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The Human Drift in 1894

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posted on Mar, 30 2009 @ 10:29 AM
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Has anyone ever read the book by King Gillette called “The Human Drift”? The idea/book fascinates me and I am unsure as to why. If you are not familiar with it, please check it out. I wonder how things would be now had the people followed this proposal

This is the basic idea and a link:

www.library.cornell.edu...

The main substance of the book, however, is Gillette's plan for a immense three-level metropolis (called "Metropolis") on the site of Niagara Falls. Designed to accommodate a population of tens of millions of inhabitants, the mega-city would draw its electric power from the Falls. (A photograph of the Falls served as the book's frontispiece.) The first large electrical generating facilities at Niagara Falls, utilizing the new alternating current system of Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, were being constructed at the time Gillette wrote.[2]
Gillette's city was to possess "a perfect economical system of production and distribution," run by a World Corporation; it would in fact be the only city on the North American continent. Economies of scale would mean that a single one of every necessary facility — one steel mill, one shoe factory, etc. — would exist. Advances in mechanization would generate ever-greater efficiencies, and ever-greater wealth for the whole society. Social progress would be natural and inevitable; gender equality would be the rule.[3]
Gillette gives a highly specific picture of his metropolis: it is shaped in a perfect rectangle, 135 miles on the long side and 45 on the short. Even with necessary farming and mining, most of the rest of North America outside Metropolis would be a natural environment. Gillette saw the city as containing the full population of the United States at that time, sixty million people; he also thought that the city could accept another thirty million in future population growth. Gillette wanted the buildings of Metropolis to be built of porcelain, for endurance and cleanliness. (His thinking on this point may have been influenced by the famous "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.) Gillette favored circular buildings, even for residences (25-floor apartment complexes), and a hexagonal street plan.



 
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