I am totally fascinated by the idea that for at least fifty years, the future meant elevated roadways. It also showed up in that 1911 prediction article that was floating around the internet a few weeks ago. It reminds me of the complaint/problem of train crossings interrupting so many early roads, and causing a lot of deaths. Nowadays, I feel like we associate elevated roadways with the highways that came through and divided cities and spread blight out from under them by several blocks, if not through entire neighborhoods (yes, I’ve read my Power Broker; I also bike under I-35 a couple times a week and wonder why the homeless dude’s don’t jump me).
The pleasure of walking, at least for me, is passing houses and shops and barking dogs and little parks you didn’t know existed - the pleasure is in the street life, if not in the cars. At the same point, the success of the high line has to be due, in part, to the pleasure of walking slightly above it all. Though I think that’s because the high line is transgressive and an outlier, not the rule. I suppose elevated walkways would disrupt the over-privatization of our social spheres in a really fascinating way. Though in my logistically difficult utopian future, the cars are gone, and the streets are for pedestrians and cyclists, at least in the city center. And who even likes moving walkways? They’re dead boring at the airport.
“The Tokyo of 2061” by Tenan Ito,
“Tanoshii Yonensei” (Happy 4th Year Student), 1961
Is it the future yet? I want my elevated roads!
(via 50watts)
