More Florida

[Omicron]

This is one of the strangest things I've come across in recent memory. Whilst wasting time on Google Earth, I've noticed that Florida is covered with empty subdivisions - miles and miles of streets and culs-de-sac with hardly a single building to be seen. In many cases, the roads are all at least forty years old and in acute disrepair, so any future development would require completely new infrastructure to be built all over again.







Here's a comparison between the map and satellite views of the same area:




And then there's this:



Floridian sprawl is unbelievable. It manages to cover thousands of square miles, yet houses practically no-one. I've never seen anything like it.

[Wayno]

And then there's this:

imagine living at one of the "Rim and Spoke" corners - the traffic would be horrendous...

[Prince George]

Aha! This explains the Nazca lines - they're ancient Peruvian subdivisions. That's it, I'm going to write my book, Suburbs of the Gods, and become the next Erich von Daniken!

[AtD]

That is very bizarre. I find it hard to believe that the sunk cost of that infrastructure can just be ignored in preference for new work. Surely if the developer was liquidated a new developer would have taken advantage at some point.

Curious.

[monotonehell]

It's not just Florida, I've seen similar no one there subdivisions all over the California desert. And other places where there are loads of roads, but only a few houses. Seems like they subdivided whatever, but never thought of sustainability, or the fact that no one wants to live in the middle of a desert with no utilities.

Avenue D you say?..
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=34.7 ... 3&t=h&z=15

My favourite nowhere is California City...
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.1 ... 1&t=h&z=13

The area where California City now exists was largely uninhabited prior to the last half century. Padre Francisco Garcés, a Franciscan missionary, camped at Castle Butte in what is now California City in 1776 during his exploration of Arizona and southern California. In the late 19th century, the Twenty Mule Team Trail, which carried loads of borax to the railhead in Mojave from mines in the east, ran through the California City area.

California City had its origins in 1958 when real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn purchased 80,000 acres (320 km2) of Mojave Desert land with the aim of master-planning California's next great city. He designed his model city, which he hoped would one day rival Los Angeles in size, around a Central Park with a 26 acre artificial lake. Growth did not happen anywhere close to what he expected. To this day a vast grid of crumbling paved roads, scarring vast stretches of the Mojave desert, intended to lay out residential blocks, extends well beyond the developed area of the city. A simple look at Google maps satellite photos shows the extent of the scarred desert and how it stakes its claim to being California's 3rd largest geographic city, 34th largest in the US. California City was incorporated in 1965.

The first post office opened in 1960.

Most recently, CHiPs star Erik Estrada has been promoting real estate property for California City in infomercials as spokesperson for National Recreational Properties.

Geeze I look at Google Maps way too much, it took me less than a minute to find these two places just by zooming in from space.

[Prince George]

And then there are the places that should be nowhere, but fate has spared them (which usually means they are next to a big busy freeway). My favourite of those is Primm, Nevada - http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll= ... 22638&z=16 It's literally just feet over the border with California, on the Interstate between LA and Vegas; it's like a mini Vegas: a couple of casinos (one with a roller coaster), a pile of shops, and some tatty housing for the people that work there.

[Shuz]

More than half, if not three-quarters of that town, is covered in asphalt!

[AtD]

More than half, if not three-quarters of that town, is covered in asphalt!

And it's in the desert too. It must be awful.

Looking around, probably half, if not three quarters of Las Vegas itself is asphalt!