The stuff built new in ultra-rich parts of Orange County during the seventies were all like a Syd Mead vision.

When South Coast Plaza and Westminster Mall were still having paint drying, they completely fulfilled the Logan's Run fantasy. The Westminster Mall, circa 1975 was unbelievable. A fortune was spent on that mall and the designer had multiple level catwalks, huge artistic colored ropes that strung hundreds of feet into the air and pointed toward a huge skydome. It was like an intricate spiro-graph come to life and all the details were just like those pictures - linear, coherent and purposeful. The place was a seventies fantasyland complete with a semistar-like design/layout.

Naturally, watching things go down hill from there has been rather disappointing. Last I heard they were renaming the area "Little Saigon" - I kid you not.

When the eighties came there was the anti-disco rebellion and caught in its wake, was anything that had to do with the seventies. Syd Mead architecture, which is a postwar-utilitarian conceptualization, pretty much lost popularity all at once. It was replaced with a hodge-podge of nouveau Spanish hacienda mish-mash and tile roofs that typified remote suburban utopias like Mission Viejo, San Clemente, etcetera.

The Bio-rhythm machines fo that period seem to make a perfect match for the Syd Mead architecture. The techno-music with melodic, yet artificial qualities also fit well.

From a "where in the world can you still experience such" list, the choices are few. Spiritually, Tokyo and much of Japan is an ever-evolving Syd Mead painting. The need for space efficiency and absolute love of technology make this the case. Parts of Walt Disney World and some other places also continue the "future city" concept pretty well.

Other places, poorer states without the cy