The Future They Foresaw: 1964 envisions 2000

[Metro Jacksonville]

The Future They Foresaw: 1964 envisions 2000



George W. Simons, the pioneering colossus of the City Planning movement in the Southeast was a Jacksonville brand.  He helped Grace Trout and the women of Jacksonville produce the very first Southern City Plan in Jacksonville in the 1920s and was instrumental in creating planning boards across the southeast. In 1964, he produced a Sunday feature story for the daily paper envisioning how the city was planned to develop by 2000.  This was not a speculative work by a wishful thinker about the future.  It was the work of the man who had spent the previous 40 years crafting the zoning and the long term planning of the City of Jacksonville.  Check out where we believed we were going after the jump.

Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2016-may-the-future-they-foresaw-1964-envisions-2000

[hiddentrack]

As for the disappearance of the historic neighborhoods, maybe he was secretly expecting a massive natural disaster and need to rebuild from scratch. Thankfully no such thing has occurred.

In all seriousness, this is a great find. I'd love if there was a way to buy a copy. I imagine there are very few originals lying around, but if someone used an original to make a nice print available for sale, I'd definitely look at buying a copy.

There are some interesting ideas in the context of what most people expected from the future. The reference to "little one unit cars will operate to convey passengers from place to place" reminded me of Masdar City's PRT.

[finehoe]

Looks like he borrowed heavily from Le Corbusier's Ville Contemporaine with its towers in a park; skyscrapers set within large, rectangular, park-like green spaces.  Jacksonville would've been better off if Simons had been an admirer of Jane Jacobs.

[Know Growth]

Fast Backward

Interesting to see published accounts of the then soon to occur I-10 project;Euphoric assessments,why in fact,Jacksonville was moving forward! The lucky site of Eisenhower Project path!

And eventually, I-295,which in fact traversed relatively undeveloped landscape compared to the eastern terminus of I-10.

(And of course, Next: First Coast Outer Beltway  Planners & Consultants as Champions. Genesis Group et al.Few foresaw St Johns County & Clay County pivotal Sector Plan proceedings and precious little was covered here on this forum or elsewhere;The Future Some Foresaw empowered! Some day our own home grown Planning characters might receive the same scrutiny as Moses. The timing is always perfect. )

[spuwho]

The Eisenhower Plan in its original form never envisioned expressways to rip through urban centers. It was expected to pass city centers from a far and leave access to the city centers by interurban or other rail.

The "plan" due to its sheer size and money involved was redirected by willing local political players and their highway contracting contributors. Passenger rail was dying and interurbans (what was left by then) were weak and impotent and had no political leverage.

So the highway trust fund was used for ramming through urban highways, usually through some of the poorest neighborhoods where influence was low and property values cheap.

Eisenhower was politically asleep when his proposal was modified and didnt even see the changes. He woke up on a trip to Chicago and on his way from Midway Airport to the city center, he was shocked to see entire neighborhoods being ripped out. Why? He asked his aide, and he told him that Mayor Daley had used his new highway bill to have the Congress Expressway extended out to Central Avenue.  Ike tried to stop it but it was to late.

Other cities were doing the same, taking the money and using it as a urban patronage operation with the highway unions.

Just in Chicago alone, one interurban closed right after and another dribbled on and died as the Edens Expressway finished past Skokie.

City planners, always to follow a trend, probably saw Jacksonville in the same light.