An “I Love Lucy” mural on a building in Jamestown, N.Y. The popular TV show signaled a shift in American living from cities to suburbs. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

Next City has been using popular TV shows for decades in speeches and the classroom to demonstrate the structural changes in how we build the country. Using television is an engaging way to examine how Americans have wanted to live since TV began to dominate American entertainment in the late 1940s. Popular shows also are important predictors of the future of the built environment, thanks to Hollywood’s extensive consumer research and the instant feedback to current shows, and so TV tends to reflect how we live today and, more importantly, what we aspire to tomorrow.

There have been two crucial times over the last 60 years when TV shows switched settings, reflecting society’s shifts in the way we have invested in infrastructure and real estate. We are in the middle of the second structural shift right now, which started in the mid-1990s. TV helped to predict that change.

They used a few criteria in selecting these top shows that indicate American desires about how to live and build our metropolitan areas. First, we focused on prime-time situation comedies and dramas (no daytime TV, sports, news or reality shows). Second, the built environment — walkable urban or drivable suburban — must play a significant, though generally subtle, role in the show....Continue Reading

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