Web Urbanist goes retro-futuristic in this short series of city planning visions for five American cities – and one imaginary one.
It’s good to know that – this being the future – we’re all zooming around San Francisco in our (patented!) flying saucers; Columbus will, by now, have floating skyscrapers 
in a very nearly Retropolitan setting; and Manhattan gets a familiar, multi-tiered layout to accommodate air traffic, cargo hauling, and trains.
Houston (left) will obviously have at least one Hugh Ferriss building. In other words, pretty much what we ought to expect – with one exception. Where are the greenbelts?
‘Cause you just can’t have a retro-futuristic megacity without its essential farmlands, dairies, and orchards.
Cities like this nearly make sense. But if you’re still trucking in your food from distant farming communities then you’ve got some shocking waste of energy. You will also have created two societies instead of one, where the cities get everything they need from the farms and the farms get more or less exactly what they have today.
So get those greenbelts in there. We really need ’em, no matter how many flying cars we have.
