Smart Growth and the Internet – Rethinking Cities: Telecommunication & Transportation

Congested roads and highways, long commutes, smog, pollution and loss of productivity are often cited for America’s economic woes and the gradual decline in that elusive "quality of life" aspect of living in some of our finest cities.

Some believe the decline of our cities started in 1939 at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. The most popular exhibition was The World of Tomorrow in the General Motors Pavilion. It featured an enormous model of a city of the Future, complete with elevated freeways, on-ramps and off-ramps and gleaming skyscrapers separated by miles and miles of asphalt.

For General Motors and for the rest of America, the vision became reality, as more and more roads were built across the country and more and more families were able to purchase their own automobiles.

Only now, over 66 years later, are we beginning to change the lens in our camera and see the need for a new and vastly different vision of our future and the role of cities. In a very real sense, the shift from an industrial to an information society is the raison d’être for revisiting the American love affair with the automobile and asking some very tough questions about its role in the new economy. By doing so, we will begin to open the door to new thinking about the architecture of our cities and renewing their place in our lives.

By John M. Eger

Full Story: http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/96227