Human Scale Cities

Urban labs without people. From the german village in Dugway to the new empty town built to test technology

This is the english version (via Google Translator) of the original text in my blog (spanish)

Some time ago I read Dead Cities. Some of the stories Mike Davis covers are shocking, especially those related to the use of the central desert of the United States as a hidden territory for nuclear testing. The book is a compendium of stories on Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and also contains an amazing story. A brutal one. A story worth reading and knowing of. The German village of Utah desert, built in the early 40s of last century in the Dugway Proving Ground :

The more remote Berlin suburb, and orphaned secret is in the salt desert, about ninety miles southwest of Salt Lake City. “The German neighborhood,” as it is officially named on maps declassified Army Dugway Proving Ground U.S. is the remnant of a great “neighborhood condemned” German / Japanese, built by Standard Oil in 1943. This area played a crucial role in the last great public project of the government’s New Deal: the incineration of the eastern cities of Germany and Japan.

The American military government needed to check the deadly effect of his new war materials to implement the fire bombing of Nazi Germany cities. It was necessary to attack the cities, to break the social support of the population towards the regime. Attack cities with the highest lethality possible. The construction of a “city” was necessary to have a test of the construction details of the typical German cities in terms of distance between buildings, facades and roofing materials, types of windows, etc.. and how they would react to a bombing. Davis’s story is full of details: the hiring of Mendelsohn as director of construction, the British government’s role in promoting the solution of bombing German cities, the construction of a replica of a Japanese neighborhood also …

Why do I have this come to mind? Because I had to get there: we have the announcement of a private corporation willing to build a city for 350,000 inhabitants, but you will not have residents. It will be a “city” to serve as a technology lab. Also in the desert, of course. Not exactly the idea the city as a laboratory. No people, no city. No people, no intelligence. A pilot city to test the potential vacuum technologies can only generate passive solutions for buildings and infrastructure for utilities. That is not so bad. But possibly more effective to think of models testing technology from the start by opening a real, with real people using, transforming and appropriating the possibilities of the city and its resources.

The connection between the two projects is forced, but worth it if only as an excuse to learn the hidden history of military tests of the Second World War, and to dedicate a line to the obvious: that the city is people and technologies are for people.

P.D. Via Treehugger I found that in the last Indiana Jones film there seems to be a military testing city. I wonder if Dugway was an inspiration for that film.

Notes

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