts of people.
Yeah! America sucks.
dik
All cites are planned...it's called the Zoning Board and a blueprint.. next.
I wish that were true everywhere. I dont think they ever heard of city planning in Japan, most of the cities are a nightmare to navigate. I dont really get the Japanese mindset behind it even after 20 years of living in Japan.
Watch Hidden In Plain Sight on YouTube
When I was in the UK, I had conversation like this. The locals pointed out that Milford Haven was planned. Unfortunately, I never got to pass through there.
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
Neil Peart is a brilliant lyricist.
Rush was the first concert I ever attended in 1978.
Are ZH'ers the Analog Kids?
Here's an excellent version of 'Subdivisions' done by Jacob Moon from a rooftop in Hamilton.
"Some will sell their dreams for small desires and lose the race to Rats..." In the gold record race of the music business, well, guess who's 3rd on the list after The Beatles and The Rolling Stones...
Happy 40th RUSH !
-------------------
What? No mention of Chinese "ghost" cities?
There’s the old adage, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”.
In addition, if you want to make God angry, show him your plans.
Finally, if you really want to piss God off so badly that he retaliates with wrath and acts of vengeance against mankind, make them Central Plans.
City planning is a lost art. I live newr a town of 50,000 in the midwest. About 100 years ago, someone decided to have 3 of the new highways that came to town meet in one intersection. Over the years, this mistake has been upgraded to 2 lane roads, then 4 lane roads. The latest iteration has the old three way intersection duplicated twice. Once for the street light version and the second for the non-stop freeway version (complete with a tunnel and several overpasses). One overpasss swings around and merges blindly with oncoming traffic. It is so dangerous I avoid it all costs. The design must have been done by the companies profiting from concrete, bridge and underpass building. Two 10 mile long commercial streets that should run parallel are needlessly merged into the freeway sections. It's a complete mess. When they design these things, they need to throw out the old highway map and start from fresh and use a rational design.
I have been to a few of these...and they do not work very well...total traffic jams...
"Stunning Images"
Quite surprisingly, I was not stunned.
So, was this an ad for Wired, or something?
North Korea should invite Jerry Brown to replace their defector in chief. North Korea is that closet lumberjack's wet dream. Here's a shopped image of planned California in 2024:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyshop/6538886017/
Save the bison. Kill the children.
Treachery is its own reward.