NOTE: The following is a fictional take on innovative communities that could potentially be created in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. They might seem too utopian and unreal to some readers, but such arrangements make a lot of sense. To me, anyway.
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Sometime in the mid-Twenty-Thirties
They’re called “Mega-Rotondas” because they’re big and round. They’re really huge. The circumference in most of them is about six miles, close to ten kilometers in length. They all have a circular inside pathway that runs about a half mile from the outer ring’s perimeter. It’s a one-way narrow thoroughfare used for public transportation, mainly small electric buses that run around in circles as long as there are customers to be picked up or to be dropped off. There’s a smaller pathway that circumnavigates the center area of the rotondas. It’s also one-way. It has lanes for joggers, bicycles, electric scooters, and other riding contraptions. The handy track wraps around a central park, a place filled with venues for all ages: children’s playgrounds, picnic areas, sports facilities, and even an indoor gym.
There are several Mega-Rotondas now throughout the Western Hemisphere. The first ones were built in Central America: in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. They were followed by the ones in the Andean region, in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. The newest one is in Paraguay. There are plans for building many more, in Mexico, for example, but those plans are still on the drawing board. There are a few loose ends that need to be tied in the ongoing negotiations with that country and with a few other nations in the Hemisphere. Some potential hosting countries object to the quasi-sovereignty required by the Mega-Rotondas. On the other hand, the nations that have welcomed them and already have them in place, have all benefited from the realized win-win windfalls that such planned communities have generated.
The Mega-Rotondas are self-sustained commercial and residential communities owned mainly by some of the people that live and work in them and by some of the businesses that operate their pursuits there. The participating commercial enterprises run the gamut from large industrial plants to small mom and pop retail stores and restaurants. Most manufacturing plants have ties to corporations in other countries, but mainly in the United States and Canada. All small retail businesses and food service places are generally family-run and owned. It’s a requirement for the more mature small business ventures. There are no large multinational megastores or franchise type fast-food eateries in the Mega-Rotondas. Most of the workers are from the hosting country, too, but a few are foreigners. Some are retired seniors, mainly from the U.S., people that spend a few months in the Mega-Rotonda community of their choice, enjoying their stay and working part-time in a myriad of job classifications, mostly to supplement their pensions, but also to share their skills and expertise with other workers.
The industrial plants and most other larger enterprises are located in the outer ring of the Mega-Rotondas, a donut-shaped area that also has a stretch of apartment buildings located in a designated quiet zone. There are small retail stores, cafés and restaurants throughout the place, but most of them are located in the inner ring, the smaller donut-shaped area, which is also the home of most residential dwellings and several schools for the workers’ small children and young adults. There are other type of educational facilities, too, scattered in strategic locations. The ones related to the arts are near the central park; the vocational centers are in the industrial area. There is also a small, a very small university campus in the outer ring, with about a dozen of classrooms, all interconnected to schools in other Mega-Rotondas and to several hosting universities from throughout the world, but mainly from the United States. Lectures are live via satellite, broadcast simultaneously by a single professor to all the participating classrooms and their students.
The Mega-Rotondas were originally conceived as self-sufficient, environmental-friendly manufacturing centers for U.S. offshore factories, with two basic goals in mind: to take advantage of low wages in some Latin American countries and to help those nations’ economies grow. Once the proposed project gained traction in the minds of the original organizers and of their counterparts in the hosting countries, a few salient ingredients were added to the planned Mega-Rotondas. That was when vocational schools, as well as those for higher learning, art centers, and diverse athletic facilities were included in the contemplated communities. Soon after the first Mega-Rotonda was established, there were plenty unexpected benefits for all the parties involved. More on that topic next time, on part three of this series.
AUTHOR: Pedro Chávez