-scape

California City, Mojave desert

In the desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles is a suburb abandoned in advance of itself—the unfinished extension of a place called California City. Visible from above now are a series of badly paved streets carved into the dust and gravel, like some peculiarly American response to the Nazca Lines (or even the labyrinth at Chartres cathedral). Bill & Ted meet Cerne Abbas Man.
The uninhabited street plan has become an abstract geoglyph—unintentional land art visible from airplanes—not a thriving community at all.

One the 2010 Obscura Day tours. // More at BLDGBLOG.

Reforest

‘Urban Nature’ by Tom Noonan

The reforestation of the Thames Estuary sees the transformation of a city and its environment, in a future where timber is to become the City’s main building resource. Forests and plantations established around the Thames Estuary provide the source for the world’s only truly renewable building material. The river Thames once again becomes a working river, transporting timber throughout the city.

The Reforestation of the Thames Estuary, a series of drawings representing the fictional future of the Thames estuary // by Tom Noonan. // via BLDGBLOG.