Group Members: Christian T., Tinin B., Zoey Y., and Citlalli M
This image is Normans Bel Geddes modeled city of Futurama shown at the General Motors exhibit. The importance of this city gave modernistic perspectives of what was to come. This image shows an elevated view of skyscrapers, roads with multiple layers of traffic, and parks. This city can be seen as a utopia considering how everything seems unified and functional. By analyzing this image you can tell that the majority of the space is occupied by road. This meant that vehicles were going to be one of the main forms of transportation. This was an ideal city that was presented to thousands of local citizens and foreign visitors at the World’s Fair. In contrast, based on the citation below, modern time today can be seen as a dystopia considering such modernistic highways were implemented too early for a developing city.
Tinin B
In “ The Role of Highways in American Poverty” Alana Semuel declared based on the above image the impact of the poverty experience across the country in the 1940s and 1950s where many people were sick from air pollution due to the rise of the number of automobiles on the highways every single day as we can noticed through the following: 60 percent of Americans owned cars in 1940, 80 percent in 1960 did, and today 95 percent own cars. This condition of illnesses required cures via medicine improvement.In other hands, Semuel suggested that the only solution to cure the city illness was the reconstruction of highways systems in order to keep communities healthy, but this statement is not the right one for all Americans. Moreover, Alama pointed out that the project of reconstruction of highways systems had a unique goal that planners across the country had in mind was to help communities access a bright future in terms of transportation and at the same time keep people healthy.
In 1939, Norman Bel Geddes designed the General Motors pavilion, they planned the future and saw how it looks like from the bird’s eye views (Pic 1). As we can see how clearly the great highways of the future (Pic.3) and futurama of the airport are connected to the highway (Pic 2). Also, the highway is without intersections and walk roads. And we can see how they try to create the straightest possible lines and across the bridges spanning the broad river. However, it is the vision of the future highway, we can see how perfect the highway connects to each other. It is totally different from what we have about the highway system as of today.
The following picture is one of the most influential moments captured in the Futurama exhibition because of three major factors. The first factor would be that the ride was an automatic belt that would move the guest around a miniature city while being narrated to. The second factor is the modeled city, a city that was replicated off of Shell City created by Norman Bel Geddes, a newly self made industrial exhibit designer. The third factor would be the company who created the whole experience, General Motors. As the leading manufacturer of the automobiles, not only promoted cars but the highway systems themselves the most. The more highways that were built the more the need to explore and getting around that would need to happen aka.cars. Guests were so intrigued/mesmerized by the idea of having the perfect city that revolves only on the highway system but the idea that they were going to have a shining future. A pin would be given to commemorate them assisting and seeing into the future.
Research Question:
How did a modernist approach in the 1939 World Fair Futurama exhibit initiate the fabrication of a flawed utopia and prompted an immediate dystopian neighborhood?
How did a modernist approach to the 1939 World’s Fair Futurama exhibit initiate a flawed utopian vision and prompt a transformation resulting in dystopian neighborhoods?
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