The Atlantic is asking if today's McMansions are tomorrow's tenements in an article titled The Next Slum. It seems suburban developments nationwide are seeing the same problems the city streets are: druggies, homeless, grafitti, gang activity, broken windows, stray bullets, and even in Pleasantville copper wire is a commodity.
Suburban decay is on the rise, making them a far cry from what they were presented as at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and ’40. The Highways and Horizons (aka Futurama) exhibit was the fair's most popular, and for the past 60 years Americans have fled the city for the McMansions in the 'burbs. But times they are a changin', now The Atlantic reports "the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay."
The presentation of suburbia at the Worlds Fair was followed by GIs returning home and families decamping to the city outskirts. By 1981 the trend hit the big screen in Escape From New York, showing the world an abandoned Manhattan (which became a maximum security prison). But soon after, the shift began to reverse, and with shows like Seinfeld, Friends and even Sex and the City portraying a new New York, urban allure was back. Today television and movies use the suburbs to portray soullessness and moral disrepair.
If the shift that's taking place continues, "the world of tomorrow" falling apart could actually be a good thing. With Main Street, USA morphing into a walkable urban area -- the population and environment will benefit. The Atlantic states that "if New York City were its own state, it would be the most energy-efficient state in the union; most Manhattanites not only walk or take public transit to get around, they unintentionally share heat with their upstairs neighbors."
