I don't disagree with the overall assessment, but I wouldn't call Friends (last episode aired: 2004) or Seinfeld (last episode aired: 1998) "today's hottest sitcoms."

by jfruh on Dec 9, 2008 4:01 pm • link • report

Fair enough. I was using a very broad definition of "today." Changed.

by David Alpert on Dec 9, 2008 4:04 pm • link • report

But Monica and Chandler moved to the suburbs and the Seinfeld gang drove everywhere.

by RJ on Dec 9, 2008 4:05 pm • link • report

David, These generalizations about boomers are inaccurate and seem to be self-serving. And it seems that even the characterizations of TV, based on a few shows, simply ignored many of the other shows ranging from the Honeymooners and I Love Lucy to All in the Family, Get Smart, Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, just to name a few that you might of heard of, that are based in cities.

by Boomer on Dec 9, 2008 4:19 pm • link • report

Boomer,

Don't forget "Threes Company", where the use of transit was used often and they never owned a car.

by RJ on Dec 9, 2008 4:25 pm • link • report

And the Jeffersons, who moved from Queens to Manhattan, when they achieved financial success.

by JR on Dec 9, 2008 4:36 pm • link • report

RJ, that's a good point, re: Monica and Chandler, and I actually remember being kind of horrified by that at the time -- the message seemed to be that the 'burbs are where you go when you grow up and have kids. Though Ross and Rachel did explicitly say that they planned to raise their kid in the city at the time.

Of course, this plot gave rise to TV's greatest praise of urbanism ever, when Phoebe said "But where else but New York can you get an Asian hooker delivered at 4 am?"

by jfruh on Dec 9, 2008 5:21 pm • link • report

Ooh, fun game! Let's see...

Shows set in cities: Gossip Girl, Scrubs, Mad Men, Grey's Anatomy, CSI, Ugly Betty

Shows set in suburbs: Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill (is there something inherent to cartoon sitcoms?), Desperate Housewives, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Hannah Montana

Shows set in the countryside: Survivor

by tom veil on Dec 9, 2008 5:22 pm • link • report

tom veil: I wonder if cartoon comedies more tend to be set in places that the writers are making fun of, instead of places the audience wants to emulate. Friends and Sex and the City definitely glamorized Manhattan single culture. The Simpsons is satirizing the average American family. South Park is really poking fun at suburban Colorado; the show's creators even say so.

Our cultural focus is moving from suburbs to cities. The cartoon shows seem to be poking fun at the foibles of the previous generation's archetypes, while the sitcoms are creating the next ones. It's easier to make a place seem ridiculous and have ridiculous characters when it's fake drawn people in fake drawn places.

by David Alpert on Dec 9, 2008 5:27 pm • link • report

> Of course, LEGO is a European company, and Europe's cities have always looked like this.

My information on this is dated, since I haven't looked into it since the days of (ehem!) our youth. But anyway, LEGO sells different sets in Europe and the USA. The European catalog used to fascinate me. So, to make a long story short, I would make your thesis more precise -- it's not that walkable urbanism has arrived, it's that LEGO thinks it's arrived in the United States!

by Turnip on Dec 9, 2008 5:32 pm • link • report

Transit on Three's Company? I don't think the San Diego Zoo tram qualifies as transit.

Just about the entirety of that show took place in their apartment, the Ropers/Furley's apartment, or the Regal Beagle.

I agree that it's oversimplistic to say one generation's shows were set in suburbia and the next's were set in the city, but the last paragraph is closer to the mark. The overall depiction of cities changed in the 90s from one almost wholly inhabited by the working class and/or minorities to one inhabited by yuppies.

by Reid on Dec 9, 2008 5:34 pm • link • report

Reid said: "The overall depiction of cities changed in the 90s from one almost wholly inhabited by the working class and/or minorities to one inhabited by yuppies."

Probably because that's what was happening in real life as a result of two widely happening (but not then widely reported) events occurring at the time. First you had city officials following Giuliani's example of strict enforcement of minor offenses on the basis that bigger crimes came out of general lawlessness reflected by things as seemingly harmless as graffitti and littering. Secondly, the prison system was privatized leading to prisoners being sent miles from their families and making a trip to jail mean much more punishment than it did earlier.

I.e., while you could argue that the flight from the cities was facilitated by gas-tax paid highways which people were demanding, the return to the city was only made possible by creating a climate of law and order.

by Lance on Dec 9, 2008 6:12 pm • link • report

Reid,

LA zoo tram. But there was always a mention of them taking the bus to work or wherever. There are several show plots centered on the fact they they had to coordinate bus schedules or the fact that they had no car. Also the fact the location was Sana Monica, middle of the car culture in the late 70's, being without a car was rather far fetched, but it worked.

by RJ on Dec 9, 2008 6:52 pm • link • report

I always hated Friends.

A bunch of young people living in enormous apartments in NYC, and none of them seems to work very much.

Definitely not realistic. I found the Golden Girls much easier to related to.

by spookiness on Dec 9, 2008 11:10 pm • link • report

they have had "urban" buildings like these for decades on model railroads. check out a model railroad catalogue and you can shop for a entire urban cityscape.

some examples...

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-2814

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-2809

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-2934

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3029

http://www.modeltraincrossing.com/bac_cityscenes.htm

by j on Dec 10, 2008 1:14 am • link • report

This is a far cry from the staple toy much of my generation celebrated: Matchbox cars. Any "city" type toys I had were generally car oriented, and my "cities" often wound up looking more like a stop off the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

There's the old stereotype that boys love machines, and cars certainly fit that bill... but I always remember being jealous of my friends who had train sets when all I had was a crappy car wash. Kudos to LEGO.

by Dave Murphy on Dec 10, 2008 1:18 am • link • report

I'd like to see how well the Seattle Library or any modernist masterpiece would fare in the Lego lineup. Or any typical public school from the dark ages of urbanism, with their slit windows at the ceilings if they where lucky enough to have windows. Cheap gas and a subsidized highway system made it possible for the middle class to flee the city after world war two, but it was fear that propelled a lot of them.

by Thayer-D on Dec 10, 2008 7:20 am • link • report

I don't remember Lego blocks being anything than just that ... "blocks" with which you could build whatever you designed. I think they were red ... In any case, the specialty bricks like those shown here must have been a later innovation. Doesn't it take the fun out of it to have roofs and windows and etc. already built for you?

by Lance on Dec 10, 2008 8:19 am • link • report

j, I think model railroad enthusiasts are a unique phenomenon - sort of an 'exception that proves the rule'. Model train setups are typically built, by adults or older children, around a nostalgia. A train layout is a lot more interesting in a world where trains are a part of everyday life, as opposed to one where they primarily serve the needs of coal companies or corn-syrup manufacturers. Even if you've never ridden a train, and your primary real-life interaction with rail is being stuck on your way to work waiting for a few hundred ADM tank cars to clear the crossing, if you're going to invest in a hobby, that's not the model you want.

The question as to why young children would rather play with a gas station may have more to do with familiarity: if a child has no context in which to understand urbanism, that toy won't have as much relevance to their play. I would suggest that, because of television and movies, spaceships may have more relevance to a lot of kids than urban, mixed-use living.

In considering the appeal of children's toys, sitcoms are not as relevant as programs aimed at children. Sesame Street has always been a model of livable urbanism, but how fully are kids absorbed into that? I loved Sesame Street as a kid growing up on a gravel road in Iowa, but watching it never made me want to live in that environment - at least not the way that watching Star Wars made me want to go to space. Assessing the difference in the appeal may point the way toward getting the next generation to embrace urbanism.

I'm not going to go into sitcoms now, but I feel like the Cosby Show deserves some attention.

by Nick on Dec 10, 2008 12:02 pm • link • report

Is it just me, or do these lego sets look very DC-style? Either building would look at home in a lego Logan Circle.

Also, this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway:

DO WANT!!!

by Chris Loos on Dec 10, 2008 3:48 pm • link • report

The urban Lego kits in your example don't seem to have a 6.0 floor area ratio that you suggest in your lasted post is the density necessary for "smart growth."

by Mark on Dec 10, 2008 4:44 pm • link • report

David, This gratuitous attack on people who are over 30 seems to be based on some bizarre notions about popular culture before you arrived on the scene as well as generalizations about broad groups of society. First, let me say that there were quite a few television shows set in big cities, some of which glamorized urban life. Some examples: Ann Sothern, My Little Margie, That Girl, Family Affair, Make Room for Daddy, Patty Duke Show, the Odd Couple, All in the Family, Love on a Rooftop, Barney Miller, Get Smart, Taxi, the Jeffersons, Bosom Buddies, Different Strokes, Bob Newhart Show, One Day at a Time, Kate and Allie and Rhoda. Then there were characters like Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke show, and who can forget Rhoda in her wedding gown riding the subway. You might find even more examples in television drama and the movies. Then of course, as Lance pointed out, the building sets that children used to have left more to their imagination, and certainly were used to build all types of structures.

At any rate, I hope you will tone down these attacks on people who perceive as disagreeing with your vision for the future, or at least try to get some of your facts straight. While many people don’t share your vision, I can assure you that for some of us, it isn’t related to a fear of urbanism, but a basic disagreement over what appropriate urban development is, and for many of us, our notions of appropriate urban development are based on years of study and experience.

by Andy on Dec 10, 2008 6:31 pm • link • report

What makes you think I'm attacking anyone, Andy? How s saying that TV shows reflected a cultural attitude among a certain generation an "attack"? Plus, I'm just quoting and/or paraphrasing a point Christopher Leinberger made.

Plus, I'm over 30.

by David Alpert on Dec 10, 2008 6:38 pm • link • report

Sorry if I interpreted turning 30 in January 2008 as being 30, rather than being over 30.

by Andy on Dec 10, 2008 6:56 pm • link • report