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99% Invisible

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

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0:00.0

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

0:04.0

San Francisco has

0:07.0

San Franciscans have a healthy pride in their city.

0:17.0

Maybe their pride is a little too healthy, sometimes a little over the top,

0:21.0

but they acknowledge this.

0:23.5

It's the natural result of living in the greatest city

0:27.5

in the history of the universe, they'll say.

0:31.0

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

0:37.0

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

0:46.4

And this basically looks like a blimp that would be attached to the underside of a bay bridge

0:50.8

that would apparently cross the bay in five minutes.

0:54.0

That's Allison Ariyuff talking.

0:56.0

She writes about design for the New York Times and is a content strategist at Spur,

1:00.0

a member organization dedicated to crafting smart solutions for cities.

1:04.0

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

1:10.3

Call.

1:11.3

Fletcher Felt's proposal with the most amazing headline.

1:15.9

From the Call Building to Oakland City Hall in five minutes, subtitle, who put up $16 million

1:22.1

so that Fletcher Feltz can span the bay with his suspended

1:25.2

auto motor railway which promises to revolutionize all kinds of traffic by rail.

1:30.3

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 on again off again, for you have scarcely made yourself comfortable in your

...

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