Re-Imagining Urban Planning Perfection: Boise of the Future

Forged Series: Transfer Hub, Bannock Zone, UPT

To learn more about the FORGED series, visit the Table of Contents.

The Transfer Hub

People familiar with Boise, Idaho, will spot many familiar locations sprinkled throughout the Forged series. Early in Shattered, book one of the series, Tessa and her Aunt Clari go on a picnic at the old Boise Train Depot on the edge of the Transfer Hub. They climb the tower to view the flooded downtown and distant foothills from the bell windows.

There are multiple mentions of the Transfer Hub throughout the series, but not until book three, Forged, will Tessa spend much time in the area.

Map of area

The downtown core of Boise is flooded when the Morrison Dam is constructed from the Crescent Rim to the Foothills, creating Lake Boise. The Boise Bench becomes the new government, commerce, and housing development center.

In 2025

The Transfer Hub runs along the current-day Crescent Rim Drive from the old Boise Train Depot on the southeast to the intersection of Americana Boulevard, Emerald Street, and Latah Street to the northwest. Currently, an eclectic mixture of homes runs the length of Crescent Rim Drive. At the edge of the Boise Bench, the area is about 60 feet higher than the river basin in which downtown Boise is located.

View of downtown Boise from the Old Boise Train Depot. LEFT: as photographed in June 2024. RIGHT: With AI overlay of higher waterline as imagined in the Forged series. PHOTO CREDIT: CB Mason

In 2134

In the world of the Forged series, the former downtown Boise is flooded when a dam is built from the Boise Bench to the Foothills along the path that is currently Americana Boulevard. The dam forces the final vestiges of civilization trying to live in the structurally unsound city buildings to leave the river basin for higher ground.

Once flooded, the Bannock urban center's governmental and business center moved to the Boise Bench section along the current-day Crescent Rim Drive. The area includes the UPT media center, hospital, hotel, conference center, shopping and entertainment businesses, the inter-zonal train station, and offices of all major governmental departments, including the Grand Governor’s office.

Individual vehicles are limited to high-ranking government officials and essential personnel like doctors, which means that everyone else relies on public transportation, e-bikes, or gyroboards for personal transportation. To ensure that all citizens have easy access throughout the urban center, an extensive mag-lev light rail system was developed. Named the Transfer Hub, all lines radiate out from the main transit center to provide free ground transportation services, connecting citizen dwellings to the core of the UC.

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Location Inspiration and Role

The Transfer Hub is the ultimate mixed-use urban planning success. It combines the North End’s Hyde Park, Southwest Boise’s Mill District (where Lucky 13 Pizza is now located), and the Village at Meridian with the downtown governmental core and efficiency living quarters for optimal density usage. In the daytime, business professionals hustle along the walkways. In the evenings and weekends, families take over the area.

Mixed into the pedestrian-friendly zone is the 2134 versions of Lucky 13 Pizza, Grenika (a cafe in the future), the STIL ice cream shop, an arcade, a movie theater, a bowling alley, and more. It’s where all the cool kids hang out (and what I’d always hoped would exist in Boise when I was growing up there).

Boise peeps: what landmarks do you hope to find in the pages of the Forged series?

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What I’m reading

Here are some other dystopian and Sci-Fi fiction pieces available on Substack that you might enjoy. Plus, some thought-provoking pieces.

1. Forbidden Parallels - Fellow Provender Press author,

   Kevin Carver
   has his first book coming out soon! If you want to be on his Street Team and get an early copy in exchange for an honest review, ARC applications are now open. Apply here.

2. A Story from the Year 3053 - Check out this short, poignant read from

   Strawbridge
   , and you’ll be thinking twice about checking your phone’s notifications.

3. The cellar of a thousand skies - As I said on Notes, this piece by

   Nathan Slake
   is “Written as prose, but this reads as poetry.”

4. Mars Sample Return 4 -

   Larry Hogue
   gives us another great episode of his speculative tale based on the history of the Viking Lander experiments and recent NASA plans.

5. Is Empathy Really the Weakness of Western Civilization? -

   Neela 🌶️
   does it again. This piece will make you think and cost only “2 Cents & a Lime™.” My favorite line: “It's that we've been raised to believe strength only comes from stoicism and strategy, not connection.“

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