Experimental City: The Sci-Fi Utopia That Never Was

To forestall the continuing growth of cities as “cancerous organisms,” the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC) was conceived in the mid-1960s by epochal technologist Athelstan Spilhaus. A modular settlement of 250,000 people or more, the city was to be powered by clean energy and run on public transit. Experimental City would be a tabula rasa—a place to begin anew, free from the constraints and compromises of past cities, located in the remote marshlands of northern Minnesota.

Spilhaus could be gruff, but maintained a patrician air, expressed in his decades-running “Our New Age” comic strip, which confidently proclaimed science fiction to be science fact just around the corner. To advance the cause, he gathered around him a progressive cadre of experts including Buckminster Fuller and civil rights pioneer Whitney Young. The world they outlined was startlingly prescient.