Free Republic

Developers are plotting a nearly 93,000-square-foot indoor rainforest with free-flying birds, sloths, snakes and exotic plants — smack in the middle of Arizona’s scorching Sonoran Desert. Dubbed Paradise Earth, the four-story attraction is planned for 10.5 acres of Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community land near Scottsdale and is being billed by its creators as the largest indoor rainforest in North America. The elaborate wildlife exhibit would also house freshwater fish, two-toed sloths, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, according to a conditional-use presentation submitted to tribal officials.

The 175-acre site at the base of Mount Fuji will have clean, autonomous cars and 2,000 residents. While introducing a concept car is nice, Toyota chose this year’s Consumer Electronics Show to announce it is building an entire city, the roads packed with last year’s autonomous concept cars. Top that, competitors. The “living laboratory” will be built on 175 acres that used to crank out the Toyota Yaris. Efficiencies in production meant the plant was no longer necessary, freeing up all that land. Toyota said it would be “a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells.”

"This week Diane and I have a friend visiting from back east. As locals generally do when guests visit, we used this visit as an excuse to go sightseeing at local attractions that we somehow never got the time to visit on our own.So on Tuesday we drove north to take a tour of Biosphere 2, what has been called “a giant space-age ark in the middle of the desert.” The idea, as sold heavily to the public when it was built in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was that eight people would try to live in a closed...

Who needs the Amazon rainforest when you can bring the rainforest to Amazon. The e-commerce giant is set to unveil its $4billion urban campus in downtown Seattle on Monday that features an innovative mix of office space and exotic plant life. The company's hard-working employees will be able to take a break from the daily grind by walking along stone pathways, observing mini-waterfalls, and enjoying the plant life from exotic locales in South America. The massive project includes three office buildings in the shape of spheres – the tallest of which is 90 feet tall and 130 feet in diameter,...