Wow, amazing.

Not a single mention of the environment. Even the “Sun-Powered Electro-Suspension Car” is sun powered in order to get the American to the shopping mall and workplace faster.

PS. Love how the Great Sphinx and the Taj Mahal can be improved with an adjascent six-lane highway, all in the name of bringing the countries of the world together in worship of the American way of life.

So much of that is just so wrong…

Where’s the part where the bulldozers are tearing down entire neighborhoods to erect giant highways?

Where is all the traffic? Even all sprawled out, there must be more than just a handful of cars on those roads?

Where are people walking and socializing outside?

This looks like a future of absolute hell. Living isolated from others, being totally dependent on cars, having nature absolutely ruined with giant highways everywhere. Because this is an animated film, all of the negatives can be completely brushed over. And besides being people-unfriendly, this reality would cost more money than we could ever come up with.

Where’s the giant parking lot around the Sphinx?

In all of human history, this is the ultimate “bait and switch”. It is remarkably similar to GM’s Futurama from the World’s Fair ten years before, and really brings to mind Brasilia, started at around this time. Want to be scared, read the comments over at Youtube.

Notice it’s ‘he’ who is driving? ‘Father’ who is selecting the route?

I guess the future is Saudi Arabia…

Boogiedown, some of this is also remarkably similar to Le Corbusier. The “city” looks like the Voisin Plan of three decades earlier and that house looks a lot like Villa Savoye.

You’re right, Jose…I was thinking more of propaganda to the masses, but bingo!

In fact, you can argue that the suburban magic carpet fantasy was created in response to the Industrial Revolution-era fantasy of urban living through efficient machines. The limits of those efficient machines were shown by dystopias from H.G. Wells, Fritz Lang and Charlie Chaplin. The fantasies created in response were the beginnings of the Fantasy genre: George Macdonald, Frank Baum, J.R.R. Tolkien.

In the 1950s and 1960s you had a resurgence of the machine-age urban fantasy in the science fiction of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke: cities that covered of planets! You also had movies that glorified cities: On the Town, Roman Holiday, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, for example. In response you had more pastoral stuff: Led Zeppelin, Piers Anthony, etc. and all the Sixties back-to-the-land hippies – people might not like to see Heinlein characterized as a hippie, but he had back-to-the-land fantasies.

You also had suburban home/car-of-the-future stuff like this Disney film and Jane Jetson’s Driving Lesson. It’s essentially a compromise between the city and country fantasies: Gregory Peck commuting from his home in the Shire to his job on Trantor.

Speaking of architecture, did anyone notice that London’s Millenium Dome appeared at 6:18?

I think the new American dream is living in a place where people walk, bike, and take transit, and need cars very infrequently; communities that are of a human scale, where public places are dominated by people and trees and not parking lots, expressways, and cars.

There are places like this in America, thankfully. Most of them developed before people starting worshiping the automobile as the solution to all problems. I think we’re slowly moving back towards this way of living, but we’ve got a long way to go.

That’s a great question steely. It’s an uphill battle because car companies spend millions marketing their vision happiness behind that wheel that is not at all like reality. However, there is nothing mainstream out there marketing a vision of happy people walking, bicycling, and taking transit.

I think the fantasy should also include more free time. Live in a walkable neighborhood instead of a sprawl suburb, and the money you save is enough to let you work one or two days less per week. We need to show people the Venice Plaza and people who have plenty of free time to spend in the plaza.

That was also part of the 1950s vision of the future: everyone expected that automation would continue to shorten work hours and increase free time.

In reality, Americans work longer hours now than they did in the 1950s. This is another failing of the consumer economy: we spend so much on more stuff that we have to overwork.

How’s this for irony: Disney put out the movie “Cars” a couple of years back, which is all about how a small town dies when the old, winding highway that goes through the town is replaced with a modern, new, straight expressway that is miles away from the town. I’m sure Disney would be none too pleased to see this new take on expressways.

Wow, people are extraordinarily lazy. Computer Automation can only go so far to make the highway’s capacity higher. Just look at RER A in Paris. In about a year though the highway will be clogged. However if you build a train line, it will be clogged but probably cheaper.

But nice tunneling. Maybe that machine can get the Second Avenue Subway Built.

wow. we all know that much of this was misguided, but you have to admire the ambition and optimism of the planners.