"The Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors, was a massive ride-through model spanning over 35,000 square feet that depicted a utopian "City of Tomorrow" filled with sprawling highways, automated roadways, and cars as the centerpiece of modern life. It promised happiness, safety, freedom, and beauty through a car in every driveway."
"What started as a fringe idea became mainstream in a shockingly short time, with exhibits like this drawing millions and embedding car dependency into the American psyche. The cultural transformation happened because advocates sold a powerful vision of lifestyle upgrades, not through incremental tweaks but bold, aspirational narratives. They didn't poll residents about whether they felt "interested but concerned" about automobiles. They showed them the future and made them want it."
20th-century American design shifted from human-scale streets to car-oriented sprawl driven by persuasive, utopian storytelling that presented automobiles as pathways to happiness, safety, freedom, and beauty. The 1939 Futurama exhibit visualized a City of Tomorrow dominated by highways and cars, accelerating mass desire for auto-centric lifestyles. Advocates sold bold visions rather than incremental reforms, embedding car dependency rapidly. Contemporary planning often reverses that approach by surveying existing preferences, producing predictable, context-dependent results. Surveys show high bicycling interest in a bike-friendly California college town (87 percent) and far lower interest in a sprawling Texas city (54 percent), with 44 percent rejecting cycling. Infrastructure should protect all lives and provide practical mobility options for everyone, including those unwilling to bike today.
Read at Streetsblog
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