Roadtown

by Edgar Chambless

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1910. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADTOWNS MY many friends have advised me to sell the Roadtown patents or form a company and sell stock. But these people have failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for private gain I would have unquestionably been the meanest man on earth, for in me and my backers would have been combined all the despotism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, the factory slave driver, the wasteful middleman, the extortionate retailer and half of the commodity trusts. The private owners of the Roadtown would be absolute master of the inhabitants in every phase of life. I know no better way to explain to my wellmeaning friends who wear dollars instead of lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not care to make a private monopoly of Roadtown, than to say that I was raised in a country town and know the sad limitations of human aspirations due to the loneliness and narrowed horizon of isolated existence, and that I have also lived in the congested districts of New York and of other large cities and know the pain and misery of the life of the city, and that for me to think of promoting Roadtown as a private graft would be exactly comparable to the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin keeping the secret for selfish gains. The Roadtowns will be built by the people who believe in its principles and who have money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market price of a security better than municipal bonds. The Roadtown corporations will each be chartered with a nominal capital stock which will bear no dividends. I will at first hold this stock in trust. This stock will be the voting stock of the corporation; hence, I or trustees I might name will have control of the policy of the comp...

28 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2009

Reviews

[Wreade1872 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another utopian novella thing but its an amazing idea. Imagine a city laid out in a single long line, connected with underground rail. The author lays out this plan which seems really do-able.
This isn't a very long read and its one of the most startlingly simple and original ideas i've ever heard.

Update: Saudi Arabia is going to try and build Roadtown! or something very much like it ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYqNO... .

[Annabelle Fozard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst the concept is wild for some, I think it’s really interesting to consider the linear city designed by Chambless in 1910 against the backdrop of more contemporary iterations such as Superstudio’s Il Monumento Continuo (1969) and, most recently, NEOM’s The Line. Chambless feels like a little bit of a forgotten visionary whose linear city plan lives in the shadow of Soria y Mata’s, yet this 100-something page manifesto really has so much to offer by pushing us to consider an alternative. Maybe it’s a utopian trip (or dystopian, for some), but Chambless’ solutions to the problems of his day were ambitious and bold - never a bad thing in an age that is so same-y same

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating little book. It's an architectural outline for a future town which is built in a straight line above a railway. As it was written in (1910), some of the ideas are almost sci-fi like. A vision of what could have been.

[The Usual]

As an proposal - which is what it is- this sets off all sorts of alarm bells. There are too many things that cannot possibly go wrong, too much evangelical fervour, and too many simple solutions to complex problems. The author seems to believe you can change human behaviour simply by changing the built environment - it's usually the built environment that loses such a contest. Then, too, he proposes to control things until a democratic form of government can evolve - which puts me in mind of Augustus Caesar... and Tiberius... and Claudius. If I'd been alive in 1910 I'd have run a mile.

As a setting for a work of fiction - which is what it isn't but should be - all those points work in its favour. The detail is good, and because of its age it feel a bit like... I'm going to get the terminology wrong here, so forgive me... a kind of Edisonian steampunk. There's plenty of scope for conflict in this utopian vision.

Really rather good fun.

[Etta Madden · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real trip! a utopian one, that is. Like many utopian accounts, the prose itself lacks life, but the vision is fascinating. I've heard about this early twentieth century text for years. Glad I finally took a dive in to see Chambless's plan to rid the world of filth and poverty while building from technology. I especially like his views of eliminating women's "household drudgery." Lots of cool ideas. Nonetheless, he envisions that teachers and caretakers of the young will continue to be women. . . . Worth reading at least for the glimpse of the historical moment.

[Justin Howe · Rating 3 out of 5]

An architectural diatribe from 1910 with equal parts real estate advertisement and messianic polemic.