LIB200 Assignment 5

The vision of a ‘perfect’ superhighway future in the 1939 World’s Fair was hype than reality as the fair created real problem with its vision of suburbia and cars. I agree with World’s Fair being more of propaganda to the American people. The World’s fair was to get people to become stable after the war. The vision was for anyone to have the American dream of owning their own home in the Suburbs and having a car. No one wanted a life of crime, hate, and to be underprivileged and that was the city life. It was full of “noise and fumes and shouts and shrillness and ambulances, drunks, fire trucks stuck in traffic, angry cops” (Gelernter 25). The streets were dangerous and no parent would want their child to grow up in a ugly, dirty and unhealthy environment. Living in the suburbs in the future would be “a place where people live in suburbs towns – where children romp in green fields, ride bikes and play softball… far away from the grind of city traffic, the filth of city gutters, the danger of city rail road yards” (Gelernter 25). The problem with having the perfect place to live was “a city where no one lives” (Gelernter 26). It did not exist because there were too many ideas about fixing a problem but no accurate solution without causing damage to the earth.

The problem was too many people were unemployed; about 1/5 of the (46). They believed that the fair had open opportunities where they would be able to work and a certainty of better opportunity for the future. The exhibit was a way for companies like General Motors to advertise their automobile in the modern life with superhighways. “The goal of the exhibit and the fair as a whole was to make people more comfortable and familiar with new technologies” (Fotsch 47). “Thus, while general motors did not promote its product directly, its exhibit promoted the construction of a transportation infrastructure of vital interest to the sale of its products” (Fotsch 51).