PBS Orville Interview (1989) Moderator: Back on Earth. What will cities look like in the future? One man has a few ideas on that subject. Meet Orville Simpson, for the past 50 years he's been planning Victory City. Imagine one building 102 stories tall and over a mile long, inside there's living space for more than 26,000 people. Outside there's a stadium, a lake, a forest, and farms. An entire self-contained city that Orville believes is the way of the future. Orville: This will increase the standard of living but use less money and natural resources to achieve it. And it solves a lot of problems which are developing the trends are towards pollution and the loss of ecology and the loss of many species of plants and animals and as far as energy goes they you know that are running out of the oil in the world and automobiles run on gas made from oil and this cuts the automobile transportation down to just 10 percent of what it is and the obsolete cities because you take the elevator here, and there are very quiet they don't produce any carbon monoxide gas, they run on electricity and they're the safest form of transportation in the world. Moderator: Besides it's complex system of elevators and escalators, Victory City has another unusual feature. None of the apartments would have kitchens. Instead everyone would eat of one of 21 gigantic cafeterias. Victory City would be the largest construction project ever attempted. Moderator: How long would it take to build Victory City? Orville: Oh, that’s a good question, probably…the fastest anybody could do it, I would say it would take at least 5 years but it would more likely take 10 or 15. It would take hundreds of architects and engineers just to plan it over a period of several years and cost millions of dollars just to plan it. These are just conceptual drawings and plans and they have to make working plans once the particular building sites have been bought. Moderator: Victory City. Is it just one man's dream of Utopia or is it a realistic vision of the future? Orville: I think that come true someday, I'd like it to be in my life time. [Laughter] because the world needs it.