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rfmcdonaldOver at Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew Barton blogs about a 1950s Disney film, Magic Highway U.S.A, that purported to show how the world would be saved by ... highways. With a super-dense highway network allowing for highly dispersed and decentralized urban areas, everything would be good. Right?
Fortunately, as Andrew notes, this imagined future did not come to pass. New urbanists have enough problems that is. It's not surprising, really, since the various futurologists I've blogged about have systematically gotten things wrong. My favourite example is how futurologists managed to miss out entirely on decentralized computer networks and personal computers--the iPOD and the laptop just weren't imagined.
I imagine that a lot of my readers are familiar with the works of various futurologists. What failed prediction sticks out the most to you?
Discuss.
In the 1950s, everything was swell, so long as you weren't black, a woman, an atheist, a communist, a beatnik, or any kind of minority, and were American. The Second World War was over and America was stronger than ever, ready and able to spread freedom, democracy, and Mom's apple pie to every part of the world, thanks to the twin fists of Prosperity and Science. Magic Highway U.S.A. reflects that postwar optimism and forecasts a world in which great highways "link together all nations, and help create a better understanding among the peoples of the world... and a better way of life for the future."
[. . .]
At the time it was made, Magic Highway U.S.A. was earnestly showing a world that was supposed to be pleasant and full of promise, a utopia that we could all look forward to. Fifty-one years later, it looks to me more like a roadmap to social breakdown. Not only does its world of the future encourage sprawl and dependency, it practically makes them mandatory. It is so married to the concept of the personal automobile that there is no allowance at all for their absence. In this world of the future, people would probably think they were better off dead than have their driver's license revoked. Personally, I can only be thankful that the techno-utopian excesses of Magic Highway U.S.A. did not come true.
Fortunately, as Andrew notes, this imagined future did not come to pass. New urbanists have enough problems that is. It's not surprising, really, since the various futurologists I've blogged about have systematically gotten things wrong. My favourite example is how futurologists managed to miss out entirely on decentralized computer networks and personal computers--the iPOD and the laptop just weren't imagined.
I imagine that a lot of my readers are familiar with the works of various futurologists. What failed prediction sticks out the most to you?
Discuss.
