Comment on Evidence by saarnok

saarnok · 10/24/2025, 1:28:05 PM · permalink

Yeah. It's true they don't, from our perspective. There was a video I'd probably have a lot of trouble finding where a guy explained the world fairs plausibly.  
  
The basic idea is the scheme to get a lot of money flowing into an area, plus a little bread and circuses, but mostly they generally wiped out the existing naturally evolved neighborhoods and replaced them with eye catching structures, generally only for a  year or two.  
  
Very few of the structures were made to last, regardless how awesome they look on the surface. They built facades that were mostly plaster and used steel frames which could be repurposed.  
  
These projects were part of the "City Beautiful" movement which is in a sense a French concept owing to Baron Haussmann’s redesign of Paris under Napoleon III from the 1850's through 1870.  
  
Daniel H. Burnham would use this styling to design several World Fairs/Exhibitions including the first in Chicago (The White City) and eventually the redesign of Washington D.C.  
  
Some things, like the D.C. redesign would be essentially permanent, while others were not and never were intended to last more than a year or two.  
  
Part of the "conspiracy theory" is the "great fires" that ravaged cities on a fairly regular basis, owing to lack of planning and lack of any real fire safety building codes.  
  
I have a multivolume "Cyclopedia of construction" from... I think it's 1921 or so. The design of homes from a modern perspective is that they were made to be burned. Absolutely no thought went into preventing fire transmission through the structure and entirely by accident they were presenting a "new" design intended to stop mice which also (though they never mentioned it) prevented air flow and slowed the spread of fire.  
  
Also "new" was the use of poured concrete foundations.  
  
Before planning, cities simply went up in as economic a fashion as possible. Builders inevitably chose to build more rather than to build safer and "fireproofing" was one of the things not really taken into account until Burnham added it to his buildings.  
  
There are LOTS of really implausible things about that period of history, not because they didn't make sense at the time, but because they don't make sense from our point of view.  
  
Part of the way this "theory" sells to young people is because of how little organic connection this generation has to the past. I knew a man personally who knew a Civil War Veteran. My grandparents lived from the early 1900's and grew up with people who lived through the late 1800's. My grandmother taught her kids history, but only included up to "The World War", which was  how far history had progressed when she gave up her teaching job to marry my grandfather. WWII was yet to happen.  
  
I can tell you how much their generation saw of the remnants of Tartaria: Not one bit of it.  
  
If you want to learn about this subject, you should be searching for "City Beautiful" and Burnham for information. There are numerous books available which range from less than $20 to several hundred. But, there's plenty of [information](https://www.britannica.com/topic/City-Beautiful-movement) online.

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