I had forgotten about this idea for long, linear cities laid out along transportation corridors.

It’s interesting. I’m a little skeptical for a few reasons. First, I can imagine it being a cold, corporate world. Who would own the buildings and transportation systems? From my little row house I can walk in many different directions and engage in many different activities on little parcels of land owned or controlled by many different entities. Would this linear city be more like living in a mall, where everything is ultimately controlled by one owner and sanitized for my protection? Also, a line is by definition a one-dimensional world – in a linear city it seems to me like I would have only two choices of direction and that sounds boring. Although the prospect of being close to a natural or agricultural landscape is intriguing. A final concern would be the capacity of the transportation system. As the city keeps getting longer indefinitely, it seems like you might come up against a finite transportation capacity and bottlenecks could develop in the system.

I’m also reminded about a couple works of science fiction, both of which are dystopian. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is laid out along “linear cities” that are definitely not cold, corporate, sanitary or mall like (or safe). They are more like trashy interstate truck stops. Paul McAuley’s Invisible Country alludes to enormous “ribbon arcologies” where most people live. They don’t have to work because they have slaves, so apparently they spend most of their time tripping on drugs and virtual reality, and don’t really go out much. So the linear city is an interesting idea, but we need to be a little cautious how it unfolds.