Roadtown: Planning a Utopian City

Roadtown is a visionary proposal for a radically new form of urban life-one continuous, linear city extending across the landscape. Designed to merge transportation, housing, industry, and agriculture into a unified system, the plan outlines a world without traditional cities, traffic congestion, or slums. Chambless imagines a future where people live in concrete structures along a single railway line, with homes connected by underground electric trains, rooftop promenades, and modern utilities integrated directly into the infrastructure.

By eliminating inefficiencies in transportation, food distribution, and household labor, the model promises to free individuals from the burdens of city life. More than a design, this book presents a sweeping critique of early 20th-century industrial society and a blueprint for sustainable living through cooperative engineering. Chambless's work represents one of the earliest comprehensive visions of a technologically-driven utopia.