Fordlandia
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I do like a good bit of Ozymandias-style hubris, and I stumbled across some this morning when I discovered some information on a failed utopia in the Brazilian jungle
- the improbably named Fordlândia - a now-abandoned, prefabricated industrial town in the Amazon. Established in 1928 by American industrialist Henry Ford, the town was intended for the purpose of supplying his company with its own source of rubber for the tires on his Model T cars.
Unfortunately for Henry, his belief in his own omnipotence meant that the whole thing was doomed to failure from the very start. The rubber trees from Malaysia didn't like the soil, the indigenous workers didn't like being treated like slaves and then some bright spark invented synthetic rubber, making the whole place obsolete.
The ruins are now being swept from the face of history by the inexorable march of the jungle.
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