Quote Originally Posted by wrinkly View Post
Everywhere will be sunny by then and Miami will be under water
...but Nintendo will have built the cyber-reality bubble by then and you'll be able to climb in and dial in whatever world you fancy - including an imagined Miami 2400 that isn't under 20 feet of water!

To the OP's choice, I was living near Detroit in the mid-seventies but spent a fair amount of time in New York on visits. (I also worked there for five years in the mid-nineties commuting in from Connecticut.) New York 40 years ago was as different from New York today as contemporary London is from 40 years before. I stayed in the Bronx - an area I would try to avoid these days - even just driving through. Manhattan was definitely scruffier but more raffish and vibrant. There were neighborhoods where people could afford to live and small cafes and markets off the main thoroughfares. These days everything is driven by big money and largely homogenised. There was more begging on the streets and petty crime but it had character. I remember driving with a friend through neighborhoods where, each time you stopped at a traffic light, youths would come up and spray your windscreen with soapy water and try to wash it. My friend had a clip of quarters attached to his dashboard and would hand one out before they even started in order to avoid the usually messy "attack" - definitely a threat rather than a service.