The streetcar and elevated railway will disappear. Streets will consist of four or more levels, respectively for pedestrians, slow motor traffic, fast motor traffic, and electric trains, the uppermost level being raised above the present street level.

Buildings will be half a mile high or more, containing offices or commercial establishment on the lower floors, and dwelling and amusement places on the upper. These later will be reached by spiral escalators and will be supplied with pure air piped from the country.

Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes, and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be aircraft landing-fields,

Nice vision, isn’t it? It is how Harvey W. Corbett, president of the Architectural League of New York in 1925, thought future cities could be 25 years later⁽¹⁾.

This future vision belongs to a distant past. However, I would say it’s highly topical, especially when I look at the aerostat at the upper left of the image, and I wonder whether the new Google—a.k.a. Alphabet—will put Project Loon near Sidewalks Labs…

Let’s wait another 25 years, and see.

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(1) “The Wonder City You May Live to See”, Popular Science Monthly, August 1925—via Core77