CyberPunk Cities: Fiction or Reality?

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We're already living in a Cyberpunk world, it's just missing all the cool cybernetic enhancement stuff

"Cyberpunk is a warning, not an aspiration." - Mike Pondsmith. More people need to actually listen to stuff like this. I love the cyberpunk genre as a media, but I do not want to see it become a reality. This was a fantastically written video.

The first night I stepped out of my Bangkok hotel lobby, on a rainy day, seeing the heavy concrete BTS train station towering over me, experiencing the strange smells from all the street food vendors, the crowds of ordinary people, and then looking up at the huge LED advertising screens speaking in a strange language, my first thought was that I had just stepped into a Blade Runner set. That moment in time is still etched in my mind 10 years later.

With the unexpected resurgence of Cyberpunk 2077, I am reliving night city, and it's amazing how much care and effort has went into designing the architecture. This video gave me another set of eye to look at things

My theory is that the Tyrell corporate building in Blade runner is a contained city for the upper class and corporate employees. It's like the city apartments in Cyberpunk 2077, Judge Dread or the real Ponte City Apartments

I’ve always loved the cyberpunk city aesthetic. Megastructures, with a heavy neon glow, and progressive technology. Don’t know if I’d want to live there everyday but being there every so often would be awesome

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This made me remember a doc about a city in Japan, i think it was Kyoto but I honestly can't remember. It is currently one of the cities with some of the strictest controls on what type of adverts can be used and how they can be used. It was done to preserve more of the city as it was becoming dominated by "modern living". Depending on how close you were to the historical sites was how much more strict the codes were. For example near one of the temples was a Starbucks with a wood sign and the logo carved into it, but several miles away was another with a muted green and toward the city center it was normal. To be honest seeing the before and after, you can see why they did it. It worked. Near the historical sights, regardless of how many tourists were there, you see the heritage and history and the welcoming feel for people to be there. The more toward the center of the city you were the more it was about the businesses and less about the people... though really the accessibility through walking was still really high considering.

Considering The Line as a Cyberpunk city is quite acceptable Edit : What I said is just an supposition, I didn't say anything about if I liked it, if I support this construction, or if it will really happen

i would watch these even if they were 2 hours long! 20mins flew by real quick with how entertaining and fun this was to watch.

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This video is literally a hidden gem in the world of endless cyberpunk video essays/documentaries. Top Notch editing, top notch explaining, and really great seeing a niche (architectural) perspective on the cyberpunk genre. One of the best video essays I've seen on YouTube, well done!

There's also the huge influence that Kowloon Walled City had on writers of early Cyberpunk. You can still see that influence - both architectural and stylistic - in tons of today's cyberpunk movies and games. The special thing about Kowloon Walled City being of course, that there was no planning, no regulation, no oversight involved in it's growth. It was just residents adding more and more to a very strictly limited space - thus increasing density, often in a pretty haphazard way. That lead to a very unique... *style*. I just felt I had to mention it - you just can't talk about Cyberpunk architecture without mentioning Kowloon Walled City.

I'm pretty sure that the pyramids in Blade Runner (1982) are supposed to be arcologies, that is, fully self-contained cities in and of themselves. The game "Deus Ex: Invisible War" also featured an arcology, and they're even featured in William Gibson's "Neuromancer", the seminal cyberpunk novel that defined many of the genre's tropes. It's a very cyberpunk concept that would probably be worth exploring in more detail!

Cyberpunk used to be a foreboding, undesirable dystopia. Nowadays its just a 'cool' aspirational aesthetic that media companies sell us.

As someone who just came back from China after living there for 4 years there I can say that it’s crazy the amount of cameras over there, it’ll have up to 5 at any exit of any metro small or big. It’s crazy but you get used to it and that’s the craziest part!

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Paradoxically, some parts of the cyberpunk universe don't feel dystopian at all. The lights, the rain, the fog, the colors, those cities are just a mood. That why we love the city in Blade Runner. Objectivly those cities are dystopic, but from what you perceive of them they are just the perfect place to be melancolic.

I remember reading something about the advertisements in cyberpunk movies. I think it was in reference to Babylon A.D. The idea was that advertisements replace street lights and they can be brighter but less harsh. So there are no dark corners for crime to happen in secret. It also provides landmarks for first responders. Rather than street numbers, most people usually don't know without looking.