Modern Urban dystopias (in film and literature)

Cafe Society
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Okay, here goes.

Disclaimer: Most of the study of this area of Architectural design or city planning is new to me. I have touched on parts of it before, (Urban Design or Urban renewal classes back at in University days) but never spend much time devoted to really reading up and studying the ideas and analyses previously published. So I will gratefully defer to Exapno’s (much) greater knowledge. But I am appreciative for the opportunity to have someone reply coherently to my meandering thoughts on this topic.

To begin, I hate the idea of suburbia, or urban sprawl. I like the city to have defined boundaries, to be surrounded by a protected green belt which will buffer the surrounding countryside from over-development. I would much prefer that city centre brown-field sites were enhanced and re-developed rather than the easy option of new units on a city limits green-field site. I particularly hate the random nature of developers throwing up industrial or retail parks on the edges of cities which must be driven to, rather than walked to, with their huge car-parking lots and generic cladding becoming an eyesore. This is another factor in the destruction of city centres and the promotion of the car from privilege to necessity. The boundaries between what is urban or countryside, what is public or private are definitely blurring. I would much rather the city focused (again) on the verticality than on the horizontally which seems so prevalent today.
Maybe I secretly want the ‘visions’ of the dystopian films to prevail. :slight_smile:

From some things you said I get the impression that the suburban life is much sought after in the US, where it is here in the UK (whilst admittedly very popular), much maligned and disparaged as the 2.4 kids, white-picket fence, complete conformity option. I don’t think it is a style of living many aspire to, it just happens to where many ultimately end up. (People buy whatever houses are available, developers build more of what is selling: that old viscous cycle) The city centre loft / apartment living is still a more attractive option, at least for the young. The vibrancy and energy of the city streets attracts people like moths to a flame. And, of course, any tourists too.

You appear to have basically summarised the housing stock of most Scottish cities, specifically the tenements of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The 3/4/5 storey blocks built to define the boundary of the street in city blocks, leaving a communal courtyard behind which may once have served a grand purpose but is no longer applicable to modern living. Especially the idea of communal maintenance. Personally, I find these tenements remarkable - far superior spatially than anything developers are producing in city centres today and at once serve to define the street, the public, from the private. But they are not for suburbia today, but suited well the mindset of their times.

I agree with this - I think the street is the most important part of the city. The street is the focus of the urban experience, of interaction and energy. It is at heart a functional place, but also at once romantic and mysterious. It is our method of transport from space to space, but is also a place to go in it’s own right; a necessary destination. No one street alone can sum up or capture the essence of a particular city, but they can all work together to create how the spaces between are experienced and perceived. The street is a canvas for living and interacting.

Children today (can) grow up in a very dangerous, complex and dark society. They can grow up wandering these urban streets, streetwise and independent, with drugs, music and alcohol, they join gangs, run truant, get abortions, drive drunk and victimise the weak. They perceive their surroundings according to class, religion, colour, status and cultural or social backgrounds. They interact with others of their age. To them, the street can become more of a home, a comforter, than their house.

George Orwell, in 1984, can now been seen to have predicted the now widespread installation of CCTV cameras around city centre streets. Many school buildings, albeit with the permission of the pupils, have cameras installed in classes and even toilets to protect kids from bullying. Helicopters and satellite technology can be used to track our movements and locate our positions. As you said, the watched streets have less crime than the unwatched.

Our streets are laid with railways, roads, sewers, gas and water pipes, telecommunications and power cabling. As architects and planners create our cities and attempt to render them known, familiar and transparent, the streets are repeatedly dug-up and scarred by the doctoring of the cities hidden infrastructure, its intestinal world. Skyscrapers, the car and technology as used metaphorically in film, are often the desired epitomes of the success of the city; yet underneath these supposed triumphs there is a fearful underground life. The building of our cities is as destructive as it is creative, but its dangers are openly buried so they are no longer discernible. What we do not know about the city creates new risks: the car or train wreck, telecommunication breakdowns, electrical blackouts and underground station fires.

The more we come to rely on technology the greater the power it has to damage us.

I fear the rush to the suburb will have the affect of leaving the city to the mercy of those who would abuse it. Many areas within cities have become so run-down they attract only those who wish to remain anonymous, unseen. Entire areas of city centres have become wastelands, unvisited by anyone but the most under-privileged. The rich elite wall off their enclaves and provide security to disassociate their lives from others and to protect their personal gains. The streets in certain areas can become a stand-off point, a war-zone. The city suburb relocation ‘schemes’ or ‘housing estate projects’ in the UK have been shown to be woefully inadequate at providing sociability and security for residents - the areas become run-down areas of crime and squalor, whether through poor design or mismanagement.

It is the actual relocation of the wealthy to the more affluent suburbs which, to me, leaves this vacuum in the centre which becomes (or came become) filled with ‘undesirables’. This is the very real possibility I see portrayed in the dystopic imagery in these films - a city where the streets are abandoned by the general populace to be inhabited only by the ‘underclass’. Many people are afraid today to walk the streets, or even leave the safety of their own home. Modern living (with telecommunications and cable) can mean people don’t have to leave, if they choose not to. This intrinsic fear is becoming part of the general psyche, and people are beginning to abandon the streets to their lonely fate. Only through the continuous regeneration of central city areas to provide quality, safe and market-appropriate housing can this trend be reversed. When the young, rich white-collar workers wish to live in an particular area the local bars, restaurant and shops can all flourish, which feeds again off a new influx of people. It can produce a positive circle of influence, rather than a negative. I want to see the streets remain alive, I fear they will not.

It may be different in post-industrial cities in first world countries (specifically in the US) as you testify, but much of what I have read recently suggests the flocking of people to cities from the countryside continues to far outstrip the movement of the existing middle classes to the suburbs. This is especially rampant in the far east, the likes of China and Indonesia. I hear Chongqing in China is the fastest growing city in the world and will surpass all others (population-wise) within a few years. I wonder at what is being done to prepare for the inevitable fall-out from this population explosion? After 1949 when the Republic of China was formed, the mass immigration of people into Kowloon was vast. The Kowloon walled city, famous for drugs, gambling, prostitution and vigilante gangs was born, and was almost entirely constructed by the criminal elements that inhabit it. It represented everything about the dystopian future our cities may face. This was reversed with the return of the area to Chinese control in 1987, when the area was finally cleared and a public park put in its place. But the end result could easily have been something much different.

You mentioned malls and how their inclusion helps to gather people together to create spaces people are contented to walk in. This is usually fine during the day, but come 6.00pm when the mall closes, this can destroy the social access around the city streets. I am thinking here of St. Enoch’s Centre in Glasgow – when open provides fantastic spaces, vibrant internal streets and shortcuts through many city blocks; but on closing restricts access through the centre, creating very undesirable effects and forcing the pedestrian to find less attractive alternative routes. This is a common problem in many city centre malls, the dichotomy of use between open and closed hours, day and night. They can shut of the streets as easily as opening them up, if not considered fully. I prefer the city at night, but only if the streets are buzzing, not silent and foreboding.

You would think I was Scottish or something, with all these references to Glasgow. :wink:

And although you believe the city to be dead, I say its only sleeping, and it is time for it to wake.

I would like to recommend to all a recent book (well, a collection of essays on various related topics to the discussion at hand) called “The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space”

One further question for Exapno or others: How do you rate the ideas and work of Paolo Soleri and his attempts to create a new vision of what the future of cities may be, in his Urban Laboratory at Arcosanti?

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Dang, somebody beat me to Snow Crash. In the same vein (if slightly lighter) I suggest Head Crash by Bruce Bethke. Lots of online avatar interaction, and the hero has to go to work in a humorous “Office-Space-to-the-nth-degree” company.

Another dystopia exists in Sterling’s Distraction, a largely political book about a congressional aide struggling to keep a research lab open during a crippling budget crisis. The US has lost its technological egde because Chinese-funded hackers stole major products from US information businesses and released them for free on the Internet. The rich live richly, and the poor live poorly - and societies like a technology-driven gypsy/hippy/biker gang form and move freely through the nation because nothing can be done to stop them.

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How about a few dystopias centered on games and sports? A popular idea in the future is that sports will develop to such a fever pitch that the spectators expect people to die, and most often the players do.

In Rollerball, James Caan’s character is planned on being killed because he’s getting TOO good. The actual sport itself is pretty dangerous, and the future world is run by corporations.

The Running Man takes place in the 2020s I believe. A man needs money for his sick daughter so he gets on this gameshow where he’s hunted down to be killed. He must run from them.

The Long Walk is hinted that it takes place in some society where a Nazi regime rules. In it teenage boys walk in a race where, if they win, they get anything they want for the rest of their lives. The catch is they must never stop walking. If they do they get three warnings and then they are shot.

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“This Perfect Day” I believe this, like most of Ira Levin’s novels, was made into a film. I read it many years ago, but as I recall, It was set in a future where all imperfections were “repaired” The protagonist was "blighted by having one blue and one brown eye. In the end, the whole society was a testing ground to find the indivualists left. Don’t remember much more, but to my teenage mind it was horrifying

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I have two deadlines on Wednesday. So I shouldn’t even be reading this, much less responding. But it seems I’m not going to be able to stop myself.

benthames, Green Bean posted Logan’s Run many posts before you did.

BrainGlutton, did you notice that your description of Chung Kuo corresponded almost point for point with my description of Robert Silverberg’s – much earlier – The World Inside?

I’m not and never will be a defender of suburban sprawl. But it is the reality in which we must function. There is no conceivable future in which it will be bulldozed.

What we need to remember is that sprawl is merely the consequence of the two overwhelming facts that I mentioned earlier.

First is that Americans – of all classes, races, income levels, ethnicities, religions, and occupations – prefer in the mass to live in single family homes surrounded by their own space. Another factor is that they also prefer to live in new, custom-built homes rather than older homes that seem superficially more rational – cheaper, in built-up environments with more convenient schools, stores etc. Part of this is because they don’t trust the cheaply-built homes of the past fifty years anymore than they trust someone else’s used car. But primarily it is because the standard wants/needs of families have changed in our more affluent society. People want/need three-car garages that will hold SUVs. They want/need bigger kitchens that will hold bigger appliances. They want/need more bedrooms because they don’t double up their children any more. They want houses that are already energy efficient so they don’t have to retrofit. These are also rational demands. Selfish, perhaps, but humans have always been selfish, even in cities.

Second is that someone has to put up the money for new homes and businesses. In the U.S. that means developers, people who want maximum return for their money so that they will cater to whatever the latest demands are of their customers. And these demands rarely coincide with smaller, cheaper, more crowded, more city-like. (In the economic downtown there has been some talk about building smaller, more affordable houses, but I’m skeptical.)

Suburbia is the irrational conglomeration of a multitude of individual rational decisions. It is the free market at work. Government is the normal institution in the U.S. for combating the collective irrational in the name of collective rational. It can happen, but since the constituents of government are the same rational individuals who can see that their rational selfish interests will be affected by change, they rarely allow any.

Now for Kuntsler, whom I am quite sure used to live in Manhattan. Sure he can find an “Eyesore of the Month” in suburbia. But I’ll make this challenge. Put me down in a city, any city that you name, with a camera and I’ll give you an “Eyesore of the Week.” I will also venture to say that I could go around suburbs anywhere in the U.S. and find pictures that will make your mouth water. That kind of argument is sheer piffle.

Kuntsler’s problem is that he hates the people who have made the rational decision to live in a fashion different than he does. He doesn’t even understand that the individual decisions were rational. People voted with their feet to leave cities. Presenting them with “better” alternatives that more closely resemble the elements they consciously rejected when they left the city will not work in large numbers.

We need solutions to sprawl that do not involve bulldozing. The New Urbanism – which I mentioned earlier so you can be sure I’m aware of it – is nice for small pockets of individuals (suburbia is so large and so varied that it can handle variety) but has for the past 50 years been outnumbered by the people I mentioned above. It is the equivalent of covering a crack in a wall by hanging a picture over it.

Economics alone will doom it. While pendulums always swing back, it will be a long time before the big box retailers and discounters disappear. Who is going to set up the little stores that are a necessary feature of New Urbanism only to be pushed out of business because the very people who live in these enclaves will shop in the stores where they can save money, just like everybody else in the world? (Every wonderfully livable little town in America has already been affected by this? What makes anybody think that New Urban areas will be any different in the long run?)

What Kuntsler and his ilk forget is that both cities and suburbia have advantages and disadvantages. You cannot get people back into cities until the problems (whether perceived or real) of crime and danger are taken care of. There are gangs in suburbia, but gang warfare, drive-by shooting, and the taking over of large neighborhoods are basically city phenomena. And that won’t change as long as the economics of cities dictate that only the very rich and the very poor can afford to live there. And people who have become used to freedom of movement in their cars and free parking will not give those freedoms up for mass transit and parking garages.

That is a huge, major, enormous point about Edge Cities and suburbia. They actually correspond to the Jane Jacobsian ideal of having work, shopping, schools, and homes together – although together is defined in automobile terms. Cities no longer have that.

You talk about tourists not going to Edge Cities (except for shopping, which is now a huge tourist industry in the U.S. – ever been to the Tysons Corners mall just around the corner from the planned community of Reston, VA?). Tourists do go to cities, which as I mentioned are increasingly basing their economies around them. This is a saving grace in one sense – it provides much needed jobs and attracts income – but is disastrous in another sense. An economy based on tourism and service jobs in general is an economy of low-paying, low-education, easily-interchangeable jobs. It will actually increase the population of the working poor who will become trapped in the worst sections of their cities. Jobs – even industries – have moved out of cities. People will go to jobs. That’s why California was – until the past couple of years – attracting people to commutes of two hours and why upstate New York goes begging with housing prices literally one-tenth as high and five-minute commutes.

Where will the high-paying middle-class and professional jobs come from in cities? Answer that question and you have a shot at making cities viable again.

Aro, yes, cities were suited for the mindset of their times. Exactly. And except for the young – and that’s a big exception, although I continue to insist that children will change everything – cities are not built for today’s mindset, which is based around cars. There are more cars (including trucks) than people in the U.S. We love our cars. No, we love our cars, even more than we love our guns. They will not go away until after some apocalypse.

Exactly, again. American suburbs have largely – not entirely, if one looks around, say, Chicago – have avoided this. Crime is a paramount concern of families. The very rich can handle it; the very poor must. But the middle classes – and in the U.S. that’s 80% of the population – won’t stand for it. How does Kuntsler and his ilk propose to change this?

Malls do not belong in cities. Unfortunately, planners thought of them as panaceas. They can work if they are adjunct to a lively street scene. And how many even larger cities still have that? Worse, too many small cities, even small villages, put in malls. Batavia, NY, is a city of 30,000 that tore down half its downtown for a mall that now seems to have one tenant. East Rochester, NY, is a town of 2,000 whose mall lost all its stores and has been turned into a Techniplex for light industry and businesses. Malls are for suburbia.

Arcologies are another of the 60s masturbatory fantasies I talked about. Who wants to live in them? As far as I can tell, no actual human beings.

The challenge is to find solutions that will work because it is a rational decision by an individual family to embrace them. You cannot plan for the mass. The mass doesn’t do anything (except perhaps in China when they are told though – although even there the mass increasingly does what is best for the individual). You must make your environment enticing enough so that I will think it is superior to the life that I am living now. And the life that most Americans - and most affluent people all around the world – is pretty damn good right now. They may complain about sprawl and commuting times and the price of gas, but when they get home they are in relative paradise. How do you come up with a way of life that is better than relative paradise?

I don’t have the faintest idea.

Neither does Kuntsler or Solari or the New Urbanists or Joel Garreau or Steven Spielberg or Robert Silverberg.

We haven’t stumbled across it yet. It may be that nobody will until the collective irrationality exceeds the individual rationality to the extent that the whole system reaches it tipping point.

And I’m not sure I want to be around when that happens.

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You are correct. I will go away now and flog myself. Thank you.

However. In Minneapolis, the Target corporation has donated a large sum of money to install video cameras on street corners and in skyways. This seems Orwellian to me, much like the preponderance of video cameras in Great Britain.

Also, I recently read a nearly pornographic book called “The Children’s War” which was about a world in which the Nazis had won WWII. It was set in 1999, and the story revolves around a forced laborer in a suburb of Berlin. Urban Planning and Sprawl are really not my hobbies, but it is an interesting (though, as i said, pornographinc) account of a modern world under Nazism, and the London she portrays is not at all utopian.

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A couple of posters have mentioned Logan’s Run. Actually, the only obviously dystopian feature of the domed city in Logan’s Run is that everyone’s life must end at thirty. Apart from that – it is more like the society of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a beautiful, well-functioning society devoted to hedonism and consumerism, utopian in surface appearance but dystopian if you’re the kind of person who wants something out of life other than bread, circuses and sex.