Here begins a happy day in 2381 The morning sun is high enough to touch the uppermost fifty stories of Ur ban Monad 116 This is how The World Inside written by Robert Silverberg in 1971 begins and even if you hav en t read the book you suspect that this is a world of make believe Urban Monad 116 is a three kilometer 1 9 mile high building inhabited by hundreds of thou sands of people who won t leave it until they die Should any of them come up with the idea that it might be great to see the ocean for a change they ll be condemned for an ti social behavior You can imagine the rest Post apocalyptic worlds It s hardly an uplifting vision of the way people will be living together in urban areas of the future but one that s pretty typical of how science fiction writers have been describing plans for city life ever since the begin nings of this genre If you follow their ideas future gen erations will mostly be living in a post apocalyptic world ruled by totalitarian regimes in claustrophobic megaci ties in subterranean cities like in Hugh Howeys Silo or underneath domes described by Isaac Asimov in tiny Conaps described by Philip K Dick or in tent like hotel los described by Kim Stanley Robinson Not an appeal ing thought not a brave new world and it does make you wonder why the majority of sci fi novelists paint such a grim picture of the world s future metropolises A likely assumption is that stories about the future reflect present day fears The seventies produced a growing awareness of demographic trends industrialization environmental pollu tion and the destruction of resources In 1972 the Club of Rome published its report titled the Limits to Growth and it was also the year in which the World Environment Con ference of the United Nations was held that s deemed to have marked the begin ning of international environmental policy This was followed by civic initiatives changes in legislation a direct effect on urban planning and on the imagination of writers who in the seventies virtu ally wallowed in visions of dystopia Which of course would not explain why H G Wells and Jules Verne described air pollution commercialization and housing shortage even as far back as in their day The city as the perfect setting for the future The truth is that ever since the early days of in dustrialization the city has provided a perfect setting to portray the consequences of automation as well as technological progress Jules Verne in 1863 fanta sized about gas cabs Four years earlier Étienne Le noir had filed a patent for a gas engine Looking at it this way science fiction writers use the metropolis as a platform to express criticism of the present to craft a plot and as a possibility to think inventions and de velopments through to the end Unfortunately it s usu ally not a happy ending Naturally we shouldn t forget that exaggeration is part of the sci fi genre just like abomination is of hor ror fiction Creation of drama conflict and suspense is what academics call this but it could also be put in much simpler terms catastrophes are just more fun especially in cit ies A few examples on the fol lowing pages illustrate the point 49 in motion

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