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Abstract
Unerringly, across its whole history, urban science fiction has offered up imagined cities that operate about remarkably similar and highly verticalised visions. These are heavily dominated by politics of class, resistance and revolution that are starkly organized around vertically stratified and vertically exaggerated urban spaces. From the early and definitive efforts of H.G. Wells and Fritz Lang, through J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel High Rise, to many cyberpunk classics, this essay – the latest in a series in City on the vertical dimensions of cities – reflects on how vertical imaginaries in urban science fiction intersect with the politics and contestations of the fast-verticalising cities around the world. The essay has four parts. It begins by disentangling in detail the ways in which the sci-fi visions of Wells, Lang, Ballard and various cyberpunk authors were centrally constituted through vertical structures, landscapes, metaphors and allegories. The essay's second part then teases out the complex linkages between verticalised sci-fi imaginaries and material cityscapes that are actually constructed, lived and experienced. Stressing the impossibility of some clean and binary opposition between ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ cities, the essay explores how verticalised projects, material cities, sci-fi texts, imaginary futures, architectural schemes and urban theories mingle and resonate together in complex, unpredictable and important ways which do much to shape contemporary urban landscapes. The third section of the essay explores such connections through the cases of retro-futuristic urban megaprojects in the Gulf and forests of towers recently constructed in Shanghai's Pudong district. The essay's final discussion draws on these cases to explore the possibilities that sci-fi imaginaries offer for contesting the rapid verticalisation of cities around the world.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Lucy Hewitt whose excellent research between 2010 and 2012 laid key foundations for this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See Stephen Graham, ‘Life Support: The Political Ecology of Urban Air,’ City 19, nos. 2–3 (2015): 192–215 and ‘Luxified Skies: How Vertical Urban Housing became an Elite Preserve,’ City 19, no. 5 (2015): 618–645. See also Stephen Graham, Vertical: The City from Above and Below (London and New York: Verso, 2016).
2 Syd Mead and Patrick Sisson, ‘Meet Syd Mead, the Artist Who Illustrates the Future,’ Curbed, July 23, 2015, http://curbed.com/archives/2015/07/23/syd-mead-city-architecture-blade-runner-design-future.php
3 See Lucy Hewitt and Stephen Graham, ‘Vertical Cities: Representations of Urban Verticality in 20th-Century Science Fiction Literature,’ Urban Studies 52, no. 5 (2015): 923–937; Donato Totaro, ‘The Vertical Topography of the Science Fiction Film,’ Off Screen (August 2010): 14, http://offscreen.com/view/vertical_topography
4 In the sub-genre of super-hero sci-fi cartoons, novels and films, meanwhile, the sudden ability of the various protagonists—Batman, Superman, Spiderman and their ilk—to transcend gravity by flying through the forests of skyscrapers, is little less than the very means to (repeatedly) save the city—or the world—from malign attack. See Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
5 In some sci-fi films—Blade Runner and Elysium are notable examples—the elites have shifted so far ‘upward’ as to be ‘off-planet’ altogether inhabiting extra-terrestrial colonies.
6 Susan Sontag, ‘The Imagination of Disaster,’ Commentary 40, no. 4 (1965): 42, at 44.
7 Efraim Sicher and Natalia Skradol, ‘A World Neither Brave Nor New: Reading Dystopian Fiction After 9/11,’ Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4, no. 1 (2006): 151–179, at 153–154, 174. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek called the news images of the burning World Trade Center ‘a special effect which outdid all others’. Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (New York: Verso), 11.
8 See Hewitt and Graham, ‘Vertical Cities,’ 928–932.
9 Herbert George Wells, When the Sleeper Awakes (London: Penguin, [1910] 2005), 42.
10 Ibid., 162.
11 Ibid., 193 and 196.
12 Metropolis was based on an original novel of the same name by Thea von Harbou.
13 Cited in Fred Gehler and Ullrich Kasten, Fritz Lang: Die Stimme von Metropolis (Berlin: Henschel, 1990), 9.
14 David Desser, ‘Race, Space and Class: The Politics of the Science Fiction Films,’ in Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science-Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn, Vol. 2 (London: Verso, 1999), 80–96.
15 As in many vertical sci-fi films, the arrogance and vulnerability of those in power is shown using vast skyscrapers clearly inspired by the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel—a building whose top was to reach Heaven (from Genesis 11), but which was ultimately destroyed by a wrathful God. See Anton Kaes, ‘The Phantasm of the Apocalypse: Metropolis and Weimar Modernity,’ in Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City, ed. Gyan Prakash (New York: Princeton University Press, 2010), 17–30.
16 Desser, ‘Race, Space and Class,’ 82. H. G. Wells, who was not happy with his When the Sleeper Awakes, actually criticised the extreme vertical stratification in Metropolis, as ‘stale old stuff’. Cited in Dietrich Neumann, ‘Before and After Metropolis: Film and Architecture in Search of the Modern City,’ in Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner, ed. Dietrich Neumann (Munich: Prestel, 1999), 35.
17 Fritz Lang, Metropolis (Paramount Pictures, 1927).
18 J. G. Ballard, High-Rise (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), 10.
19 Ibid., 9.
20 Ibid., 14.
21 Rick McGrath, ‘Reconstructing High-Rise: Adventure Thru Inner Space,’ May 2004, http://www.jgballard.ca/criticism/highrise.html
22 Along with ‘Blade Runner-esque’, ‘Ballardian’ is a common adjective in contemporary urban and cultural criticism. Martin Amis, ‘High-Rise Review,’ New Statesman, November 14, 1975, http://sdicht.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/high-rise-review-by-martin-amis-1975/
23 Ballard, High-Rise, 53.
24 Ibid., 15, 27.
25 Ibid., 9.
26 Ibid., 43.
27 Anna Greenspan, Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 76.
28 Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net (New York: Ace Books, 1988), 215.
29 British Marxist critic and writer Raymond Williams points out that, historically, ‘out of the experience of the cities came an experience of the future’. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 179. See also Robert Crossley, ‘The Grandeur of H. G. Wells,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
30 This distinction was first identified by Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 27.
31 Susan Sontag, quoted in A. O. Scott, ‘Metropolis Now,’ New York Times Magazine, June 8, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/magazine/08wwln-lede-t.html?ref=philip_k_dick
32 Mark Fisher, ‘Things to Come,’ Frieze Magazine, December 17, 2014, http://www.frieze.com/issue/print_article/things-to-come/
33 See Darko Suvin, ‘On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,’ College English (1972): 372–382.
34 See Peter Brooker, ‘Imagining the Real: Blade Runner and Discourses on the Postmetropolis,’ in The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic, ed. Will Brooker (New York: Wallflower Press, 2005), 213–224.
35 Sicher and Skradol, ‘A World Neither Brave Nor New.’ See also Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates (London: Verso, 2002).
36 As well as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Blade Runner’s influences were wide-ranging: Mayan pyramids; the architecture of the Italian Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia; William Hogarth’s engravings of street life in 18th-century London; Hong Kong at night; and the work of French comic book artists (notably the Métal Hurlant—‘Heavy Metal’—series and Jean Giraud’s—pen name ‘Moebius’—Incal series).
37 Cited in Michael Webb, ‘“Like Today, Only More So”: The Credible Dystopia of Blade Runner,’ in Film Architecture, ed. Neumann, 44–47, at 44.
38 Scott Bukatman, Blade Runner (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 41–42.
39 Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
40 Blade Runner’s teeming street scenes were filmed in a dramatically updated Hollywood set depicting a Manhattan street built initially in 1929. Many critics thus interpret the film as a futuristic film noir exaggeration of New York as much as of LA.
41 Sisson, ‘Meet Syd Mead.’
42 Marcus Doel and David Clarke, ‘From Ramble City to the Screening of the Eye,’ in The Cinematic City, ed. David Clarke (London: Routledge, 1997), 141.
43 Aaron Barlow, ‘Reel Toads and Imaginary Cities: Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner and the Contemporary Science Fiction Movie,’ in The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic, ed. Will Brooker (New York: Wallflower Press, 2005), 43–58, at 43.
44 Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 132.
45 British Film Institute, ‘Blade Runner Day at BFI Southbank’ (n.d.), http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4fc75d98f0212
46 William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003.
47 Artist Fatima Al-Qadiri also helped coin this term.
48 Even some within the real estate industry admit that many contemporary skyscrapers are laden with ‘environmental’ features and discourses that are nothing but ‘ornament or greenwash’. William Murray, ‘Selling Tall: The Branding and Marketing of Tall Buildings,’ Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (2012), http://global.ctbuh.org/resources/papers/download/261-selling-tall-the-branding-and-marketing-of-tall-buildings.pdf
49 Natalie Olah, ‘Gulf Futurism is Killing People,’ Vice (n.d.), http://www.vice.com/print/the-human-cost-of-building-the-worlds-tallest-skyscraper
50 Cited in Ibid.
51 Middle East Online, ‘Syd Mead Praises Dubai’s Foresight, Ambition,’ February 21, 2005, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=12769
52 The idea had to be withdrawn, however, as it became clear that the winds of the Jetstream at that height would make the building structurally unsound. See Sammy Medina, ‘Straight Out of Sci-Fi: Cyberpunk Author Plans Tallest Skyscraper Ever,’ Fastcodesign, October 1, 2013, http://www.fastcodesign.com/3018510/straight-out-of-sci-fi-cyberpunk-author-plans-tallest-skyscraper-ever
53 Quoted in Sarah Noal, ed., The Architecture of Adrian Smith SOM: Toward a Sustainable Future (Sydney: Images Publishing Group, 2015), 29.
54 This follows a long tradition in sci-fi filmmaking of using futuristic or brutalist cityscapes and buildings as sets when filming. See Yasser Elsheshtawy, ‘The Prophecy of Code 46: Afuera in Dubai, or Our Urban Future,’ Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review (2011): 19–31.
55 Jon Gambrell, ‘Filming Begins in Dubai for New Movie “Star Trek Beyond”.’ Associated Press, October 2, 2015, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5a37f2e182834954b2d6daca98d89b8b/filming-begins-dubai-new-movie-star-trek-beyond
56 Anna Greenspan, Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), iii.
57 ‘Los Angeles of 2019 can indeed be read as Hong Kong on a bad day’, cultural analyst Wong Kin Yuen argued in 2000. Wong Kin Yuen, ‘On the Edge of Spaces: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Hong Kong’s Cityscape,’ Science Fiction Studies (2000): 1–21, at 4. See also Chi Hyun Park, ‘Orientalism in U.S. Cyberpunk Cinema from Blade Runner to The Matrix’ (PhD thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2004), https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/2159
58 Greenspan, Shanghai Future, xv.
59 Ibid., xxiv.
60 Dave Tacon, ‘Shanghai: The City that Changes the Way you See the Future,’ CNN.com, November 12, 2015, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/travel/shanghai-future-trip-that-changed-my-life/
61 See Amanda Lagerkvist, ‘The Future is Here: Media, Memory, and Futurity in Shanghai,’ Space and Culture (2010).
62 Both cited in Amanda Lagerkvist, Media and Memory in New Shanghai: Western Performances of Futures Past (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 63.
63 Culveyhouse, ‘Shanghai’s Pudong Skyline.’
64 Lagerkvist, Media and Memory, 63.
65 Greenspan, Shanghai Future, xix–xx.
66 Amanda Lagerkvist, ‘Future Lost and Resumed: Media and the Spatialization of Time in Shanghai,’ The ESF-LiU Conference (2006), http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/020/009/ecp072009.pdf
67 See Cynthia Weber, ‘Securitising the Unconscious: The Bush Doctrine of Preemption and Minority Report,’ Geopolitics 10, no. 3 (2005): 482–499; Alberto Toscano, ‘The War Against Pre-terrorism: The Tarnac 9 and The Coming Insurrection,’ Radical Philosophy 154 (March/April 2009).
68 Pedro Gadanho, ‘Taken to Extremes,’ in Beyond Scenarios and Speculations, ed. Pedro Gadanho (Amsterdam: Sun, 2009), 9–14, at 11.
69 Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2008).
70 Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit à la Ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1968).
71 See Andy Merrifield, ‘The Urban Question Under Planetary Urbanization,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37, no. 3 (2013): 909–922.
72 Issac Asimov, Foundation (London: Voyager Paperback, 1955).
73 See David Cunningham and Alexandra Warwick, ‘Unnoticed Apocalypse: The Science Fiction Politics of Urban Crisis,’ City 17, no. 4 (2013): 433–448.
74 See Crisis-Scape.Net, ed., Crisis-Scapes: Athens and Beyond (2014), http://crisis-scape.net/images/conference/CrisisScapesConferenceBookWeb.pdf; Nasser Abourahme, ‘Ruinous City, Ruinous Time: Future Suspended and the Science Fiction of the Present,’ City 18, nos. 4–5 (2014): 577–582; and the 2014 documentary Future Suspended, https://vimeo.com/86682631
75 Rakesh Ramchurn, ‘Building Brave New Worlds: The Architecture of Sci-fi Movies,’ Architects’ Journal, December 3, 2014, http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/culture/building-brave-new-worlds-the-architecture-of-sci-fi-movies/8673490.article
76 William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (New York: Putnam), 146.
77 Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Vintage, 1990); Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Macmillan, 1998).
78 Brooker, ‘Imagining the Real,’ 219.
79 Mike Davis, Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control, the Ecology of Fear (Westfield, NJ: Open Media, 1992).
80 Ibid.
81 Stephen Rowley, ‘False LA: Blade Runner and the Nightmare City,’ in The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic, ed. Will Brooker (New York: Wallflower Press, 2005), 203–212, at 203.
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Stephen Graham
Stephen Graham is based at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.
