And after 70 years a version of New York City in near future depicted in the 1997 film The Fifth Element also feature some skybridges connecting high buildings at very high altitudes.

Aside from the films the skybridges also appear in many fictional illustrations or conceptual arts. The pictures below is from a book published in 1990s that named King's Views of New York.

In fact skybridges not only exist in the films and conceptual arts, they have been existing in the reality for a quite long time. And perhaps New York City has more sky bridges than any other city in the world, there are a total of more than ten and close to twenty sky bridges around the city. These bridges are very similar to the ones that seen in those science fiction films and conceptual arts, the only difference is that they are not that high as in the films, most of them are no more than 100 feet off the ground while in the films the sky bridges could be as high as many thousand feet above the ground.

Partially for the reason of the height of these sky bridges in New York, most of them are not in use and have been abandoned there for a long time, why? It's more free if one can just get to the ground in a few seconds to get to the nearby building.

If the sky bridges are situated at higher altitudes, they could still be useful. For example, these skybridges in Chongqing are being used by pedestrian and residents every day.

Some people say the invention of high speed elevators makes the utility of these bridges less necessary, in fact this is complete wrong. First, in some cities walking through a street is very time-consuming when traffic is busy. Second, even the elevator is fast, people still need more time to wait for it, especially when too many people are using it, I once went to the Shanghai World Financial Center to have a look at its observatory on the uppermost floors, it took us more than ten minutes to wait for an elevator. Additionally the real high speed elevators that travel faster than 6m/s are only for tourism uses or used in hotels not for offices or residences.