To people of 100 or even 50 years ago, the metropolises of today would look utterly foreign. Our elevated highways, massive airports, high population density and huge skyscrapers would be breathtaking to someone from a far earlier era. But futurists of the past did their best to imagine the world of tomorrow – otherwise known as our today – and came up with some wild imagery.

San Francisco

Above (and at top) is ship engineer and inventor Alexander Weygers‘ vision of San Francisco  as he saw it from 1950. The disc-shaped objects near the water are Weygers’ patented flying machine which he dubbed the Discopter. In his visions of future American cities, Weygers imagined large Discopter ports in every city, allowing for safe and convenient travel for the city’s residents.

Los Angeles

Architect Harlan Georgescu envisioned these sky-high mixed-use buildings becoming an integral part of future downtown Los Angeles. The buildings were meant to be 500 feet tall; Georgescu’s design put living, working, dining, shopping and recreational spaces in each building. Every structure would provide homes for 200 families in the space that would normally only support 12 conventional, ground-level homes. His Sky Lots plan included a suspended freeway running between the buildings – then out to the suburbs – to alleviate some of the city’s terrible traffic problems.

Houston

In the 1920s, Houston Post writers took a stab at predicting the city’s skyline in 1980. Note the same type of elevated freeways envisioned for LA, these also leading straight into and through tall buildings. Elevated walkways were also featured in the design, essentially doubling the pedestrian space for Houston residents. Houston did eventually develop a skyline containing plenty of tall, distinctive buildings and elevated roads – it looks like the Houston Post had (mostly) realistic expectations for the future of their city.

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“These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible,” reads the intro to a 1900 article printed in the Ladies Home Journal entitled ‘What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.‘ And over a century later, many of them do. The “wisest and most careful men in our great institutions of science and learning” envisioned that by the year 2001, we humans would have willfully made all wild animals extinct to make room for ourselves, and we’d be eating sterile foods zipped from laboratories to our homes via pneumatic tubes. But some of these ideas are more prescient than others, accurately imagining innovations like factory farming and even the internet.

Wild Animals Don’t Exist Anymore, Except in Zoos

(image via: paleofuture)

“Man’s steadily increasing need for more space will eventually force untamed beasts to pay their way in the scheme of things, or join the species already extinct,” reads a 1926 article in the Galveston Daily News. That attitude was surprisingly common during the early 20th century, despite the fact that the predictions in the Ladies Home Journal article underestimated a century of future population growth by billions. The Ladies Home Journal article predicted that animals wouldn’t exist in the wild anymore at all, and would only be found in zoos, unless they were in use as livestock or service animals.

The article predicts that rats and mice will have been completely exterminated (along with mosquitoes, flies and roaches, which would require filling in all swamplands and chemically treating all still-water streams) and that cows will be so fat, they’ll be as slow as livestock pigs. “Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.” Sounds like modern-day conditions at many of America’s largest factory farms.

Purchases and Pre-Cooked Meals Are Delivered via Pneumatic Tubes

(image via: machinelake)

In an era when compressed food tablets actually seemed like a great idea, sterile pre-cooked meals made in laboratories rather than kitchens were an appealing concept. The Ladies Home Journal article imagines that ready-cooked meals would zoom from these central labs to private homes via a vast system of pneumatic tubes. Equipped with all manner of electrical gadgets not found in homes, these laboratories would also be able to supply food cheaper than it would cost to cook for yourself, since they’re buying ingredients in such large quantities. You press a button, your food zips to you within minutes, and then you send the packaging and utensils back to be chemically cleaned. Store purchases and mail would be delivered in much the same way.

Furthermore, you’d never have to worry about anyone breathing on your food, or exposing it to the atmosphere of the busy streets. Shopkeepers would be arrested if they dared to store food that wasn’t essentially hermetically sealed, or if they sold “stale or adulterated produce.” The miracle of always-fresh produce would be achieved using liquid-air refrigerators.

The idea of pneumatic delivery hasn’t gone away altogether – some cities use pneumatic tubes to dispose of trash, and a company called the Foodtubes Project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transferring much of the UK’s deliveries from trucks on the roads to underground tubes.

The Suburb is the Promised Land for Taller, Healthier Americans

(image via: mediaarchitecture.at)

The suburbs seemed like utopia for people living in clogged, smoggy cities. The predictions of the day envisioned Americans not only living much longer thanks to quiet lives in the peaceful suburbs, but also be one to two inches taller on average thanks to better health “due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics.” In fact, suburbs would be so amazingly beneficial for mankind, city housing would be practically eliminated, and building in blocks would be illegal.

Americans, and humans in general, are indeed taller than we were in the year 1900, thanks to ample amounts of nutritious foods, though that could very well change with the unhealthy fast-food diets that have become increasingly common over recent decades. The suburban dream hit its peak during the ’50s, however, and is now starting to fizzle, with many young people choosing to live in cities for access to efficient transportation, jobs and culture.

Zero Traffic Noise in Cities as Transit Goes Underground

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The dream of the suburbs would be achieved with quiet, high-speed transportation that was virtually invisible at surface level, with “well-lighted and well-ventilated” underground railways in broad subways or tunnels, as well as monorails and elevated streets. Trains would take passengers from New York to San Francisco in a day and a night (imagine!). It’s easy to see why this seemed so readily achievable in the year 1900; the first underground railway in the world opened in London in 1863 and transportation grew more efficient by the year. People hadn’t yet been seduced by the status and freedom of individual automobiles.

We may have high-speed trains in much of the world (though sadly, still not in most of America), but car-free cities “free from all noises” are far from our current reality. However, at least one city may be able to achieve that ideal: ‘Great City’, a dense carless metropolis being built from scratch in a rural area outside Chengdu, China.

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Are we on the brink of a new era in construction? With commercial space travel finally within our reach, will we see space colonies within our lifetime? And with Earth’s resources running low, will we soon be forced to move into previously uninhabitable areas of the planet? Japanese construction group Shimizu Corporation seems to think so on all counts, and they’ve come up with a whole series of architectural plans for the world of tomorrow. Their bold ideas, which they collectively call Shimizu’s Dream, illustrate what life on Earth and in space will be like in the not-too-distant future.

Space Hotel

Space tourism will be big business in the future, so it only makes sense to start planning the grand space hotels of tomorrow. This low Earth orbit hotel will be connected to its docking station by a 240-meter (790-foot) elevator shaft. The hotel consists of four elements: solar energy supply (and battery for storing power), loading and unloading platform, a public area, and a sleeping quarters section with 64 guest rooms and 40 staff rooms. The sleeping rooms are arranged in a ring that rotates at a comfortable 3rpm, providing artificial gravity of 0.7G. Guests will be free to observe Earth and other space bodies while enjoying recreation and meals in microgravity.

Urban Geo-Grid Plan

Back on Earth, urban space is running short and it’s time we figure out how to maximize our city areas. The Urban Geo-Grid Plan would move many of our essential urban functions underground to ease congestion on the surface. A vast underground network would be built that would consist of transportation, communications and energy delivery systems – all moved beneath the surface and away from the crowded city streets. There are two different sizes of underground structures: grid points and grid stations. Grid points are small and will contain community amenities like convenience stores and exhibition halls. Grid stations – including some underwater – are larger and will include office buildings, shopping centers and hotels. The ultimate vision is to create an integrated city with both above-ground and below-ground elements.

Luna Ring

Fossil fuel stores are quickly becoming depleted and it’s obvious that future cities will need a cleaner, renewable energy source. What better source is there than unlimited solar power? The Luna Ring concept would put permanent solar collectors around the moon’s equator like a belt. The majority of the solar cells would always face the sun and collect massive amounts of solar energy, which would then be beamed to Earth via microwave power transmission antennae. The construction of the Luna Ring would be handled mostly by robots controlled remotely by people on Earth, though there would be a team of astronauts on hand to supervise the robot fleet.

Lunar Bases

Perhaps in conjunction with the lunar solar plant we will one day finally build the lunar bases that have been predicted for decades. Shimizu Corporation has developed plans for what they feel would be the most expandable and easily operable lunar bases. The base will be constructed of hexagonal modules that will allow for horizontal and vertical expansion. To greatly reduce the costs associated with transporting building materials from Earth to the moon, the modules will be constructed mainly of lunar rocks and soil. Remotely-controlled robots will do most of the work to minimize the risks that would be daunting with a human crew.

Green Float: The Environmental Island

According to Shimizu Corporation, our convenient urban lives have caused us to lose touch with what’s really important and what truly makes us happy: healthy living, cultural pursuits and contact with nature. They want to re-shape the cities of the future to help us reconnect with that healthy, happy lifestyle in an organic way. Their environmental city concept will have a water-bound base with a top that extends into the sky – overall resembling a natural plant. Residential space both at the waterfront and at the top of the tower will house 40,000 people per island, while the tower will provide enough commercial space for 10,000 people to work. Island communities will be joined together in modules, making it possible for entire self-sustaining, carbon-negative cities to be built from groups of the floating platforms.

Inter Cell City

The Inter Cell City is another future city concept based on living organisms. The idea behind the concept is to create sustainable urban systems that integrate natural green spaces with occupied city spaces. Each urban community unit would operate based on citizen initiative, with every one being responsible for its own water, energy and waste management. The cities are designed to be sustainable and to cut down on fossil fuel consumption by 90% within a century.

The Pyramid City in the Air

As far as self-contained cities go, this pyramid city concept is a sight to behold. It is meant to house around a million people in just a 3 square mile footprint, all of whom will be able to enjoy ample sunlight and all the rest of nature’s gifts. The truss construction consists of interconnected octahedral units, each of which can accommodate a 100-story building. The building materials are all lightweight but strong, and the shafts that connect each unit are also used to carry the plumbing, communication and electrical systems. Leisure centers, moving walkways, trains and escalators also crisscross the interior of the vast city, allowing an entire population to live, work, study and play comfortably.

Desert Aqua-Net Plan

Though changing the ecological structure of a place is generally not considered very “green,” we may one day find ourselves faced with the inevitability of living in the desert. Deserts currently occupy around one-third of the planet, so Shimizu Corporation wants to utilize some of that currently uninhabitable space. Their plan is to create seawater canals that will feed artificial lakes in arid regions, then build habitable islands in those lakes. Putting the living spaces into the middle of lakes will cut down on the extreme temperatures to create pleasant living conditions. The canals could also be used for transportation, making the previously difficult-to-traverse desert much more easily navigable.