Here's hoping city's video of future isn't fiction

We know "X-Men 3" and "The Breakup" were big movie openings, but our recommendation goes to a far-less-hyped film.

It's a video simulating what downtown Carson City will look like in 10 years or more, and will show at the Brewery Arts Center on Wednesday and Thursday from 6-7 p.m.

The video, the brainchild of the Planning Department, cost the city about $90,000 and incorporates the results of several public meetings and workshops and thousands of comments.

We've seen some clips from the video, and the highlights are breathtaking.

The two-lane pedestrian-friendly downtown of the future will have no traffic lights, store vacancies or traffic gridlock and its associated noise and pollution.

It will have perfect sidewalks and enchanting landscaping.

It will be Pleasantville, U.S.A.

Whether it's realistic is another matter altogether.

The key to the entire plan seems to be how well the bypass works in siphoning off a large percentage of the daily count of 40,000 vehicles that stop and go through the downtown area each day.

If not, the lane reduction proposed for part of downtown will prove to be a nightmare of a bottleneck, and the perception that it's hard to find parking spaces will keep people from shopping there.

There are pedestrian-friendly projects throughout the country that have fallen short of projections for the simple fact that Americans love their cars. Many people will drive from store to store in a strip mall rather than walk.

We give planners credit for the job they've already done in revitalizing the downtown, and putting forth this vision for the future.

In fact, we hope this video and the downtown vision win awards.

We just hope they won't be in the fiction category.