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

Here's another retro futuristic cartoon about the automobile...
YouTube: Car of Tomorrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aTjof5fqQo

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.

yes, but how do you sell that? "walking, biking and transit" and "human scale communities" needs to be packaged in a gold box with a big red silk bow and handed to america with a vanna white smile.

here are some touchstones that such a dream might tap: a venice piazza, san francisco trolley, sesame street, block party, a european bicycle vacation, a street like Cheers "where everybody knows your name". have you seen that Kingsford charcoal commercial where everyone is in a traffic jam and then everyone just gives up and starts grilling and chilling? http://www.methodstudios.com/project/960.html

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.

the existentialists have this notion of "auto projecting" (double entendre!) -- how people are constantly moving forward toward a better future. the act of shopping and the act of driving are similar in this way. probably somethign to do with our eons of hunter/gathering and nomadic living.

if cars and consumption are not it, then what is the new american dream?

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.

so, streetsbloggers, what is your alternative story? how would you make livable streets as enticing as a magic carpet?

Good point, Paul, but how can reality ever compete with fantasy? Creating a new fantay to replace the old one is problematic: if people believe the fantasy, they can get carried away in the other direction, and if things don't turn out like the enticing fantasy you spin, there can be a backlash.

"[the highway] will be our magic carpet to new hopes, new dreams, and a better way of life.”

so, streetsbloggers, what is your alternative story? how would you make livable streets as enticing as a magic carpet?

I guess the future is Saudi Arabia...