4 Kinds of Fake Cities (they're all creepy)

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_Special Thanks_
Coproduced and edited by Evan Montgomery
_Description_
Dive into the extraordinary world of simulated urban environments in our latest deep-dive video! We explore the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FASTC), a sprawling 1400-acre site in Blackstone, Virginia, that serves as an urban simulation playground for federal agents. Witness the meticulous design by the renowned architecture firm Kieran Timberlake, known for their technically advanced and aesthetically striking projects, including the one billion dollar US Embassy in London.
Discover how this "city" transcends mere facades, with buildings crafted from indestructible reinforced concrete and wired with cutting-edge technology, to withstand intense training scenarios. Yet, it's the philosophical underpinnings that steal the show. FASTC stands as a stark, surreal interpretation of urban life, a caricature mirroring the essence of a city while serving as a potent tool for strategic training.
Join us as we delve into the broader landscape of fabricated urban spaces, from the hyper-realistic Playas Training and Research Center to the iconic Potemkin Villages. Uncover the multifaceted purposes of these ersatz metropolises, from military training grounds to testing hubs for futuristic technologies. Ponder the moral and psychological implications of these spaces, and how, through their uncanny mimicry, they offer profound insights into the nature of urban existence and human behavior.
Get ready for a thought-provoking journey that challenges your perceptions of reality and illusion in the urban landscape. Subscribe, like, and share for more content that unravels the fascinating layers of our built environment!
#Architecture #UrbanSimulation #MilitaryTraining #FakeCities #UrbanDesign #KieranTimberlake #TechnologyInArchitecture #UrbanPlanning #RealVsFake #PsychologyOfSpace #CityLab #SimulationCities #PropagandaCities #DecoyCities #UrbanDynamics
_ Further Reading and Resources_
Kieran Timberlake: kierantimberlake.com/page/for...
Awesome book about military and the city: www.amazon.com/Fronts-Securit...
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_About the Channel_
Architecture with Stewart is a KZbin journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
_About Me_
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
_Contact_
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
_Special Thanks_
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
#architecture #urbandesign

[@stewarthicks]

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[@DROK278]

London, On, Canada we call it fake London and not because of the one in England. We became a test bed for products and corpo BS and government plans/ propaganda and this is exactly why we call it fake London, it's a charade a show for the masses, London is actually a shit hole rife with political and financial problems but the "facade" of success is everywhere here. We are FAKE, a sideshow if you will and it's only getting worse. Great video! 👍👍

[@33Donner77]

The U.S. embassy in London, surrounded by a moat. A good idea, but does it have a drawbridge for extra protection?

[@FlymanMS]

Better question is, do they have hot oil and poop/stones prepared?

[@Soundbrigade]

And crocodiles and sharks in the moat ….😊

[@barryrobbins7694]

…but can they defend against trebuchets?

[@jredmane]

Alligators. Needs alligators.

[@primalconvoy]

​@@FlymanMSWe call it "poo", not "poop" in the UK.

[@skylarking12]

There's a sport shooting complex in the Southern Illinois town of Sparta. They have a "fake town" of building fronts that are used for cowboy action target shooting competitions. Fake saloons, barns, etc. are set up so a competitor dressed in full cowboy cosplay regalia, can be timed in their reactions firing actual antique six-shooters and rifles. The decor adds to the simulated realism of their 1800's setting. Another fake town I've seen is at a hospital rehabilitation unit in Springfield, IL; They have a floor full of essentially movie sets of common home and village settings, to help recovering patients practice their adaptations and coping skills in a simulated and safe space. You can go to the bank, the post office, the movie theater, a restaurant, as well as a garage workshop and farm equipment barn, and practice the mobility and manipulation skills you need in everyday life. It really helps them hit the ground running when they get home after something like an amputation or augmentation surgery. Then there's also the fake villages made for memory care facilities.

[@birbluv9595]

That is amazing!

[@jasonriddell]

in vancouver? I think there is an old time "village" built for people with bad dementia / has a 50s street scape and a 50s diner and barber ETC and they take care home residents there for a day out there is an "afghan" village in Alberta Canada for NATO military training that is "authentic" in design / architecture and NOT a "blank simulation of everywhere ville"

[@longiusaescius2537]

Huh

[@ashleybanks-wm4cg]

Manipulation??? I feel like that word gets thrown around too much these days

[@longiusaescius2537]

@@ashleybanks-wm4cg physical manipulation

[@tuusnullorum]

A big component of the bland design without aesthetics is also that it's useful for not training inappropriate information. Human training isn't too different from AI training on that front: if in a training scenario the bad guy is always in front of a fountain, people are going to end up getting programmed subconsciously to look extra hard at fountains in the real world, and in turn look less quickly at other things.

[@hcxpl1]

I'd argue thr complete opposite - by having absolutely no real context you can make people completely lose the sense of place and try to interpret certain "signs" as if they mean the same things in all contexts - Which by itself is bad enough as it contributes to the military's overall militarized view of the world where anyone is a potential target and any place a potential battlefield; but when coupled with already pre-existing biases it simply makes it easier for them to isolate behaviours that they can classify as dangerous when going through territory that they deem being enemy, be it another country or simply a non-familiar-looking place to the combatent - their towns they see as cities, foreign towns are seen as battle grounds

[@louiscypher4186]

@@hcxpl1 I think you're missing the point of a military. The entire point of the military is to go and kill the enemy. They aren't there to be nice and hang out. Their job is to kill the enemy and so they train to kill enemy. If they are deployed overseas to a foreign town it is a battleground by nature of them being there. The problem is not with the military, its not with how they are trained. The problem is how they are being used. The military is not a police force, they aren't designed to build and develop an area. They are designed to fuck shit up. If you don't like it. Then stop invading foreign countries.

[@hcxpl1]

​@@louiscypher4186The point is precisely about how the way soldiers are trained, everyone is seen as an [potential] enemy - Just look at those with PTSD after an war to see how well one integrates into civilian society; You seem to forget that they still exist as citizens - and more often than not, mal-adjusted ones. You say the problem is not with the military and how they are trained but rather how they are deployed but, to me, that's an irrelevant distinction - You have humans that are molded into killing machines, designed to destruct and de-estabilize targets, whatever they may be, without question - It's obvious they are wrongly deployed, bc there is no right use case for such a thing as the problem is in the conception that such could help solve the problems; Well, at least if we pretend they're there to help or anything more than Imperialism, really.

[@louiscypher4186]

@@hcxpl1 Well i'm not indulging in the fantasy that military's are "good guys fighting bad guys" Military's are about ensuring the continuation of state policy via brute force. But i do not forget Soldiers are people, quite the opposite. When you are deployed a combat zone as soldier there are in fact threats everywhere. The moment you let your guard down, you put yourself and your fellow soldiers lives at risk. When you ask to remove training that keeps men alive, you're asking for them to be slaughtered. As for imperialism although it's not something we should ever return to. At least Imperial powers understood their goals and so worked to towards stabilizing and integrating the conquered territory. What we have instead is a bunch of useless arrogant politicians who don't seem to understand the power they have inherited nor the consequences of unleashing it.

[@hcxpl1]

​​​​@@louiscypher4186​ I'm not asking to remove training, but rather removing the military - There's a reason they are "at risk" when there and that's bc they shouldn't be there and are seen as the invading force they are. What is slaugthering soldiers is, as it has always been, precisely the States they "protect" that send them on these suicidal missions to, as you said, forcefully enforce imperialistic policies. Lastly, but not least, Bauman would already point out that although the means are more detached and distant than ever, the aim of control is still the same - it may have a new face but it's still imperialism, only difference is they've now realized they don't need to preoccupy themselves with managing or even occupying territory in order to epxloit their resources

[@SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

To add more context about Kijong-dong: It was built in response to the real village of Daeseong-dong in South Korea. Under the 1953 armistice, Kijong-dong and Daeseong-dong are the only villages permitted in the DMZ. Because of its location, Daeseong-dong is quite unique among the places in South Korea, as only individuals who lived in the village before the Korean War, or are descendants of those who did, are allowed to move to the village. There is a curfew and headcount as their safety is paramount, and visitors need a military escort. It also comes with benefits as residents are exempt from national defense duties and taxation and are allocated large plots of land, having some of the highest farming income in the nation. The flagpole of Kijong-dong is because of a flagpole war. South Korea built a 100 m/328 ft flagpole in Daeseong-dong in the 1980s. In response, the DPRK built an even taller flagpole at 525 feet or 160 meters. After the DPRK built this flagpole, it was the world's tallest flagpole for quite some time! But since then, places like Jeddah, Dushanbe, and the New Administrative Capital in Egypt building even bigger flagpoles. Kijong-dong and Daeseong-dong are also the places where the two governments have placed loudspeakers towards each other in the past to convince the other to leave, whether they're spouting patriotic marches or in South Korea's case, K-pop.

[@namenotimportant8408]

Yeah, you'd know

[@ttlee.2020]

Thank you supreme leader Kim! Thanks for making a KZbin account just to share novel insights about your country! You are the most admired world leader in the world!

[@primalconvoy]

This reminds me of the virtual architecture of video games. For example, Fallout (3, New Vegas, 4, 76, etc) have abandoned towns, cities, etc, plus these have been "reclaimed" and used in different ways by the virtual residents there. Even more "down the rabbit hole" is New Vegas (which reclaimed a "vault" and used it as a hotel by filling most of it up with concrete and rl evicting the residents) and "Nuka World" (a theme park taken over by barbarian criminal gangs). The player can themselves reclaim and build their own "settlements" changing the original use or look of abandoned places or refurbishing then to their original glory and use. Also, due to the limitations of the game engine, many perfectly fine buildings are boarded up and not used by the NPCs in the game, so you'll often see characters camping in makeshift metal shacks or temporary shelters right next to perfectly serviceable houses, or dwelling for many years in places that look like they just been bombed (rubble and skeletons everywhere), hundreds of years after a war... Still, the architecture and related themes in the Fallout games are really interesting for me. In Japan, it's not uncommon to see rich, brand new homes right next to abandoned shanties, etc so this always reminds me of those games.

[@TheOneGuy1111]

There's also how video game cities are fake cities in and of themselves, and it's amazing how quickly the illusion can fall apart once you take the camera out of bounds. For instance, if you are never able to get behind a building, chances are pretty good they never gave the building a back wall.

[@AverytheCubanAmerican]

More on the tunnels at Magic Kingdom: They're called the Utilidors, a system that has some of the world's largest utility tunnels. This system allows cast members like costumed characters to reach their destination out of sight from guests. The public can visit the Utilidors if you book the Keys to the Kingdom Tour. According to a legend, Walt was bothered by the sight of a cowboy walking through Disneyland's Tomorrowland on route to his post in Frontierland. He felt that such a sight was jarring and detracted from the guest experience. Since Disneyland was small, such a tunnel system could not be built, so when Magic Kingdom was planned, the system was built. The Utilidors is not a basement, as due to the elevated water table of its Florida location, most of these tunnels were actually built at ground level, and the Magic Kingdom was built above that.

[@therealmol]

You should have talk about the Burning Man city or Renaissance Festival where the festival is usually set up like a city.

[@barryrobbins7694]

Those cities are temporary, but very real to the people that create and inhabit them.

[@jredmane]

@@barryrobbins7694 that should be the next vid! Real but temporary

[@barryrobbins7694]

@@jredmane Yes. There is a lot to cover. …disasters, big construction projects, internment camps, constant war, scientific research, etc.

[@SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

Here are other examples: The Japanese Village was built in 1943 in Utah at the Dugway Proving Ground. The purpose of the replicas of Japanese homes, which were repeatedly rebuilt after being intentionally burned down, was to perfect the use of incendiary bombing tactics. Testing on the Japanese Village coincided with the erosion of precision bombing practice in the US Army Air Force. The principal architect for Japanese village was Antonin Raymond who had spent many years building in Japan. Boris Laiming, who had studied fires in Japan, writing a report on the 1923 Tokyo fire, also contributed. The most successful bomb to come out of the tests was the napalm-filled M-69 Incendiary cluster bomb. Not whole cities but in NYC, there are buildings used to hide subway or other important infrastructure. One of them is 58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn. The building resembles any other townhouse on the picturesque tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights, but the building was acquired by the IRT in 1907 for a subway vent and emergency exit for the Joralemon Street Tunnel! On Pier 34 in Manhattan, what looks like a small factory is actually a vent for the Holland Tunnel, and this same design is also on a pier on the Jersey City side. On Roosevelt Island, the Strecker Memorial Laboratory was originally built in the 1890s, closed in the 1950s, designated a NYC landmark in 1976, and acquired by the MTA in the 1990s as a power conversion substation for the 53rd St Tunnel

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Sovereign Hill in Ballarat is a real city and also a fake city. It is a historic goldmine outpost, maintained and renovated to look and feel in a way that visitors expect, but not how it functioned when it was in use during the Gold Rush. It is sold as an experience, as a way to travel back in time. We are not actually travelling through time, but interpreting history through modern eyes.

[@Dave_Sisson]

While they are not as wildly successful, the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement and Coal Creek Heritage Village at Korumburra provide similar insights into the early days of the Mallee and South Gippsland respectively.

[@matthewsallman1700]

The talk of Potempkin Villages reminds me of the first North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It was 1989 and the recently opened People Mover had the potential to take the assembled press to obviously derelict parts of the downtown. So the city put awnings and other signs of life on many empty buildings that were visible from the People Mover. Thankfully the resurgence of downtown Detroit these days makes the fakery unnecessary.

[@longiusaescius2537]

Resurgence lmao

[@mausegetlit363]

Resurgence of downtown destruction of the neighborhoods

[@longiusaescius2537]

@@mausegetlit363 exactly

[@jalendiamond421]

Quite disappointed about no mention of Atlantas Cop City especially with the opening of the video

[@MarlinMay]

I was expecting that also.

[@Vagitarian01]

Those would fall under MOUT towns. It could have been mentioned, but it'd just be adding the the existing list. Most military bases have them, as does Blackwell Island, Alcatraz.... see what I mean? Now we're just naming all the places.

[@doxielain2231]

I hate that place. Manifest destiny, writ small.

[@DenverChris]

The problem with the M City sandbox used for "self driving cars" is that the real world will never be the grid, development environment that those algorithms function in. You can test 10,000 sandbox scenarios and the moment you put that vehicle into the real world, the production environment will throw 20,000 unknown variables at it. These are not happening. Technology has come a long way. It still has limits within the bounds of where it operates.

[@rafaelkorbes]

Great episode! I would love to see you talk about the Disney's E.P.C.O.T. Project!

[@architecturebydesign6003]

The channel All Things Architecture has a really informative video on EPCOT.

[@dymaxion3988]

Here in Calgary, we have Heritage Park. Functionally, it’s set up more like a theme park, but its purpose is to be more of a history museum. It has a mix of real and recreated historical buildings, a lot of real artifacts, and demonstrations of all kinds of old technologies or otherwise old ways of doing things. The sidewalks are wooden, the roads are dirt (with regular “deposits” from the horse-drawn carriages), and they even have a working steam locomotive and paddleboat. A lot of the staff are in historic costume too. It’s fake in the sense of being a curated experience, but in many ways it’s quite real. Edit: am I going nuts or is the name of the video changing every time I look at a new reply to this comment? Is this some new algo meta? TOP 4 FAKE CITIES (GONE WRONG) YOU WON’T BELIEVE NUMBER 3!!! Also, I still think about how uncritically he portrayed the military one. Glad I unsubbed

[@ShinyBaboon]

They have a similar "living museum" in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and I imagine in plenty of other places too. Definitely a cool concept.

[@acewickhamyoshi8330]

Same in Australia,, i noticed just like USA,, our old mining towns are flood zones ,, also cos floods are so bad , they condemn the old part ,, & Convert it into traas ,, plus the army e rebuild towm we had 12 ost offices within 1 mil of each other They converted them into communications ,,

[@juulian1306]

I went to similar place as a child and met an older woman there (in hostorical costume) who showed me how to make bobbin lace. I've wanted to learn it ever since. Haven't done it yet but I'm going to. Places like these are great.

[@jasonriddell]

upper canada village is a fur trading recreation village / living museum

[@jasonriddell]

@@ShinyBaboon would imagine most towns on the eastern side of the USA have re creation villages

[@mgscheue]

Interesting! I'm reminded of the fake western town in the Star Trek original series episode "Spectre of the Gun". And I didn't know about the fake Ann Arbor streets to test self-driving cars. I've occasionally seen these cars in the real Ann Arbor. I'm impressed by the artistry, including even a representation of a book store I frequent.

[@J3nJ3nl0llip0p]

🖖🖖🖖🖖🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤☕☕☕☕☕

[@AverytheCubanAmerican]

Main Street USA was inspired by both Walt's childhood hometown of Marceline, Missouri (which also inspired the setting of Lady & the Tramp), and Fort Collins, Colorado! This is because of Harper Goff who worked for Disney for many years. When he worked on Main Street USA, he showed Walt pictures of his childhood home of Fort Collins, and so they wanted to incorporate many of the features from the pictures! As you mentioned, forced perspective is key in the Disney parks. Besides the floors of Main Street USA being different sizes, there's also the effect of the castle. In Disneyland's case, unlike Magic Kingdom, the castle is small for both forced perspective and because Walt wanted a castle that felt less intimidating to feel more welcoming! The trees also play a role as they are smaller as you look down the street towards the castle to make the magnificent structure appear larger and more impressive. There are other examples of visual trickery and forced perspective at the Disney parks outside Main Street USA: At Disneyland, if you are around the Haunted Mansion by Rivers of America, if you look towards where the Matterhorn should be, you don't see it, and instead you see a tree that is trimmed to be in the shape of the Matterhorn, thus not getting way in the theme of the land you're in. In Tower of Terror and Haunted Mansion, there's a Pepper's ghost effect. In Haunted Mansion, you see what looks like ghosts dancing in the ballroom and then disappear, and this is done with a large piece of glass at an angle between a brightly lit stage room into which viewers look straight ahead and a hidden room. The glass reflects the hidden room, kept dark, that holds the animatronics. In Tower of Terror, when you see ghosts in the corridor, this effect is used again (but not with animatronics), and the corridor is made to appear longer than it actually is. And not all the screams heard on Tower of Terror are real!

[@bentz98125]

More solid treatment of yet another fascinating theme. Maybe the most ambiguous of all. From nightmare "terrorist" enclaves and company towns to leisure time funscapes. But besides fake fronts and forced perspective, theme parks' biggest accomplishment is walkable urban density: Disneyland is a virtual pedestrian auto fatality- free zone. What a concept!

[@kimweir5481]

I just wanted to say that I love your videos and I really wish there were more teachers like you out there! :)

[@snarepusher]

There's also museum cities or villages as a crossover between leisure, education and science. Some of them developed from collections of real old houses that were relocated and over time formed village or city like complexes of buildings. Others are newly built, often with old techniques, to reassemble our state of knowledge about real old cities, for example from ancient Rome

[@Mountain-Man-3000]

Didn't know that's the origin of the Potempkin village term. Neat!

[@foobar9220]

Not sure if a fake city without any traffic or pedestrians is such a great training ground for self-driving cars... ;)

[@theprinceofinadequatelighting]

I wonder if they have multiple self-driving cars running simultaneously that don't "talk" to each other (share location data, etc) to simulate traffic situations. It would of course be limited and still not very realistic, but it would be better than Ghost Town Driving Simulator 2024.

[@HalfGoofy]

​@@theprinceofinadequatelighting Mcity is designed to test both automated and connected cars. All the cars are connected to the network of the facility, which uses Mcity OS and provides virtual elements for the cars to interact with. So it is used for cars that aren't always directly in communication, but also used to test those that do.

[@jayski9410]

The first thought that came to my mind was every movie studio backlot. Sometimes those facades recreate history but also the future when we're talking moonscapes or other planets.

[@pappaslivery]

I got a chance to tour Warner Brothers behind the scenes by an employee. It's amazing seeing the insides of some of those fake buildings. He also showed how different camera angles got you totally different environments depending on what you wanted so one building could be a church or a courthouse or a bank just from the side that you were shooting in the angle

[@TheoLcr]

Fascinating topic, thanks for the video!

[@jbirzer]

It is interesting to see how military training cities have changed. I used to work in the middle of one, which generally looked like a city street.

[@stefaniadogsitterbologna8251]

This is one of the most interesting episode of your 🔝 serie. Bravo ❤️

[@brentfisher6484]

LOVED this episode. So informative and educational. All the best!

[@dbeme07]

The transitions between points were incredibly clean! Keep up the good work!

[@WhiteWolfBlackStar]

I think the first BLADE RUNNER definitely put people's gears in motion, as far as fantastical futuristic cities go. I loved that whole landscape they had going on. It was in the batch of 3 first movies I rented when we got a betamax, in the 80's when I lived in Las Vegas. If I thought that place looked like some weird version of Disneyland BACK THEN..... I had no idea of things to come, NOW!

[@HarveyIves]

Stewart, do you have any books you’d recommend your viewers read? I really enjoy your channel and would like to know more about architecture and city design.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

This gave me a random idea: I'd love to see a place build a bunch of Liminal places all combined into a single connected area. They could add interactive aspects to it to make exploring and experiencing these liminal places extra interesting exciting

[@inquisitive4]

Florida did it

[@JoshForeman]

A fun corollary to a lot of these are videogame city environments. I've been a level designer for decades, so I've done the flat billboard buildings, and the training city in the video looks like what we call a graybox level. That's the first step of the process where the forms are being blocked in to test the flow and sightlines before we spend the significant time making the beautiful art assets that will replace the gray boxes. Another kind of fake city that maybe straddles the line between themepark and potempkin is the temporary 'towns' that are set up for genre fiction theme get-togethers. Everything from fantasy villages to post apocalyptic, and they can get pretty detailed. The channel People Make Games did a video about Wasteland that you might find interesting.

[@drewburt]

Loved this video. Great work 🎉

[@michaelflaherty3202]

It’s been fun to watch all the title and thumbnail changes over the week while this has been sitting in my watch later.

[@Jaykwan88]

I drive right past this place and you have no idea it exists from outside - all you see is random signs warning about 'tank crossings' haha

[@aes53]

Great video Stewart. So, would these be liminal cities😉

[@spencerjoplin2885]

If the President gets a 3AM phone call in DC about a 5AM protest, that would put the besieged consulate in Greenland.

[@A-Milkdromeda-Laniakea-Hominid]

Gonna watch the Vegas Sphere on Nebula after work TONIGHT. Such a cool attraction.

[@lok8235]

The case of Skopje 2014 would fit right into this video. It was a massive project to cover brutalist modernist architecture with tacky “classical” facades, constructed with steel lattices and hung stone or sometime even foam pieces. The new “classical” builds are incredibly thin and proportionally awkward. It is a sad case of a city confused with its identity and unfortunately also corruption.

[@moshersmusic]

I'm fortunate enough to have helped build a couple of simulated cities at Fort Story in Virginia Beach. Not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about it, but being there is beyond surreal, especially the warzone areas.

[@jfmezei]

You may wish to look at: Last Look Inside Warner Bros Ranch Before Demolition Begins- Historic Hollywood Backlot Walking Tour by TheDailyWoo Architecturally recreates suburban America with homes that are part of US culture such as Jeanny, Bewitched and so many TV shows that are part of US history. (and by now, likely all gone). Some of the home were more functional than others. Unlike the "culture-less" examples you gave, this recration was designed to be the typical US neighbourhood while not being specific so that one home could be used for one show while the one next door for another show set in another city. (and many homes were re-used with set redress , new tree etc from one show to another.

[@kennythemeat]

in switzerland we have a town called nale located in bure. its used to train military combat in an urban envirement. if no military is around you can even walk or drive trough. all the doors and windows are functional and there are a lot of different buildings. the whole village is rigged with smokemachines and stuff. so when you shoot at a building with explosives the windows opens automaticly and smoke is emitting from the building. the simulator also "kills" all the guys inside the destroyed buildings. and every soldier and all the vehicles are tracked with gps including the "health" of vehicles and soldiers. they even have filming crews on site. and they made short films about the different missions we did there. they even drive around with little suzuky jimmnys for filming driving sequences. the footage is also used to show flaws in some decisions from the troops. every building is equipped with cameras. so they can also show you what to do better in any little detail.

[@johnnychen9897]

there was also an enitre model of suburbia built on top of the Boeing factory as camoflage from potential Japanese bomber raids in WW2.

[@Shako_Lamb]

Didn't expect to see Kieran Timberlake here! While I'm not a fan of all of their work, I absolutely love their 2005-ish West Campus Houses project at Cornell University. Funny enough, it won a brick award for its use of brick, because that's a thing apparently.

[@Dantalliumsolarium]

I love how we can have empty cities and still think it’s unreasonable to give everyone a home

[@MorganHJackson]

Brisbane in Australia has a pedestrian mall with a lot of fake fronts/facades. They've kept the original building fronts but combined the spaces behind into big shopping centres.

[@jasonriddell]

one type that was mostly missed movie sets - doing the "back lot" tour OR seeing a live filming of a sitcom - looks real on TV but is nothing like it in person

[@glennk.7348]

I really enjoy your videos! 🙂

[@TripodZhitposter]

“Ok, so were completely down experimenting with Pegasus, what do we do with it now?” “Uhmmmm idk just let people live there”

[@jandraelune1]

There is one in the middle of southern Idaho, its a mock up of a military air base. ' Saylor Creek Range ' :p Oh, fake boat yards too. Mallows Bay.

[@stevengill1736]

More liminal spaces??? I wondered if you'd touch on the Sphere of Venus.....err, that is...Vegas! 😊 Looking forward to YT and Nebula versions...cheers.

[@gaslitworldf.melissab2897]

There should be at least one skyscraper, too. I mean, things can happen in there too and it would be daunting to figure out what's going on with such a building. Maybe they should lease one for such an exercise. And a multistory garage would be a good idea too. If you don't go inside, the exercise just isn't thorough.

[@patrikpolda]

I mean stuff can happen inside of a skyscraper but if you build one you'll eventually sooner or later attract people. And I don't think that that's what they really wanna do.

[@sidthemyth]

good video guy!

[@totocaca7035]

2:20 Clearly an adult's drawing.

[@archwaldo]

i've seen clients draw worse XD

[@Josh-yr7gd]

This was a really interesting topic. Not something you think about everyday. I would also add that firemen use fake buildings for their training.

[@hattree]

I really thought this was going to be about the weird 5 floor apartment buildings with stores on the first floor that they'll build as city blocks out in the suburbs. That's the fake city I was expecting.

[@amicaaranearum]

Wendover Productions has a video called “Why Everywhere in the US is Starting to Look the Same” that discusses these five-over-ones.

[@hattree]

@@amicaaranearum I'm not talking about individual buildings like this, but when they're built and arranged as some kind of weird city out in a field somewhere.

[@marklindsey4112]

That was fascinating. Love your work Mr Hicks.

[@JustClaude13]

Old Tucson was built as a complete town to film the movie "Arizona" in 1939. It's currently a combination amusement park and working movie studio. I've seen movies being filmed there. It was interesting to watch.

[@82jp]

I loved this! Well done!

[@pappaslivery]

I'm surprised there was no mention of the incredible replica city of Rock ridge. It was exact right down to the orange roof on Howard Johnson's outhouse

[@DigitalAndInnovation]

There is a firefighter training building near where I grew up and it is a similar bare concrete. As a young child I would refer to it as the "Tower of Terror" because of its ominous presence and the recent Disney ride.

[@e.s.l.1083]

Oh wow - the perspective thing... (ref: shorter second stories make the building look taller - I always wondered what math existed that made such buildings visually intriguing - ty... trippy

[@saminnippon]

In Manila, there’s two of these cities, one that’a Potemkin village placed along major thoroughfares so that tourists and foreign dignitaries don’t see too much poverty. Another is the emulation of a major city in the global north, with its comforts and amenities, another escape from the impoverished streets of Manila.

[@HeIsAnAli]

I'm guessing BGC is the emulation, but I'm stumped on the village. But then again, I've only been in Manila for 10 years; I was born and raised in Cebu.

[@Abel-Alvarez]

I'm fascinated by this, now I wanna go visit these "fake towns". 😅

[@SoylentGamer]

This reminds me of gm_bigcity or other odd social source maps that only exist to kind of mimic a city. Something always felt off about it all to me.

[@lapiswolf2780]

This video had me thinking of liminal spaces or one of those backrooms levels with all the fake looking identical houses or hotel rooms going to infinity.

[@Shunn3d]

Disney Orlando used to have a fake city, I don't mean the part that is still alive, but the other part where it was a TV/movie set with fake facades of buildings and you couldn't do nothing as there were no rides.

[@nlpnt]

Universal in CA started as a set tour and the theme park grew up next to it. It's still a working studio backlot. There's a storage building toward the opposite corner from the park that at one point was used as the exterior of the Cloud 9 big-box store in "Superstore" and could be seen from a side street.

[@HannahEleonora]

Thank you for the interesting video! I'm curious about the "other than american" parts and how they differ in architecture. I suppose they are meant for trainings for foreign interventions?

[@HeIsAnAli]

We talking "Dubya's raging revenge boner" or "nuts, someone just had to drag Uncle Sam into their mess?"

[@zach4279]

Just made me think about the shop in The Interview

[@icreatedanaccountforthis1852]

This was a fun watch.

[@JonnyFortino]

You should look into Gatlinburg TN. It's like a scary tourist dystopia. And it's offensive. Like Disneyland but people live there. The rides are in the street.

[@EllaNonimato]

if you can enter a house it might as well be a backdrop. I always thought about that.. those houses on your neighborhood that you don't know how they look on the inside.. for decades they stay there and they are a mystery.

[@russellgeisthardt9828]

What about the town of Rock Ridge? It was both a movie set and a decoy!

[@chicyclegmail]

It's right off the Gov William J Le Petomane Memorial Thruway. Does anybody have any dimes?

[@architypeone8646]

The architectural firm I work for has designed 2 fake villages for the FBI at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL. The first one is for training the bomb squads of police forces all over the country. It has a city hall, bus station, train station, small airport, church, 6 story apartment building with a 2 level parking garage, a shopping center, farmer's market, a school, main street shopping district, a gas station, and a residential subdivision. We even had Ted Kaczyski's actual cabin that we reproduced in the woods. All of the buildings had everything that a real building has like bathrooms, working elevator, stairs, operable windows and doors, lockers, cabinets, and furniture. They had minimal HVAC since they were unoccupied. The bomb squads have to learn how to remotely operate the bomb robots through any type of building and open doors, go up and down stairs and find the bomb. It was pretty interesting. The other one is similar, but is more for tactical training for raids and pursuing bad guys.

[@WindowsDrawer]

2:20 That is way more detailed than what I would have drawn as a child

[@barryrobbins7694]

3:37 In Northern Arizona, many real towns with real people received actual radiation from nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s, resulting in excess cancer deaths.

[@longiusaescius2537]

@barryrobbins7694 We should take back Ute County

[@ferrisbueller9991]

2:25 Video game mod, that is the best simile. It is exactly what it looks like, barren and a touch uncanny. A skeleton map.

[@WoefulMinion]

No mention of my favorite fake cities, Safety Towns, used to teach kids bicycle safety. Those have always fascinated me.

[@npsit1]

I trained at MOUT towns 25 years ago at Camp Pendleton... They certainly aren't new. Also, you can just pronounce it as a single word, like "mowt". Like saying ow in the middle.

[@wesleyburghardt7189]

I think of Chicago’s Columbian exposition; an entire complex of structures built around a particular aesthetic that had minimal relation to Chicago’s reality at the time (or since). It seemed to be a strange combination of aspiration and puffery.

[@cal30m1]

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on the human face, forever." Orwell

[@davidminear]

My favorite fake city was Boeing Wonderland, a 26 acre fake city built atop Boeing's #2 plant in Seattle during WWII. It was intended to disguise the plant from aerial surveillance.

[@nancypayton5272]

ok i know this is completely off that subject, but the large wood artwork on your wall reminds me of the walls of the complex in the Stargate: Atlantis series.

[@mrs.manrique7411]

My grandfather worked on Disneyland’s Main Street when it was first built in 1955.

[@GlassHouseBiking]

There is a base called KASOTIC that is very similar - located somewhere in Jordan.

[@a.o.skurtt]

For the training cities, why wouldnt they want some of the windows to be different heights? I think thats more realistic than every window being the exact same size and location

[@NoName-ik2du]

There's a new neighborhood that sprung up in my town recently, and the way its constructed makes it look like a nuclear bomb test city. You can't quite put your finger on what's wrong with it, but it just feels...off. It's a very creepy and unsettling neighborhood. Interestingly, I've never seen any cars driving or people walking around in that neighborhood, which just adds to the creepiness of it all.

[@SiqueScarface]

I would include model railways into the "fake city" class, especially if they are as elaborate as Miniatur Wunderland.

[@jacekatalakis8316]

The Starfish sites were similar to the French WWI era fake Paris, only both on a bigger scale and somehow less detailed. The British built fake scaffold towns, aerodromes, and even factories that were rigged to look like they were on fire, but could easily be put out. The whole thing is a rabbit hole of fantastic ingenuity and creativity and yes, movie studios were, during the war, tasked with this. To keep up the ruse, at times aircraft would be moved to these fake airbases, personnel were stationed there to move the (mostly wooden) aircraft around and, as I've been told, run around to make it look like a working RAF airfield during the war. FOr the factories, again going by what I have been told, they took it up a notch and had simulated shift changes and apparently had vehicles in the lot that would drive off to simulate loading and exporting of finished goods, then return later to simulate importing of goods, all this was done to sell the ruse to any German spies that the factories and airfields were part of the war effort.e

[@Pr0toPoTaT0]

There was a few parts in this video where you sounded like grady from practical engineering haha 😅

[@splitman1129]

MOUT was vital to my training. Hated and loved it at the same time. ESSAYONS

[@TristouMTL]

This applies elsewhere as well -- rocks and land painted green and fake fields of plants (really, stones stuck on metal rods) from China to be observed from afar by communist officials. Or perhaps even the beautiful tree-lined parkways that hide industrial wasteland. Or making sure strip-mines and clear-cut logging are not visible from the main roads. Not quite fake, but an interesting uncanny valley for me is Saint-Augustin-des-Desmaures, a suburb of Québec where instead of street after street of identical houses, they have a very purposeful mix of practically every house style possible in order to please everyone, which actually makes it its own uncanny valley.

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

The outdoor sets of the TV series _Boardwalk Empire_ were used to train police, and it wasn’t the only movie or TV show set used for such a purpose.

[@EllisHudsonn]

call of duty nuke town

[@josephcronin2965]

That familiarity chart you showed was pretty creepy

[@Gsoda35]

let's build a fake city and make it real.

[@robfilmer]

Sim City 2024

[@theprinceofinadequatelighting]

Ah, so the reason it looks so uncanny is that the splines are reticulated.

[@rachelpage1971]

Absolutely fascinating!

[@raggedclawstarcraft6562]

6:40 - the most famous fake city turned to be fake story. Ofc. Potemkin village is coined in its own term now in russian language, but it turned out the story is fake, created by the enemies of the Potemkin. So you can say potemkin village is a fake fake. If you understand what I mean.

[@UnderTheRugAgain]

It seems counterintuitive to have "real life" drills with buildings a multitude stronger than actual urban standards.