Scars of a Subdivision That Wasn't To Be

27 November 2009 - 5:00am

This post from BLDGBLOG looks at the ghost of a planned but never realized subdivision on the outskirts of a Southern California exurb where only faint lines of unfinished roads remain.

"Visible from above now are a series of badly paved streets carved into the dust and gravel, like some peculiarly American response to the Nazca Lines (or even the labyrinth at Chartres cathedral). The uninhabited street plan has become an abstract geoglyph—unintentional land art visible from airplanes—not a thriving community at all."

Images from Google Maps and Street View detail the abandoned development -- a "mirage of suburbia".

Full Story: California City
Source: BLDGBLOG, November 24, 2009

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

This is a time of opportunity

This is a time of opportunity to take back the land planned for bad sprawl housing developments and convert them either back to farmland, forestland, or to small scale, sustainable projects. There are builders now asking land conservancies if they are intersted in buying farmland they had purchased for their sprawl subdivisions.

We should use these opportunities to do things right.

Bookmark and Share
How might instant, near-home car rental allow households to give up a third or second car? Would the substantial savings a household receives from owning and maintaining fewer cars more than compensate for the extra time and discomfort spent riding transit?