Sci-Fi and The City: Harnessing Science Fiction’s Power Over Urban Development
You might think of science fiction as confined to the limits of books, movies and video games but take a closer look. From buildings encased in glass to cars that drive themselves, science fictions have been shaping our cities for generations. Starting with films like “Metropolis” – a futuristic urban dystopia tale made back in 1927 – up to more recent fare like “Blade Runner 2049,” sci-fi explorations of what urban life could become have influenced architects, urban planners and developers since the turn of the 20thcentury.[1]
The influence is no secret. Architect Adrian Smith has said his vision for Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest structure in the world, came from seeing the “Wizard of Oz” and its Emerald City as a kid. Many product designers openly cite “Star Trek” and its depictions of tablet computers and translation devices as inspiration for tools we now use on a daily basis. The widespread biometric scanning and personalized advertising depicted in 2002's “Minority Report” are rapidly becoming urban reality across the globe.
In many ways the dance between sci-fi and citymaking is a chicken or the egg situation. Did “Star Trek” predict cell phones, teleconferencing and GPS, or would we have developed them without the vision of the show? It’s impossible to know. Yet it’s also impossible to deny that those images of future worlds haven’t impacted the people designing our cities. Because sci-fi stories aren't just made to explore where we could go in years to come -- they’re commentaries on the prevailing cultures of the times in which they were made. George Orwell’s 1984 has proved eerily prescient in predicting our current surveillance-focused societies, but he wrote the book to explore themes of government overreach and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and 1940s war-time Britain. “Metropolis” was conceived as a response to the new skyscrapers and rapid growth of New York City in the 1920s. The original “Blade Runner” – with its dark, narrow streets and teeming nightlife -- appeared in the early 80s, when planners and architects were trying to shift away from the hyper clean modernism of the previous decades. Now the same visual designer who helped craft the “Blade Runner” aesthetic visits the Gulf region to consult on building projects.
There’s an inherently reciprocal relationship between these speculative worlds and the urban realities we build for ourselves. Which is why being careful about the science fictions that we absorb is so important. The dominant visions of the future found in sci-fi and speculative designs are dystopian. The “Blade Runner” films depict a future Los Angeles shaped by intense socio-economic segregation and the end of nation states as we know them. Spielberg’s “AI” is set in a flooded New York City, a world devastated by climate change. Spike Jonze’s “Her” dives into a near-future American upper-middle class and the social and economic isolation stemming from automation and artificial intelligence. In less well-known sci-fi works, like Gold Fame Citrus (2015), social and environmental collapse spur people to escape cities entirely. In 1976’s Woman on the Edge of Time and World Made by Hand (2008), non-urban spaces are the only areas where human life can flourish.
This dystopian dominance is a problem. Addressing complex issues like climate change is nearly impossible when doom and despair are the founding contexts for conversations about what the future could become. And while it’s far from wise to paint the future with rose-colored glasses, looking almost exclusively to dystopia as a guide for where we’re headed leaves little room for more creative, positive potential. Belief that we’re invariably heading for destruction isn’t a viewpoint that lends well to possibility and adaptation, attitudes that those less fortunate have to take in order to survive.
Embracing a different kind of sci-fi demands looking critically at those who make the visions of the future that we absorb. The Hugo Awards, the longstanding and prestigious fan-selected awards given out every year at the World Science Fiction Convention -- have overwhelmingly gone to white guys. They write the majority of science fiction, even today. And while utopian sci-fi undeniably exists (hello Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwardor Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge), the vast majority trend dark. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, -- the list goes on and on. And while women certainly write their fair share of dystopia -- Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is as sinister as it gets –white men create the most.
Those written by women and people of color often explore the opposite. Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is technically a post-apocalyptic story where most of humanity is extinct. Yet she, a black female writer, turns this bleak future into a thoughtful exploration of the role gender and consent can play in rebuilding civilization. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, sometimes printed with the subtitle “an ambiguous utopia” explores worlds where people put the needs of society ahead of their own.
Whether we like it or not, stories like these deeply affect our design and planning sensibilities, our conceptions of not just what is achievable in human culture, but what might well be inevitable. If we want to aim towards more adaptive, hopeful futures, designers, planners and citizens need more active roles in articulating the kinds of worlds these science fictions portray. We can’t just be consumers of ideas and visions of what longer-term futures could be – we need to be creating them. And it can’t just be sci-fi writers, policy makers and architects telling us what might be done. The real holders of innovation, of ideas and plans that can work with the uncertainties of our time, need to be at the table. True innovation comes from more viewpoints influencing each other, from different perspectives coming into conversation. It comes from diversity.
Acknowledging the power that science fiction has in how we shape our cities is the first step. The second is using sci-fi’s imaginative power to amplify the voices that need to be heard, the voices that we’ve too long ignored.
[1]if you count the impact of Biblical stories like the Tower of Babel, the timescale of fictions influencing cities is much, much longer.
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5 年The 20th Century certainly had its share of Sci-fi, in every medium, e.g. TV, Film and literature. And as you mentioned, much of it was based either on truly extensive research by its authors in terms of future technology (Kubrick, Roddenberry, Rod Serling) or based on darker, more sociological forces afoot (1984). But having been born in 1952, I believe the 1960’s were scary enough without having to dramatize what could go wrong on a societal level - it was actually taking place in the streets. Therefore, with notable exceptions, most popular works were far, far less dark than what Hollywood is currently producing, whether written by men or women. The job of a sociologist is to divine what is informing what and in this case, is Hollywood creating almost endless dark, foreboding, dystopian film because it is being demanded, or is Hollywood shaping opinions or worse yet, actions and reactions. If it is the latter, where these films are being demanded, what forces are shaping these demands? Is it born of a desire to see what the absolute worst might look like? And why the fantasy component? What does it foreshadow? My background is in design and social science, but the influence of the current crop of dystopian film making in my mind speaks little to the design of our homes, offices or cities in our future (as did those of the last Century) but to more critical, basic survival! If we assign the same literary weight to this new crop of filmmaking as we did to the works of the last century, we may have no future at all.
CEO & President of Impec Group. Delivering integrated workplace solutions to enhance productivity and happiness at the workplace
5 年I found your article interesting and intriguing at the same time on two counts, first the observation that sci-fi stories are predominantly dystopian and writers are male dominated. Based on these, advocacy for a more positive perspective and more women driving such stories should be in order. Writers are shaped by the forces that affect them, by their own unique condition, their own understanding of history , current socio-economic forces and foresight of the future. They are free to express their creative spirit in whatever form and shape they decide for themselves as what could create the most impact to whoever would read their creative expression. If the outcome turns out to be dystopian in perspective, that is what it is. We can never second guess the writer’s inner motivation unless it is stated in the foreword or shared during an interview. At the same time, a dystopian narrative can drive a countervailing response that balances the pernicious effects of technology as in the case of unbridled use of AI in the design of workplaces and cities. We cannot rule out that an artist’s intent was to cast a dark shadow in order to provoke and raise awareness. Artists in my view are adverse to being dictated to what and how to write but commentators, policy makers, designers and builders are as free as the artists to make a critique and advocacy of what they believe to be the most balanced approach people’s lives now and in the future. Women reading your article should pay heed and be challenged to write their own narratives to create a more equitable showing of published content and perspectives. We live in a perpetual inter-subjective world and a healthy exchange of perspectives is always good for our planet.
Design & Strategy for Social Impact | MA in Design
5 年Thank you for sharing your thoughtful analysis. I spent my undergraduate research unpacking connections between cyberpunk and identity formation + social structures. Many of the observations you make about design and planning resonates. I think this applies to a lot of industries where we are trying to imagine a different more hopeful future - such as my current work in healthcare. You are absolutely right that diversity is key to shifting which “author” is centered and which realities we build together.