Rio Communities was a project by the Horizon Land Corporation which left similar failed projects throughout the Southwest and has since often been accused of running an outright scam.
In the meantime, Rio Rancho is a functioning suburb to the NW of Albuquerque but was originally planned to be much, much larger than it is today and has a road grid stretching far into the distance, not all of which is even in the modern city limits.
At the same time, huge new developments are currently underway in the Albuquerque area (Mesa Del Sol, Santolina), suggesting that this boom and bust cycle may continue today.
Rio Rancho is now a functioning suburb, but it was originally a scam as well, along with Paradise hills and another i don't recall. Rio Rancho is, amusingly, what they're selling in Glengarry Glen Ross[1]
I've noticed many times a similar very faint street gridding around Rio Rancho and always thought it was just foresight by the city. Turns out it was yet another one of these communities. Thanks for the info!
It kind of reminds me of some rich (tycoonish) guy form Utah wanting to buy up land in VT and build a large settlement in the middle or rural Vermont.[1]
I have no idea where the plans are now, but he had some pretty forward-looking and interesting ideas for building communities for the future, including their governance.
In 100 years, when electricity is essentially free, desalination plants dot the coast, and California's population nears 100 million people, this place will be a boom town.
It'll be so much nicer when the weather producing machines create the twice-weekly rain hour. The building-printers will have expanded the city to over 50x its original footprint. Massive refugee migration from Los Angeles will have created a new demand for desert oases.
Energy will probably never be "essentially free" even if solar photovoltaics end up being very cheap and require zero maintenance because it still requires land which is scarce. Also, as energy gets cheaper, each person will consume more of it and we'll create products that consume more of it. So $0.0001 per kWh might sound "essentially free" to us, but it will not be in the high-energy-usage consumption of the future.
Do you have any ideas about how American consumers could end up using significantly more(~100x) energy than they do now?
I'm guessing people 100 years ago didn't suspect that we would use as much as we do now, because they probably didn't see either the mere possibility, or widespread adoption of whole house climate control, electric water heaters, induction ovens, electric dryers, electric cars, so it isn't very surprising to me that nothing is immediately popping into my head, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this matter.
Some idle speculation:
* Self driving cars kill walking and urban development, make things even more suburban by removing one of the major current downsides of car travel
* Further migration out of colder northern climates to increasingly hot southern areas leads to more and more air conditioning usage
* Instead of batched shopping trips once a week, or even postal-service-level delivery aggregation, everything is delivered on-demand at a one-off energy expense
* Similarly, maybe some sort of robotic daily clothes and dishes cleaning instead of only doing it when there's a full load?
* Active temperature-regulating clothing? Now I feel like I'm reaching more and more :)
Have been there for the off-roading on Thanksgiving. Can confirm the # of people is insane. The abandoned grid is pretty nice when you're trying to meet up with other people in dune buggies and dirt bikes... meet at the corner of x and y - and it works.
Yep. I started my skydiving career in California City. We used to skydive into Central Park every 4th of July before the fireworks show. It was an amazing place to learn to skydive, because if you happened to land out (happens a lot with newer jumpers), there were never obstacles - and there was always a road nearby where someone could come to pick you up. Heck, at one point a friend of mine landed so far off the dropzone that the pilot simply touched the plane down on the dirt road, picked him up, and flew him back to the airport.
(We also could use the grid to visually eyeball distance from up top).
The dropzone had been around since the 1960s, when there was a decent amount of activity at the airport (including airshows, balloon rides, pilot training, etc). Like most things in Cal City, it closed ~10 years ago, which did away with another item that lured outsiders into the area. Now, it's pretty much only the off-roading that brings people in.
Definitely a surreal place (but one that is unique and quirky...& has some great memories).
While I think your business plan needs a lot of work, I am very sympathetic to your goals and inspiration. I have often thought that the California hills would benefit from "borgo" style development.
Funny you should post this, I am very into cohousing and have been wondering if a crypto currency could be used to kickstart new "mini" city projects. I recently threw a landing page together for some of the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head: habitatico.herokuapp.com
I like what you're thinking about, but there's srs issue with rental-only; take a look at how the gentrification process of artistic areas work, and who it leaves out: If I invest my time, life, and creativity into a place, I want to count on being able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, either directly (I get to stay / keep doing it) or indirectly (I benefit from raising the value of the neighborhood).
If I can only rent, then I can't do either; and to some extent, why would I bother? (Then again - many, many people do bother anyway!)
Driving through California, one gets used to the name "City" being thrown about for quite modest settlements: King City, Kettleman City, Amador City, and the like. I've seen the name California City on the drive across the Mojave from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, and figured it was another such ambitiously-named hamlet. Little did I suspect it was an invisible megalopolis!
Separatist communities often fail. I don't think that is an inevitability, but one needs to understand the pitfalls.
One of them is caused by geographic separation. Without either proximity or regular public transit to a nearby population center, you lose your ability to market the community to potential new members. Like Apple, or Tesla, in order to break into an entrenched market you need visibility in high foot traffic locations. Regular festivals that draw crowds, retreats, etc, can help.
The other big one is unity of vision. Many of these communities lay down very specific rules in their bylaws. But humans tend to go through cycles in their ability to stomach group strictures, no matter how noble their intentions. Without an outlet on the property for counterculture, residents are pushed out every time you go through one of these cycles. Often these strictures come from a central personality. See Arcosanti and Paulo Soleri's refusal to entertain young anarchists vision for the place.
I would also say many of these communities fail because they don't separate enough from mainstream governance concepts. Many require you to make a big financial investment up front, or use a democratic governance model. Neither of those should be necessary in the age of microfinance and cryptogovernance, but we're only human, and it's hard for us to give up old habits.
And lastly, poor generational diversity is huge. Most of these communities die of old age, with a few geriatrics keeping the dream alive while their secular children live as close as they can, but outside the "community". You must have immigrants in every single age bracket throughout the life of the collective. As soon as you miss a generation you make it exponentially harder to recruit for the following one.
I would be interested to see a city concept based on freedom. Big enough for good separation between activity centers, and designed to support bifurcation of governance as much as unity. "What if we didn't have to agree?" would be the motto. Not "should you be allowed to do that?" but "if one were to do that, where would the best place for it be?"
For a separatist or any city to be successful, it needs to bring in money from other cities. Tourism is the most direct way I can think of. Las Vegas is similar to California City - a city in the middle of the desert, but is viable because of tourism. But tourism is very boom/bust.
The better option is having a company/industry located in or close to that city (e.g. money from all over the US goes to Apple, which it distributes to its employees who spend money in the Cupertino, San Francisco, etc.) BUT this isn't fool proof -- look at Detroit.
Can people be allowed to own guns ?
Can ISPs be allowed to provide differential bandwidth ?
Can people be allowed to hold men only screening of Wonder Woman ?
Can people be allowed to hold draw a muhammad event ?
I'm not advocating for unbridled freedom, that's a paradox. What I said was there needs to be equal care given to supporting disagreement as there is for agreement. Similar to the way we have different political structures for states rights and federal rights in the U.S.
Salton City is briefly mentioned in the article. It and the Salton Sea are quite interesting places to visit and are certainly worth checking out. Parts of it are incredibly creepy, parts quite beautiful in a barren and lonely sense.
If you can make it during daylight, I also recommend checking out East Jesus in Slab city at the south end of the Salton Sea. It's wacky awesome weird place, the you can (safely) ask the folks at East Jesus for tips on safely checking out more of Slab City (not that there's that much more).
Yes, Slab City is a trip and I was skimming things when I posted. The region and how people live/survive and advertisements for lots/etc. is quite a trip.
Theres a great documentary "Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea" (narrated by John Waters!) Definitely one of my top 10 documentaries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjGAWxL23c
My wife took me to Salton Sea for my birthday. Fascinating place, bizarre history, blistering heat, sobering ruins, but also strangely beautiful, and site of an ongoing ecological crisis that few Californians are probably aware of.
It's close to the Coachella Valley, but you should have seen the look on the concierge's face when we explained we weren't there to golf and shop. :-) Besides just seeing the sea itself, I recommend Salvation Mountain, Slab City, the obsidian fields, and the world-famous (?) Date Shakes in Westmorland.
The place is dangerous and violent but remote, and authorities keep their distance. It feels strange to think that a place like this exists an hours drive from Disney World.
Can you talk more about the lawless hunting club-ruled area? Or provide a name for more research - it's hard to tell exactly which feature is being pointed to on the map you linked.
It's called River Ranch Acres and on the map it's the area south of Highway 60/Hesperides Rd and east of Highway 630 E with the dirt roads throughout. The Triple Canopy Ranch to the west mostly surrounded by a canal (moat?) is not part of it. I believe there is a book titled "Redneck Riviera" written by a man who inherits some land there and attempts to take possession of it.
She explained that most people in Cal City, as locals call it, work at the correctional center outside town, the borax mine nearby, or a Hyundai-KIA proving ground for testing cars.
I had a class in Economic Geography. Cities grow where there are resources to support them. Most major cities, like New York, San Francisco and L.A., sprout up and boom due to natural ports that can be easily developed. A river meets the ocean or there is some sort of bay or quirk of the coastline. It takes little or nothing to start using it as a port. Traffic begets development.
This is why where we lay infrastructure like highways and rail lines can be such a heated debate. When cars began, the world had dirt and cobblestone streets. This was not sufficient. Proper roads developed.
During The Great Depression, people fled the Dust Bowl and arrived in California to start over. The route they traveled became the famed Route 66. The exodus birthed small towns along the way.
When interstates became the new norm, the towns along Route 66 mostly died. The traffic was diverted from roads that ran through the middle of town to roads that went around the town.
I quoted the snippet above because there is a borax mine -- a natural resource that fosters job creation -- and a correctional center. Prisons tend to be built in the middle of nowhere. No one wants to live near them. They do attract some development because they provide jobs. These are often federal or state government jobs. They can pay well, be secure and come with good benefits. They are worth putting up with some inconvenience.
Lots of good federal and state jobs involve some degree of burden. Military jobs, jobs at nuclear plants and so on can be a burden for the person who holds the job. When I was a military wife, military spouses had something like a 30% unemployment rate compared to about 6% or so for the general population. Locals don't want to hire military spouses because they know you are going to move again when the military member gets assigned elsewhere.
But the other reason unemployment is so high for military members is because it is a job with excellent benefits. The entire family has access to good medical care, most of it outright free. You just show your ID card to access it.
Military benefits have eroded in recent decades. They are making more of an effort to charge the insurance of employed spouses and a lot of small things have gone away. But it is still a situation where it is possible to make the traditional nuclear family with one breadwinner and one homemaker work. Money will be tight, but lack of savings is not a problem. If you stay in 20 years or more, you will get a retirement check for life and continue to get access to medical benefits and other benefits.
Wow, I seem to be rambling. My point is that sprawling cities don't just randomly pop up. They start with geographic resources, usually including waterways because water is critical for life and waterways provide transportation options. Once established, they may have an accumulation of intellectual capital, material capital, etc that grows them further.
Hershey, PA was laid out from scratch. But it was laid out from scratch by the Hershey company. It was a company town. They built their new factory there and built housing for their employees. It was naturally seeded in this way and had no problem attracting other businesses to serve the population. It is technically an unincorporated community, but (according to Wikipedia) it has more than 14k residents and has amenities like a local library.
There has to be a reason to move there. This is why these sorts of schemes so consistently fail. There is no real raison d'etre.
If you are housed on base, your address can be a dead giveaway. If you are an American living in a foreign country with an American base, the odds are good that you are a military spouse. If it is a small town near a base, newcomers tend to be military dependents. They want to sell to you, but they don't want to hire you.
They sometimes just frame it as "We are looking for people who will stay with the company long term." and ask a question concerning how long you hope to stay with the company. If you are honest and tell them that you expect to move again within 3 years, sorry, we don't want you.
Apparently Lyft runs their end-to-end tests in California City. Roads positioned just like those in a real city, but without people who would actually need to use the service.
54 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 75.6 ms ] threadNew York Times story about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/realestate/high-hopes-and-...
OpenStreetMap showing the area (mostly from US Census TIGER): http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/34.5005/-106.6235
An advertisement of the property: http://books.google.com/books?id=RlUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA89-IA2&lp...
In the meantime, Rio Rancho is a functioning suburb to the NW of Albuquerque but was originally planned to be much, much larger than it is today and has a road grid stretching far into the distance, not all of which is even in the modern city limits.
At the same time, huge new developments are currently underway in the Albuquerque area (Mesa Del Sol, Santolina), suggesting that this boom and bust cycle may continue today.
I have some info and photos about both California City and the Rio Communities on my website: https://jbcrawford.us/travelogue/mojave2016 https://jbcrawford.us/travelogue/nmfailed
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/synopsis
I have no idea where the plans are now, but he had some pretty forward-looking and interesting ideas for building communities for the future, including their governance.
[1]http://digital.vpr.net/post/planning-sustainable-community-u...
This is the fantastic story thread, right?
This is fun :)
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/05/08/evidence-of-a-decline-i...
Will there be a rebound effect? It is too soon to tell, but it is not a given that household consumption always increases.
I'm guessing people 100 years ago didn't suspect that we would use as much as we do now, because they probably didn't see either the mere possibility, or widespread adoption of whole house climate control, electric water heaters, induction ovens, electric dryers, electric cars, so it isn't very surprising to me that nothing is immediately popping into my head, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this matter.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
(We also could use the grid to visually eyeball distance from up top).
The dropzone had been around since the 1960s, when there was a decent amount of activity at the airport (including airshows, balloon rides, pilot training, etc). Like most things in Cal City, it closed ~10 years ago, which did away with another item that lured outsiders into the area. Now, it's pretty much only the off-roading that brings people in.
Definitely a surreal place (but one that is unique and quirky...& has some great memories).
You can read a bit more about it here [shameless plug, but I feel it's relevant]: https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/crypto-city-5d48a33a9f4...
Would you be so kind to provide more specific feedback, or doubts/suggestions? Either here, or email me (simone dot brunozzi at gmail...). Thanks.
If I can only rent, then I can't do either; and to some extent, why would I bother? (Then again - many, many people do bother anyway!)
One of them is caused by geographic separation. Without either proximity or regular public transit to a nearby population center, you lose your ability to market the community to potential new members. Like Apple, or Tesla, in order to break into an entrenched market you need visibility in high foot traffic locations. Regular festivals that draw crowds, retreats, etc, can help.
The other big one is unity of vision. Many of these communities lay down very specific rules in their bylaws. But humans tend to go through cycles in their ability to stomach group strictures, no matter how noble their intentions. Without an outlet on the property for counterculture, residents are pushed out every time you go through one of these cycles. Often these strictures come from a central personality. See Arcosanti and Paulo Soleri's refusal to entertain young anarchists vision for the place.
I would also say many of these communities fail because they don't separate enough from mainstream governance concepts. Many require you to make a big financial investment up front, or use a democratic governance model. Neither of those should be necessary in the age of microfinance and cryptogovernance, but we're only human, and it's hard for us to give up old habits.
And lastly, poor generational diversity is huge. Most of these communities die of old age, with a few geriatrics keeping the dream alive while their secular children live as close as they can, but outside the "community". You must have immigrants in every single age bracket throughout the life of the collective. As soon as you miss a generation you make it exponentially harder to recruit for the following one.
I would be interested to see a city concept based on freedom. Big enough for good separation between activity centers, and designed to support bifurcation of governance as much as unity. "What if we didn't have to agree?" would be the motto. Not "should you be allowed to do that?" but "if one were to do that, where would the best place for it be?"
The better option is having a company/industry located in or close to that city (e.g. money from all over the US goes to Apple, which it distributes to its employees who spend money in the Cupertino, San Francisco, etc.) BUT this isn't fool proof -- look at Detroit.
Can people be allowed to own guns ? Can ISPs be allowed to provide differential bandwidth ? Can people be allowed to hold men only screening of Wonder Woman ? Can people be allowed to hold draw a muhammad event ?
Everyone has their own exception to freedom.
An engineering boo-boo flooded a giant depression, became an LA weekend resort boomtown in the 50's, and now a lot of is boarded up.
It's close to the Coachella Valley, but you should have seen the look on the concierge's face when we explained we weren't there to golf and shop. :-) Besides just seeing the sea itself, I recommend Salvation Mountain, Slab City, the obsidian fields, and the world-famous (?) Date Shakes in Westmorland.
https://www.google.com/maps/@26.9825804,-82.1857099,31160m/d... https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6300975,-81.9789861,24756m/d...
Others, not so much:
https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6204017,-81.6442622,17018m/d...
There's also this curious region which started as a land scam but ended up becoming a somewhat lawless area now ruled by a hunting club:
https://www.google.com/maps/@27.7771326,-81.3102668,7540m/da...
The place is dangerous and violent but remote, and authorities keep their distance. It feels strange to think that a place like this exists an hours drive from Disney World.
I had a class in Economic Geography. Cities grow where there are resources to support them. Most major cities, like New York, San Francisco and L.A., sprout up and boom due to natural ports that can be easily developed. A river meets the ocean or there is some sort of bay or quirk of the coastline. It takes little or nothing to start using it as a port. Traffic begets development.
This is why where we lay infrastructure like highways and rail lines can be such a heated debate. When cars began, the world had dirt and cobblestone streets. This was not sufficient. Proper roads developed.
During The Great Depression, people fled the Dust Bowl and arrived in California to start over. The route they traveled became the famed Route 66. The exodus birthed small towns along the way.
When interstates became the new norm, the towns along Route 66 mostly died. The traffic was diverted from roads that ran through the middle of town to roads that went around the town.
I quoted the snippet above because there is a borax mine -- a natural resource that fosters job creation -- and a correctional center. Prisons tend to be built in the middle of nowhere. No one wants to live near them. They do attract some development because they provide jobs. These are often federal or state government jobs. They can pay well, be secure and come with good benefits. They are worth putting up with some inconvenience.
Lots of good federal and state jobs involve some degree of burden. Military jobs, jobs at nuclear plants and so on can be a burden for the person who holds the job. When I was a military wife, military spouses had something like a 30% unemployment rate compared to about 6% or so for the general population. Locals don't want to hire military spouses because they know you are going to move again when the military member gets assigned elsewhere.
But the other reason unemployment is so high for military members is because it is a job with excellent benefits. The entire family has access to good medical care, most of it outright free. You just show your ID card to access it.
Military benefits have eroded in recent decades. They are making more of an effort to charge the insurance of employed spouses and a lot of small things have gone away. But it is still a situation where it is possible to make the traditional nuclear family with one breadwinner and one homemaker work. Money will be tight, but lack of savings is not a problem. If you stay in 20 years or more, you will get a retirement check for life and continue to get access to medical benefits and other benefits.
Wow, I seem to be rambling. My point is that sprawling cities don't just randomly pop up. They start with geographic resources, usually including waterways because water is critical for life and waterways provide transportation options. Once established, they may have an accumulation of intellectual capital, material capital, etc that grows them further.
Hershey, PA was laid out from scratch. But it was laid out from scratch by the Hershey company. It was a company town. They built their new factory there and built housing for their employees. It was naturally seeded in this way and had no problem attracting other businesses to serve the population. It is technically an unincorporated community, but (according to Wikipedia) it has more than 14k residents and has amenities like a local library.
There has to be a reason to move there. This is why these sorts of schemes so consistently fail. There is no real raison d'etre.
Funny, I was just noting how much I enjoy the way you explain things.
> Locals don't want to hire military spouses because they know you are going to move again when the military member gets assigned elsewhere.
I'm curious - how would they know?
They sometimes just frame it as "We are looking for people who will stay with the company long term." and ask a question concerning how long you hope to stay with the company. If you are honest and tell them that you expect to move again within 3 years, sorry, we don't want you.
Would reduce strain on bay area and its only a few hours south so good connectivity.