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

[(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.