The original Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair was a vision of how American cities and infrastructure might look 20 years in the future. The World of Tomorrow was the theme of the 1939 Fair.
Sponsored by General Motors, it was inspired by the work of a prominent industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes, who in 1937 had developed a model of a “city of tomorrow” for a Shell Oil advertising campaign.
At the time, President Roosevelt was already concerned that the country’s system of roads was not matching its economic ambitions. He had commissioned feasibility studies for a national system of multi-lane highways but there were strong political headwinds against such grand plans.
So, it was prescient that General Motors chose to underwrite this extraordinary exhibit. Visitors to the GM Futurama pavilion were transported in gondolas over nearly an acre of animated scale model landscapes. These depicted futuristic cities, suburbs and rural areas connected by flowing highways of up to 14 lanes. Half a million model buildings, even more trees and 50,000 cars were part of this extraordinary vision. It was even proposed that the cars would have self-driving capabilities thanks to radio beams projected from each.
Millions visited the Futurama pavilion and afterwards the exhibit toured the country in a fleet of equally futuristic vehicles. Still reeling from the Great Depression, Futurama offered the nation an uplifting and optimistic vision of its future. Immersing people in such a highly visual representation was probably unlike anything that they had ever experienced before and by all accounts was highly memorable.
Despite the outbreak of World War II (or perhaps because of it) the 1956 Federal-Aid Highways Act set in motion an infrastructure building initiative that effectively enabled the creation of Futurama on a one-to-one scale. How much influence Futurama had on the 1956 Highways Act is debated by historians, but the fact is that building America’s huge highway network during the 50s, 60s and 70s enabled much of America’s Post-War economic boom. President Eisenhower, who signed the Highways Act, must have been aware of the Futurama exhibit, because as a military man he too had long been an advocate of improving America’s infrastructure.
Now, of course, there were agendas behind Futurama, and it was created at a time when there was little concern about the long-term potential consequences. The reality is that well into the 21st Century, there have been no subsequent transportation visions put forward and indeed, we are now very much suffering from those long-term, unintended consequences.
So, this is the goal of Mobility Futures Alliance: to create an all-encompassing new and aspirational vision of how America’s transportation and mobility systems need to be to support significant social and economic growth over the coming decades while reversing all the unintended, harmful consequences of the original Futurama.