Toward an Arctic City
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By Nick Solheim & Benjamin Roberts
March 30, 2021
From national capitals to company towns, the city as a mode of social organization and civic life has shaped mankind since the Neolithic Revolution. Prosperous countries have popular cities, and popular cities have powerful industries. The Arctic is no exception: in Murmansk, Russia, the Alyosha Monument towers over a bustling seaport, an ornate, turquoise rail-station, and nearly three hundred thousand citizens. Indigenous peoples for millennia have inhabited the region, but the location and lack of infrastructure have prevented the emergence of a true city in the American Arctic. As polar ice recedes and opens new pathways and resources, Americans' access to this bounty will depend on mustering an Arctic citizenry. The solution is part intentional community, part infrastructure project, and part stereotypical American adventurism: the planned city.
A Historical View
Every American era included planned cities to some degree. Charleston, South Carolina and Saint Augustine, Florida, two pearls of the South, were built from blueprints during America's first wave of colonial expansionism. The original 'Venice of America,' now the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, was designed from the ground up as a seaside resort town. Like Hershey, Pennsylvania, company towns were prefabbed and put down across the country, with some maintaining healthy populations and industry to this day. America is defined by building: cities, railroads, ports, bridges, churches, and all the other essentials of human life were erected across the continent from scratch. The planning and development of Charleston, originally Charles Town, exemplifies the civilizational spirit of the age.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/03/30/toward_an_arctic_city_770471.html
