Engineering Eden: lessons from remote Fordlândia 100 years later

Henry Ford sought to control his rubber supply by building Fordlândia, a model community in the Amazon. But transplanting the American Dream to the rainforest proved illusory.

Back in 2008, a short documentary aired on Brazilian TV about Henry Ford’s urban Utopia in the Amazon shows an old inhabitant who returned to the US when the company sold the place, Charles Townsend, asking in Portuguese a group of local children: “Who here was born in Fordlândia?” A bunch of children raise their hands, cheering. “I was born in Fordlând…