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99% Invisible

94- Unbuilt

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.827.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2013

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the utopian, futuristic transports, the impossibly tall skyscrapers, even the horrible highways, all capture our imagination with what could have been. Whether these never built structures are perceived as good...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

0:10.8

San Franciscans have a healthy pride in their city.

0:17.2

Maybe their pride is a little too healthy, sometimes a little over the top, but they acknowledge this.

0:22.8

It's the natural result of living in the greatest city in the history of the universe, they'll say.

0:30.8

But even the most die-hard San Franciscans have to admit, it could be better.

0:36.8

Like if there was a finicular transport suspended from a bridge of soaring towers over the bay, connecting downtown San Francisco to Oakland.

0:45.8

And this basically looks like a blimp that would be attached to the underside of a bay bridge that would apparently cross the bay in five minutes.

0:53.8

That's Allison, area of talking.

0:55.8

She writes about designed for New York Times and is a content strategist at Spur, a member organization dedicated to crafting smart solutions for cities.

1:03.8

She and I are looking at an article from the April 17, 1910 edition of the San Francisco call.

1:10.8

Fletcher Feltz proposal with the most amazing headline from the call building to Oakland City Hall in five minutes.

1:17.8

Subtitle, who put up $16 million so that Fletcher Feltz can span the bay with his suspended auto motor railway, which promises to revolutionize all kinds of traffic by rail.

1:30.8

The article goes on as follows. I'm going to use my old-timey reporter voice here.

1:35.8

It will be a case of one again, for you have scarcely made yourself comfortable in your seat when burr, buzz, buzz.

1:42.8

You are flying across the bay in midair with the speed of a gun projectile. And almost before you can say, Jack Robinson, you have landed in the Athens of the Pacific.

1:52.8

Now that's rather a startling statement, isn't it?

1:55.8

But for Fletcher E. Feltz, who has looked into the future, says we are going to have such a railway.

2:03.8

Oh, for sure, you say contemptuously. It's only a dream. But you know, some dreams come true.

2:12.8

And they just don't write them like that anymore, do they?

2:15.8

Which would have been absolutely amazing if that had happened. This is one that I really wish it happened.

2:21.8

This is exactly, this is like the hyperloop of its day. And I'm quite sad that it didn't happen.

2:29.8

These are stories of the unbuilt structures, a subject which has really captured the imagination of the public recently.

...

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