Futures Volume 24 Issue 7 1992 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2892%2990078-t] I.F. Clarke -- The City- Heaven-On-earth or the Hell-To-come

8/11/2019 Futures Volume 24 Issue 7 1992 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2892%2990078-t] I.F. Clarke -- The City- Heaven-On-earth or the Hell-To-come

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701

20TH CENTURY FUTURE-THINK

The ci ty: heaven-on-earth or the

hel I-to-come?

I. F. Clarke

P&s is the Greek for city; and, like so many things in our civilization, the

never-ending debate about the ideal human environment began with the Greeks.

To think about the ideal city, as Plato knew, is to think about the desirable,

about the not-yet-achieved, about the future. There has been no end to the

building of citieefrom the Athens of Pericles to the Chandigarh of Le

Corbusier. As I. F. Clarke shows, there is no end to the fiction of future cities for

the reason that the applied sciences come like the Greeks bearing gifts; and

these gifts can so affect the condition of human existence that the citizens have

to plan their cities to meet growing populations, new means of communication,

and ever-rising expectations. Before 1914 heaven was the organized, industrial

metropolis. Since then the city of the future has moved through a history of

hell-on-earth, first displayed in the dazzling images of Fritz Langs

Metropolis

(1926), to the most recent space cities of the galactic age.

Ever since the first thinkers took to

pondering the nature of the human

community, the city has enjoyed a pract-

ical and metaphysical existence of im-

mense importance. The city is both past

and present-ab urbe condita-in so far

as it is the physical and political inherit-

ance of the citizens. That has always

been the received wisdom and the point

of departure for new proposals about

the future of societies and their cities. As

Aristotle saw the matter, the city is the

greatest of human inventions. Men

come together in the city to live; they

remain there in order to live the good

life. In this Aristotle was following his

master Plato. He had opened up the

argument on justice and the division of

labour in the Rep ubl ic by asserting that:

the origin of a city is . . . due to the fact

I.

F.

Clarke v/as the Foundation Professor of

Enplisll Studies in the University of Strath-

ciyde. He has happily retired to a future of

beer-brewing and bread-making

in the

second Eden of the Cotswolds.

that no one of us is sufficient for himself,

but each is in need of many things.

Ideal states

From that initial proposition Plato moved

on to lay the moral and political found-

ations of the ideal city-state, that etern-

ally covenanted but never consummated

marriage of justice and right order. In

the could-be dialogues of the Rep ubl ic

he inaugurated the great debate bet-

ween intellect and civilization which

shows no sign of ending. Another of his

remarkable innovations appears in the

later dialogues of the Timaeus and the

Critias There the Atlantis myth of the

lost continent allows Plato to give shape

and place to social theory. Long ago and

far to the west of the Pillars of Hercules,

some 9000 years before Solon first heard

the story from Egyptian priests, there

was the prodigiously great island of

Atlantis which was sacred to Poseidon

and held dominion over all the islands in

the Atlantic for a long period. In this

way Plato relates the success story of a

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702

20th century future-think

highly organized, technologically com-

petent state. Atlantis is a leisured soc iety

that knows how to manage its environ-

ment and so enjoys a permanent sur-

plus. Aqueducts, irrigation systems, hy-

draulic engineering, great harbours con-

nected to the open sea by subterranean

tunnels,

handsome public buildings,

gold-covered temples, many gardens

and places of exercise-these are the

outward signs of a soc iety that has

ac hieved the Platonic beatitude of soc ial

and technologica l stasis.

Plato was our first Adam in utopia,

the precursor who brought the good

news of the better world. He worked

through a demonstration of principles in

the Republic and through the attractive

projections of ambitions rea lized in his

Atlantis myth. For some 23 centuries a

succession of world-changers have fol-

lowed his example in seeking the fruit of

the desirable tree of wisdom that stands

at the centre of -very earthly paradise.

For the past five centuries, ever since

Mores Libellus vere aureus of 1516, the

make-believe city has been the benc h-

mark of all imaginary soc ieties-from

Amaurotum which is the capital of the

happy island of Mores

Utopia

to

the

strange mood-made city of Zemrude in

halo Calvinos Le citti invisibiliof 1972.1

Despite the conc lusive felicity of the

utopian cities, it is not surprising to find

that idea l states are places of refuge from

a world in turmoil. These sanctuaries of

the mind appear at times of great soc ial

change. Plato was born into the desper-

ate epoch of the Peloponnesian War and

lived through the collapse of the Athe-

nian Empire. More knew a time of trou-

bles and his conscience finally led him to

a martyrs death, because he would not

adapt his principles to suit the ambitions

of an arbitrary monarch. This rec iprocal

relationship between the utopian sche-

mata and the tumultuous, frag ile order

of human experience has been even

more evident in modern times. Two

hundred years ago the applied sciences

had begun to have a profound, unprece-

dented effect on the condition of urban

soc iety. As the steamships and the rail-

ways demonstrated that things were

changing, it bec ame evident that tomor-

rows world would be very different.

One response to this new-found sense

of coming things appeared in the pro-

gressive philosophies of the first indust-

rial age-from Condorcet and Comte to

Herbert Spencer and Karl Ma rx. Another

constructive and imaginative response

began about 1870 with a flood of utopian

fiction. The new schemes turned from

the older small-scale idea l states that had

flourished since the time of Plato. The

here-and-now geography of the terres-

trial utopias changed to the seduc tive

and more promising ac counts of the

better worlds-to-come.

The new propagandists began from

the fac ts of life as they were then

experienc ed in the first industrial world.

They took special note of, and made it

their business to prescribe, for: the

growth of population, the spread of

great cities, the ever-improving means of

communication that made the world a

smaller and smaller plac e, and the

expec tation of ever more centralized

government that would be-with rare

exceptions-the guarantee of soc ial jus-

tice, peace and universal plenty. They

sought the transformation of the new

urban soc iety; and in their rhapsodic

descriptions of the future metropolis

they showed that public good must

always coincide with private amenity.

The c lassic example is Edward Bellamys

Looking Backward 1888), undoubtedly

the most widely read and most influen-

tial ideal state between 1870 and the

fateful year of 1914. The Bellamy formula

for the best of all possible futures is:

democrac y plus soc ialism plus indust-

rialism. His most effective proof is the

Boston of the year 2000-a city built by

the citizens for the citizens-where the

shopping centres are vast palaces. The

bemused time-traveller from the bad old

days enters one of the magnificent

public buildings and finds himself in a

place of plenty:2

I was

in a vast hall full of light, received not

alone from the windows on all sides, but from

the dome, the point of which was a hundred

feet above. Beneath it, in the centre of the

hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling

the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with

its spray. The walls and ceilings were frescoed

in mellow tints, calculated to soften without

absorbing the light which flooded the in-

terior. Around the fountain was a space

occupied with chairs and sofas, on which

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20th century future-think 703

many persons were seated conversing.

Legends on the walls all about the hall

indicated to what classes of commodities the

counters

below were devoted.

Tales of tyrannies

Conformity, coherence, congruence,

continuity-these were the dynamic

principles that shaped the once glorious

industrial utopias of the future. All these

hopes vanished, however, during the

calamitous decade after the First World

War. The ideal state disappeared from

the book of coming things. Utopia be-

came dystopia, as writers discerned the

terror-to-come in the great evils of their

time. From the triumph of mechanism in

the war, from the chronic social disorder

in many European countries, and from

the despotic new order in Russia-from

that time of troubles they looked into

the future and composed their tales of

coming tyrannies. There was a remark-

able European consensus on these new

hells of the future. In 1924 Yevgeny

lvanovich Zamyatin opened the dolor-

ous programme with his projection of

the totalitarian state in We.3 As the

Czech Karel Capek had composed the

first Ragnarok choreography of the final

war between men and machines in the

robot play R.U.R in 1921, so the Russian

invented the forbidding scenery, the

new age metalanguage, the rebels and

the principal demons in the new dys-

topias.

The stage machinery of the Zamyatin

story can be seen at work in one way or

another in all the celebrated dystopias

that achieved their greatest notoriety in

the ferocious urban violence of

A Clock-

work Orange 1962) by Anthony Burgess.

The leisurely pace and walk-about de-

scriptions of the old utopias change to

the hectic race of a rebellion-and-pursuit

story; the wide expanses of the utopian

geographies contract into the narrow

compass of the regimented city and the

interrogation room; the elaborate ex-

planations of political origins and social

progress in the ideal states becomes a

secret struggle of the one against the

many. The new objective is to achieve a

terrifying transformation of values and

circumstances that will shock the reader

by an artful combination of contemp-

orary causes, all waiting in ambush, and

their dreadful future consequences. The

City of the future is a realization of the

worst. There can be no escape. The

reader must go on to the very end, to the

final confrontation between the State

and the Citizen, when D-503 appears

before the Benefactor, when the Savage

debates with Mustafa Mond, and Win-

ston has his last talk with OBrien.

With Zamyatin the City becomes a

prison.

The obedient inmates, happy

conformists in all things, rejoice in the

security of their cage. I tell you that not

a one of us since the times of the Two

Hundred Years War has set foot beyond

the Green Wall. Within the well reg-

ulated ant heap every citizen has a

number, a place and a designated role.

This is the desirable norm, so the rebel

thinks before he is tempted and falls.

Thus, the first thoughts of the still obe-

dient D-503 are for the happy regularity

of life in the One State:4

The avenue was full of people-in such

weather we usually spend the after-lunch

Personal Hour in a supplementary walk. As

always, the Musical Factory was chanting with

all its pipes The March of the One State. The

numbers-hundreds, thousands of numbers

-all

in the light-blue unifs, all with gold

badges on their chests, each badge bearing

the State number of the particular he or

she-the numbers were pacing along in even

ranks of four each, exaltedly pounding their

feet in time to the music. And l-together

with the other three in

our unit of four-was

one of the countless waves in this mighty

torrent.

One year after the first English trans-

lation of We an ingenious and inventive

German film-maker began work on the

most expensive and most original Euro-

pean film of the 1920s. Fritz Lang found

the plot for

Metropolis

in a story by his

wife, Thea von Harbou; and she had

found many ideas for her largely derivat-

ive tale of the idle few and the dehuman-

ized many in R.U. R., The Time Machine,

The Sleeper Wakes, and We. Fritz Lang

took the main elements in the story and

worked them into a spectacular scenario

of the despotic industrial city. When the

film appeared in 1927, vast audiences on

both sides of the Atlantic took in the

telling images of a new iconography that

has ever since continued to display the

worst of all possible worlds. They could

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In 1903 the Strand

Magazine found the ideal image for a future London in Bellamys Looking

Backward.

By the 1920s Fritz Langs projections in Metropolis were the first models of the new integrated

urban systems.


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a

pert

lin, a disturbance in space,

laps a comet, could destroy

any great city.

or a second Deluge could leave New York in ruins


8/10

IN THE YEAR 000

By Otfrid van Hans ein

or a change in the moons

orbit could wreck New York.

On the other hand, the 50-man space base is the promise that humankind will go on and on


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20th century future-thin k 709

instance, the dangers of an overpop-

ulated world have encouraged authors

to project the most menacing possibili-

ties. One solution for the great Malthu-

Sian peril is the enclosed environment

and euthanasia for all at 21, as set out in

Logans

Run (1967);

and one of the more

effective demonstrations of the over-

crowded future is Harry Harrisons

Make

Room Make Room (1966).

In the New

York of 1999 each of the 35 million

inhabitants can expect no more than

four square yards of living space; and in

Silverbergs The

World Inside (1971)

the

teeming millions of the 24th century are

crammed into the Urban Monads-ver-

tical cities, 1000 storeys high. There the

top people enjoy the view at Level

Thousand, and the lower orders in the

Three Hundreds work for the promotion

that will take them to the top. Other

authors have looked far further into the

future, even to the end of history-to

that last day or that last time, when the

solar system disintegrates or the world

population has dwindled to a few

thousands.

In Arthur C. Clarkes The City

and

the Stars (1956)

the last human beings

live on in Diaspar, the last city on earth,

long after humankind has spread across

the galaxy. This theme of human destiny

follows the downward devolutionary

spiral of negentropy in Brian Aldisss

Hothouse (1962):

the earth no longer

rotates and the day side is covered by a

vast tree which is home to a race of

small, still-human creatures. Finally, one

of the many recent versions of the

end-of-things has the appropriate title of

The End of the World News (1982),

which Anthony Burgess took as licence

for a spectacular fantasy of psychoanaly-

sis, socialism, and the terminal excite-

ment of Lynx, the wandering planet that

will destroy Earth. The final drama of

human existence is played out in the

New York of the year 2000. The full -stop

to human history is recorded in the

viewing room of the spaceship

America;

and as that flying city sets off for Mars,

the last movement of Mozarts

jupi ter

Symphony

salutes the end of our

planet: 7

And on the screen they saw what that music

diminished and made seem remote, even

trivial, or else take on the pattern of choreo-

graphy-cosmic indeed but seemingly hu-

manly contrived. They

saw Lynx and earth

meet, and the first patch of earth to catch the

blow was the northern Rockies, which must

already be leaping with stupid love to the

claws of Lynx. They tasted the heartening fire

of gin, its little benignant brutality, as earth

shattered-core of dancing water, crust of

dust-and at once formed an outer ring

satellite of its successor in the dizzying annals

of the sun dance.. The rhythms of Mozart

bore them on into space, the beginning of

their, our, journey.

Metaphor and metaphysics

It will be apparent that for the past 70

years the ever-shifting theme of the

future city has been by turns metaphor-

ical or metaphysical. As the scale of

expectation has widened and the rate of

change has continued to accelerate, the

city-to-come has gone on forever adjust-

ing to the scope of the possible or has

gone forward to the furthest reach of the

imagination. The future city is the central

consideration in this modern debate

about means and ends. These cities of

the future quarry their material from the

hopes or the fears of their builders

-from the ruined cities of the Aftertime

to the magnificent metropolitan con-

structions to be found in far-off galaxies

and a better age. Thus, the city of the

future contains the paradigm of all the

perceived possibilities of our time.

At their best these Prosper0 crea-

tions serve as implants in the imagina-

tion. They help the mind to envisage and

to contemplate all kinds of conceivable

futures for humankind, even those de-

lightful fantasies of flying cities and the

long voyage through deep space en

route for Alpha Centauri some 4.3 light

years distant. The great may-be in this

fiction is that one day there may be an

Earth Observation Station Avernus in

orbit round a planet a thousand light-

years from Earth, as Brian Aldiss has

imagined in his admirable Heliconia

trilogy. It may be that in the third

millennium the inhabitants of a future

Avernus will follow the late 20th century

writer in regarding their space city as no

more than the most recent token of the

long divorce between humankind and its

environment. Will they say: It repre-

sented nothing less than the peak of

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710 20th century

future-think

achievement of an age when man had

tried to conquer space and to enslave

nature while remaining himself a slave?8

Notes and references

An exhaustive list of imaginary cities can be

found in two outstanding reference works:

Pierre Versins,

Encyc lopedie de Iutopie,

des voyages extraordinaires et de la sci-

ence f ict ion

Lausanne, LAge de IHomme,

1972); Albert0 Manguel and Gianni Guad-

alupi, The Diction ary of /maginary Places

(New

York, Ma cmillan, 1980).

Edward

Bellamy,

Looking Backward,

ZOOO-7887 Cleveland, OH, World Publish-

ing Co, 1946), pa ges 103-104.

Zamvatins book was written in 1920 but

wa s not pub lished in Russia. The running

dogs of the Proletarian Writers Assoc iation

saw to that. It wa s translated into English by

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Gregory Zlboorg and published in New

York in 1924.

Yevgeny Zamyatin,

We, Translated by

Bernard Guilbert Cuerny; Introduction by

Michael Glenny London, J onathan Cape,

1960), pa ge 28.

Fritz Lang,

Metropol is,

Introduction by

Paul M. J ensen London, Lorrimer Publish-

ing, 19731, pages 34-35. The pulishers

Note on this Edit ion

states: Since the

original screenplay for the film of

Metro-

pol is

was unobta inable, the version pub-

lished here has been built up from a

shot-by-shot viewing of the version of the

film seen in Britain and the United States.

J ohn Wyndham, The Day of the Tr i f f ids

London, Penguin Books, 1954), pages

230-231.

Anthony Burgess,

The End of the World

News

London, 1983, Penguin Books),

page 386.

Brian Aldiss,

Heliconia Winter

London,

J onathan Cape, 1985), page 74.

FUTURES September 1992

Futures Volume 24 Issue 7 1992 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2892%2990078-t] I.F. Clarke -- The City- Heaven-On-earth or the Hell-To-come

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