The Cosmopolis.
The final state of existence.
But will we get there before we all kill each other?
Las Vegas is the Los Alamos of urban design, the nation's leading laboratory for experimenting with how our cities will look and function a half century from now. Among the questions currently under investigation: How much 'fake' do Americans want and what kinds of 'fake' do they prefer? How high and how far can celebrity-chef franchise dining go? How will new and improved hybrid hotel-condos actually work on a citywide level? How do you build a compact, pedestrian-friendly city around what amounts to a short but congested ten-lane highway?
Howard Hughes was right; he said Las Vegas could be a "city of the future," setting a course for the rest of America. (Hughes envisioned a "super environmental" city free of smog and run by an enlightened local government.) When I read that Las Vegas had opened a new monorail system last year to whisk travelers up and down the Strip, my first thought was, Of course: all cities of the future have monorails.
Now monorails are an interesting symbol of the future, but one that has seemly become part of the past. Often futuristic 'ideals' are thrown away and people fail to recognize that the future is now. It is less radical than you believe and that the former is just a nostalgic myth.
Those artworks look marvellous! They remind me of Mass Effect and the Star Wars Franchise..
ReplyDeleteOh, and will we get to the final state of existence? That's one question our and the future generations will have to decide..
The first pic looks more like the way things are going to be heading. Police and all.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, it should be a cosmopolis in space, trying to establish it here on earth would mean a deathblow to our planet. But I cannot see science reach this level of technology before a social collapse of somekind takes place.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the instability within politics could destroy the world before we reach utopia...
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