Urban Sprawl in Comics Redux?

[dewline]

The latest version of Legion of Super-Heroes mentioned something interesting in passing in a recent issue written by Mark Waid: their version of 31st Century Metropolis runs across nearly the entire North American Atlantic seaboard.

Question: how chilling(or not) do you find the implications of a single city running all the way from Cape Breton to Key West?

Yours, whilst still wishing I'd gotten that Daily Planet Guide to the Legion Worlds project with West End Games past the outline stage,

Dwight

Comments

[quietdarkness.livejournal.com]

It didn't bother me at all, it's pretty much a logical progession of what we have going on now. He said "most of the Atlantic seaboard," which actually made me think that perhaps it ran from somewhere like New Hampshire down through Georgia or so. Certainly I would think that it would encompass Gotham, Metropolis, Boston, NYC, NJ, Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Washington DC area and suburbs, to Richmond, at least.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is another large city from sprawling from San Diego to San Fransico, either. And I suspect the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has merged with Houston and goes all the way down to Galveston, perhaps even down the Texas coast past Corpus Christi.

Central City probably encompasses Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Madison and possibly Minneapolis-St. Paul.

And I bet that Toronto stretches all the way to Montreal, too. God knows how you folks are going to work that out:D

It's an interesting idea. I'd really like to see a map eventually.

Further Speculations

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Going point by point...

As to the East Coast, I see no reason why continental unification would not have happened at some point after 2500 AD. Hence my "Cape Breton to Key West" comment. If you've an argument for a "Ville d'Acadie" encompassing the Maritime Provinces, with or without Newfoundland Island...?

No arguments re: "SanAngeleopolis"/"Mega-California" (I think Paul Levitz used both names for that region?) or "Texas City".

Gulf Coast: New Orleans and St. Roch might well merge, as they're both in Orléans Parish, and who knows what else would get swallowed up by the consequences?

More likely, Central-Keystone's swallowed up Omaha and Kansas City. Whether or not Waid and Kitson decide to revive Lakopolis to cover the Great Lakes cities of the United States, I'll be interested to see. No idea either if Madison and Minneapolis-St. Paul -- and Fawcett City as well, if Jerry Ordway's hints of it lying on the Minnesota-Wisconsin line ever get taken seriously again -- get swallowed up by either of our proposed mega-cities.

Since you raised the Toronto-Montréal Corridor -- so it's called by Via Rail (http://viarail.ca/), the transit connections that link those two cities also connect to Ottawa. A "Greater Canada-Centrale" hyperpolis, given a thousand years' uninterrupted urban sprawl.

And as to such maps, I'd gladly accept a commission to draw one up.

Re: Further Speculations

[quietdarkness.livejournal.com]

Man, I was halfway through a long reply to this and the transformer out my window had a hiccup and shut my lights off. @&!*%##$!

Ok, take 2, same verse.

I think you should email DC, or even Mark and Barry and ask if you can draw a map for them. They can include it in the 50th year Anniversary Special, which has BETTER be coming eventually:D

You do bring up an interesting point. How far are regional differences obliterated in the 31st Century? Waid made it sound like there was a uniform static culture galaxy wide, but I think we've seen that people DO congregate on Naltor and on Colu, so I think that Oriental super politeness thing must be peculiar to Earth. It's obvious by the characters that while The Public Service is a UP static feature, cultural differences are still alive and well.

Thank God, because that was one of my favorite complaints about the last boot.

Now, back to the subject at hand...

I would assume the North Am Sector would include Canada and the US. And how the cities would develop would depend, I suspect, on what regional differences were around.

I suppose we could assume that if Metropolis DOES go from Cape Breton to say, Florida, that the US cultural differences between the northeast and the southeast are erased, to say nothing of the differences between the US and Canada.

However, if that's the case, does that also apply to people on this continent who speak a different language from English? Is Mexico part of the North Am Sector, or does it belong to the Central Am Sector? I know for a fact that Central America, even if it's located technically in North America, uses the same seasons as South America. How much is language a part of geographical and cultural differences? Has it ALL been obliterated by the 31st Century?

Knowing human nature, I sorta doubt it, but that's my personal opinion, with absolutely no comic book based data to back it up:)

If regional differences are gone, then perhaps Texas City is wrong. Perhaps it's The Gulf of Mexico City, ranging from Merida, Mexico to Sanibel Island, Florida! Maybe the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is part of the southern part of Central City!

However, if there are still regional variations, perhaps Quebec has it's own megatropolis. Mexico would have one from north of Tampico to south of Merida. Mexico City would be HUGE, perhaps the western edge of the coast metropolis.

I'd hate to imagine what the Euro Sector would look like:)

Anyway, it's an interesting subject, one I hadn't given much thought to, except I did take note of the size of Metropolis.

Which leads to another question...if the envirocrats have succeeded in banning weather control, is the Legion Headquarters somewhere where it's likely for a nice class 3 or 4 hurricane to breeze in? How well prepared is the 31st Century for natural disasters? They don't like to leave their houses for anything, much less evacuate together. And there's some tech they don't trust. When I learned there was no more weather control, it was the first thing I thought of. How well prepared are they for blizzards, ice storms, tornados, and hurricanes? If they've had weather control for awhile, and now it's been recently outlawed, do they even know what they are in for?

[joe-szilagyi.livejournal.com]

Not chilling at all, and if the world is still chugging along--no zombie or meteor based human deforestation--yeah, this'll be fact in a thousand odd years.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that when I first read those lines, I was more than a tad unnerved, at least partly for environmental reasons. The continuity issues...well, they serve as an excuse for playing "what if" gedankenexperimente, which entertains more often than not.

[dannydonovan.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think that it's not only something we're used to in comics by now (ala Judge Dredd's MEGA CITY 1, which encompases the whole east coast, while MEGA CITY 2 encompases all of the west coast, with what's left inbetween being wastelands) I think it's quite possibly something that could in fact happen.

Probably not over here because we have tight grasp on our "territories" more money to be made for Washington with hundreds of politicos running around instead of a few representing a dozen districts.

But I would think, it would make for an easier economic control, and crime control as you don't have to worry about butting heads with another city/state's jurisdiction, and losing the criminal in paperwork....

One thing that really surprised me is that the Legion future is coming to pass, in the recent issue of Action Comics (by Busiek and Johns) there's a reference to an upstart branch of the SCU called the "Tech Squad" which has been nicknamed by the public as the science police

Interesting.....

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Point well taken on conditioning provided by series such as Judge Dredd...

[(Anonymous)]

It's not chilling as such, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in it. Some people are content to stay in a city their whole lives, but most need at least an occasional visit to something more rural, an escape from the crowds.

I imagine that even if they didn't know why, a lot of people would be filled with desperation and anxiety in such an environment. Cities, expsecially at ground level, are dull and featureless. And no matter where you went, you'd never, ever have solitude. It'd be like those rat experiments where even if there's plenty of food, overpopulated rats start to go psycho and tear eachother apart. Especially since I'd assume the living spaces of the average person would be quite small and spartan.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The bio-sentients of the various species all seem to have decent-sized living quarters whenever such have actually shown up "on-panel", I've noticed. This seems to fit with the "every building a skyscraper" logic that's shown up so far in dialogue.

Near as I can figure, 31st-Century Metropolis City Hall seems to be aiming for a "let's see how well we can imitate the depictions of Trantor or Coruscant" policy.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Didn't the original Legion, at least under Levitz, also have a giant East Coast consuming single city of Metropolis?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Under Levitz and Giffen, they'd confined their 30th-Century Metropolis to the general neighbourhood of Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York State from the east end of Long Island to as far up as the nearest of the Catskills(I think), and the northern half of New Jersey. There's a map that saw print in the comic itself somewhen in the mid-1980's.

Side Note: That map is part of what I've long based my personal assumptions re: 20th and 21st-Century Metropolis' location. It had to be located somewhere in that region, regardless of previous materials referring to Delaware.

[miraclo.livejournal.com]

Caveat: I haven't read farther in the current, recently re-named Legion series than what was covered in the two trade editions, so I can't comment on the rest of the context, only on the notion of a huge urban complex running up and down the coast.

To quickly echo a few of the comments:

It's something future-focused fiction fans have had more than enough prep for this sort of thing. I'll even toss Chaykin's Plex approach into the mix of examples, where not only are huge regions linked but more and more of it is sealed in. Cities not only spreading and linking, but in many ways taking on the feel of huge malls.

Also, it's not something that I - a lifelong suburbanite who would prefer to spend more time in mountainous wilderness regions - would likely enjoy. I understand the utility of cities, but it requires a different mindset than I have. I'd likely find myself cocooning in my own space (not so different from spending all the hours I do indoors, in front of various monitors) or I'd either shift towards depression or homicidal impulses.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is, I find myself caught between the two "worlds" as it were. I was born out in Saskatchewan, with all the migration between city house and farm house --= both ways -- that implies for some, and for all that I find the city as presently surrounds me congenial, I still like the idea of green space being there, and equally importantly, being in abundance.

Common ground there, Mike...