Thursday, February 29, 2024 | 6pm to 9pm
About this Event
33 MASSACHUSETTS AVE, Cambridge, MA 02139
Urban Planning Film Seminar screening/discussion.
The Experimental City (Chad Freidrichs, 2017)
Thur 2/29 @ 6pm
Room 3-133
The Experimental City is a documentary about the Minnesota Experimental City project, a futuristic attempt to solve urban problems by creating a full-size city from scratch in the isolated woods of northern Minnesota. This new city would employ the newest technologies in communications, transport, pollution control, energy supply – even large-scale domed enclosure – in an attempt to create more livable cities for the 21st Century.
At the heart of the story is renowned scientist, inventor and comic-strip author Athelstan Spilhaus, who dreams of a new kind of planned city – a truly experimental city that continuously changes to find workable urban solutions. It was a compelling vision, with powerful backers, hundreds of experts, and its own state agency.
But not everyone fell in line with this newfangled vision for the future…