Not counting new created by urban sprawl, what is the most recent new city to be created in the middle of no where?
My guess would be some of the towns that have sprung up from the fracking explorations that have occurred throughout the country.
The US doesn’t really have a Brasilia, which you probably know was created from raw jungle to be the new capital of Brazil in the 1960s. I’d guess all candidates are very small towns that grew to something city-like. Oak Ridge, TN comes to mind - from nearly zero in 1942 to nearly 30k population now.
I find it interesting that the “prophecy” of Oak Ridge is given some historical credence, if not necessarily validity.
I am not sure anything like a lasting city has come from the northern oil booms, yet. The test will come when the boom subsides and we find out whether they are nothing but boomtowns, or real cities that will find new purpose and future.
There was a flurry of incorporation in Fulton Co, GA a few years ago.
Sandy Springs in 2005.
Johns Creek in 2006.
Chattahoochee Hills in 2007. (Already had one name change.)
Of these, Sandy Springs is the most populous with over 100k people. Johns Creek ranks 13th in the US in average earnings.
Atlanta has been trying to annex surrounding suburbs and these are attempts to foil that.
Retirement housing developers will create entire new towns in Arizona - suburbs of Phoenix and Tucson. Don’t know what the most recent is.
ftg, Mr. Billy, I think those are mooted by the “urban sprawl” exclusion of the OP
Agreed – for all the vastness of the country, there were (are still) a whole bunch of one-horse towns scattered throughout and it is more likely for one of those to grow as the hub for some new activity nearby, than actually creating a whole city out of jack scratch in the middle of the void.
Many areas of the country had unincorporated territory circled and turned into a town or city; I lived in one such. But the OP seems to be asking about cities that were created from scratch, not just political line-drawing. Not many of those and I will be surprised if there’s been one since Oak Ridge and the era of such massive mobilization.
Many towns in Northern California grew enormously and then split off growth sections as “new” towns, but I’m not sure that counts as “created in the middle of nowhere.”
Columbia, MD is a planned community established in 1967. Currently it has a population of over 103,000.
Browsing Wikipedia returned Carlton Landing, Oklahoma: established 2013, population 56, and not part of any metropolitan area.
Laughlin, NV dates to the mid-1960s. The founder and namesake is still alive!
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I think there may be many of these across the country. I was born in a small unincorporated “town” that was more or less distinct from surrounding communities, and it stayed much the same until a massive pair of mall complexes was built way to hell and gone out in farmland. The “not-town” exploded in size, growing around this new nucleus, and finally incorporated at around 80-90,000 people with rather arbitrarily drawn borders. There were other examples in that California county alone.
Would a city built on rock ‘n’ roll count?
flees
You’re knee-deep in the hoopla now, buddy.
Say what? We have the proto-Brasilia.
The difficulty of this question is that most ideal city locations already have a city built on them. Places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, which boomed into giant metropolises in the late 20th Century, began life as sleepy little desert towns which themselves were built on Native American settlements dating back millennia. Even cities created by urban sprawl, which were expressly excluded by the OP, usually began as some tiny hamlet before they were invaded by suburbanites.
One potential candidate would be California City, California, created from scratch by real estate speculators in the mid-60’s:
I poked around on google for a bit and found this:
Ave Maria was started in 2005.
From the Wikipedia page here: Ave Maria, Florida - Wikipedia
Page AZ was built from literally nothing in 1957.
California city is what Lancaster and Palmdale was 20-30 years ago … mainly people who cant afford the aforementioned places the normal anti social desert rats a lot of the meth labs that were ran out of the AV … the immigrants that no one would sell to here … people hiding from warrants (theres oddly enough a medium sized Filipino community that all work as home nurses that’s based out of there … )
A few years ago there was talk of several communities in the area suing the la county welfare system for “dumping” people in the area and bringing the usual hassles … the jokes going around was cal city was the only place where l.a. refugees were considered an improvement to the area
There’s a few of these developer-only towns in Florida. Somebody buys up 100 sq miles of farmland well inland then plants the first half square mile of duplexes, zero lot line houses, & golf courses. Then hopes it goes.
There might or might not be some pre-existing sleepy dusty farm town nearby. But the developer-only town is NOT in any sense suburban sprawl growing out of that farm town. Or out of the nearest established 100K+ population “city” 50 miles away across unbroken farmland or swamp.
Here’s one noteworthy example: The Villages, Florida - Wikipedia
Does Celebration, Florida count? While it’s in the middle of Kissimmee/Orlando, it is it’s own entity/community.
I presume the OP is referring to cities that were created where there was no prior urbanization, nor within the influence of any other nearby city,and grew to be cities of substantial size. There were a couple in the 1940s, like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, both of which were created as research facilities by the US atomic energy research.
A good example outside the USA would be Cancun, Mexico, which did not appear on 1960 Rand McNally road maps, nor was there a road leading then to the site of the present city of over 700,000, which has doubled in every decade since its formation.