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Old Posted Jan 27, 2018, 6:06 PM
llamaorama llamaorama is online now
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Join Date: Oct 2008
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Quote:
Any city largely built out before 1940 has a distinctive look.

Also the Plains cities, which were reaching their stride exactly around 1940(IIRC, maybe I'm wrong).

They are also just smaller and there's more variation in prosperity and a lot of divergence based on their modern circumstances.

Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Amarillo, Lubbock, Tulsa, parts of Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, Denver, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Midland-Odessa. Albuquerque is a hybrid between this and a southwest/rocky mountain style. Saskatoon, Winnepeg, Calgary, and Edmonton may or may not qualify too. Also if you want to stretch things, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton, etc.

Shared attributes:

*A really booming resource based economy in the early and mid 20th century. You can feel through the buildings that there was this time of immense optimism and progressivism towards the future. Like vocational high schools that are palatial art deco masterpieces. Also an embrace of technologies of the era. For example some of the first modern airports, and Wichita still has some aviation industry.

*1930's-1950's high rises and civic buildings that blur the lines between late art deco and early contemporary buildings. More flw influence than mies. Oil money or big ag/banks is to thank for that.

*Endless neighborhoods of late 1950's ranch style houses which have a flow-y street grid pattern, usually close to the urban core.

*Huge grimy industrial zones. Not so much manufacturing or steel like out east and by the lakes, instead big spooky old grain elevators and feed mills and slaughterhouses and oil refineries and warehouses. Often a giant rail yard somewhere near downtown.

*Everything is a grid. Sometimes numbered streets and letter avenues persist into the new suburbs and extend way out beyond the metro edge into rural areas.

Last edited by llamaorama; Jan 27, 2018 at 6:24 PM.
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