Minnesota Experimental City
The Minnesota Experimental City was a proposed planned community to be located in northern Minnesota. Proposed and studied beginning in the 1960s, it would have been constructed as a public private partnership. In contrast with many of the model cities of the time, the MXC was to be experimental, trying new things rather than proposing to select from the best of the existing practice. The project was initiated and directed by renowned scientist and University of Minnesota dean Athelstan Spilhaus.
The city was designed for 250,000 people over. In the plan, only 1/6 of the area would be paved, the remainder would be open space: parks, wilderness, and farms. Under the influence of Buckminster Fuller who sat on the MXC's advisory board, the plan called for the MXC to be partially enclosed by a geodesic dome. It would contain a branch of the University of Minnesota and 3M Corporation.
Among other proposed features were:
