Depends how you define slum. I live in a 2200 sq ft apartments. There are 96 such apartments in 1 building and there are 8 such buildings in a gated community. The corpo that built left after selling the apartments and the entire community is now union owned. There are like 700 families in the union.
@KazuhiraMiller-y1w thats less because that comparison is apt and more because its a game, and they wont actually have the plethora of poor slums that would actually exists. BAsically, CP2077 is far to nice and diverse vs what the real thing would be, because videogame. What the game does have is the original idea of what a mall would be (a bunch of stores and entertainment experiences right on top of apartments, surrounded by woods.
The problem with megabuildings, as it stands today, is more about bureaucracy, costs, corporate greed and safety. The thing that the game fails to showcase in the dystopian future is that the owners would maximize costs per square footage, so there wouldn't be the wide areas that we see in the game, but rather small hallways leading to stairs or elevators. Sure, the shopping floors might resemble malls, but that's it. The single occupant efficiency apartment we see in V's apartment is about as large as my 1 bedroom apartment (RL) too, with the exception of the floorplan not being an open floorplan like in the game (which gives the illusion of a larger area).
I thought that too, but then I realize V probably makes good money working as a merc, so he had to good flat. Look at the cop we help out for a quest who turtle died. His flat is what I would imagine majority of all apartments in the megabuilding look.
@@thaedleinad Aren't the mega-buildings also considered to be "high tier living areas" for the non-elites? For those outside of mega-buildings, their apartments are pretty much slums. Pretty much "middle class living" per se?
I once actually LIVED in a megabuilding--the Lefrak City Complex in Queens. Nice apartments, shops, gyms, restaurants, even nearby schools. And it worked for a while...but when I came back twenty years later, Lefrak had become a combat zone with drug gangs and wrecked infrastructure. So when I write about Night City megastructures, I know exactly what I'm writing about.
@@judi1009 Either you know or you don't. If you know, you don't need to be told. If you don't know, you'd deny the truth regardless. Clearly you do not know. And thus you cannot discern what caused the issues. I will be nice and give you a hint: Demographics and their arrival.
As someone who's a sci-fi fan AND who works in the building industry AND has hundreds of hours on Cyberpunk 2077, this video was made just for me. I've always been fascinated by arcologies because they're such a natural fit for dense urban design. In ancient Rome most regular people lived in "insula" which were mixed use tower blocks up to seven floors high. So they were basically ancient arcologies. The insula ground floor was always retail shops or other businesses because they could serve passing pedestrians as well as the building inhabitants, while also accepting bulk deliveries of goods without having to carry everything upstairs. The lower residential floors were the upmarket larger apartments because you didn't have to climb too many stairs to get to them, while the upper floors at the top of the stairs were the cheaper apartments. (This is the opposite of many cyberpunk scenarios, where the wealthy live higher up). Most of the insula housing units also had no kitchen (like V's apartment) because it was assumed you would buy and eat all your food in one of the taverns downstairs. Insula living must have been an intensely communal experience. You automatically got to know the owner of your favorite tavern downstairs because you interacted with them daily. The owners of these businesses also usually lived in the building themselves. You would also meet your neighbors in the tavern because you all ate your meals there. The main reason we don't have these structures anymore is because of zoning regulations. These regulations often force developers to build for one use only, so we end up with different buildings such as office blocks, apartment blocks, and shopping malls. Relaxing these regulations would see developers building apartment blocks on top of shopping malls which would give us a building very similar to a megabuilding. The only drawback is that high-rise concrete towers are the most expensive buildings to build per square foot. That's why you only see them in high-demand areas.
Ha ha, I should have just skipped writing my own much more rambling take on this. :D I realize that social media urban planner content isn't reflective of actual industry or regulatory practices, but all the articles and videos I've seen tend to endorse mixed use zoning, mid to high density housing (townhomes up to apartments/condos that are only tall enough to skirt the low side of requiring heavier concrete construction; maybe 3-5 stories?), and semi/full restrictions on motor vehicles through the area (using a combination of traffic flow, fewer lanes, less parking, scheduled times of day). In my city, there are a few areas where trendy developers have tried to cash in on the mixed zoning concept. In downtown/midtown, makes economic sense. In an immense bedroom community with central planning, it seems a bit forced -- but maybe in a few decades if that bedroom community grows enough to become its own metro hub, it'll make sense.
@@dakaodo Some fascinating work has been done on how the built environment effects the psychology of people living in it. It turns out that 3 - 5 floors is the optimum number, and even correlates to lower crime. Lower than 3 floors is inefficient for public transport, forcing people to use cars. On the other hand more then 5 floors leads to alienation and a disconnect from the communal space of the street. In my jurisdiction developers have the added incentive that only buildings over 5 floors are required to have an elevator, which is a huge added expense. So we get a lot of buildings up to 5 floors and a lot of buildings of 10 floors and more. There are very few buildings with 5 - 10 floors.
Wow my guy that was a lot to learn in an instant thank you for the knowledge n honestly it reminds me of Minneapolis in downtown where you have certain buildings that are apartments or hotels and below them is a sprawling shopping center if dozens if not hundreds of stores at one point
I think you’d enjoy the Jerry Pournelle novel “Oath of Fealty”, if you haven’t read it. It’s speculative fiction set mostly in an arcology, and goes into both the technical details of such a building, and the sociology.
@@Blu3bonic Minneapolis is one of the only cities in the US outside of Texas that hasn't embraced NIMBYISM. They still let people build multifamily housing.
The building that took me away was the rooftop of Hanson's DogTown HQ. The building is in construction until the very top where it fades into a complete form which is ironic that the rooftop was finished before anything else.
It's not massive but it's also not very large. I mean it has one couch. a horribly placed small screen (makes no sense to me since I figure you'd have a whole wall dedicated to a screen and technology would likely have progressed enough that they are dirt cheap, bought in panels/pieces that you can add too) but his apartment is missing some crucial stuff .. like a kitchen, and place for a washing and drying machine. Other than that it's relatively spaceous
One thing I found out today is that if V's apartment is reminds people of college dorms and is "compact" than American education system is not overpriced
We’ve tried megastructures many times before. They’re always inhuman in the end and not places people want to live. Not to mention the upkeep of such structures are insane Ultimately we don’t need megastructures, we need to stop building the least efficient housing possible (suburbs). Amsterdam and such have the most effective type of housing, no absurdly ugly building necessary They are soooo friggin cool tho, Judge Dredd really nails it
@@SuperTinku883-5 floors of apartments, arranged like a square with a "courtyard" style hole in the middle, generally full of shops and civic amenities. Walkable blocks.
@@SuperTinku88its diversified bij apartment complexes townhouses rowhouses en some single standing housing sprinkled in en some high rises here and there and very good planing with shops everywhere for walkable infrastructure plus safety
@@ArawnOfAnnwn No, Apartment complexes, especially the poorer ones in America are generally insulated bubbles of inter-community walk-ability that are immediately cut off by massive multi lane stroads that butt right up against the complex property lines, they have no shops within the walkable area because American zoning laws make it literally illegal, to get to any place to do any shopping you will be forced to wait and cross at least one massive busy road where thousands if not tens of thousands of cars will drive through while flying over the speed limit, if not wait for a bus to travel across town to go to the only store with fresh produce in a 10 mile radius. Most of the time, the sidewalks just end without any alternative but to just walk along the shoulder of a bridge or roadway. It is literally nothing like Amsterdam, and you are deluding yourself by saying otherwise and accepting a worse designed world than even the one your parents grew up in.
I live in hk, so when i heard you say V's apartment is compact, i can only imagine you are living in a palace of sorts V's apartment is actually dream house to me
Kaoloun also had massive heroin addiction issues as its design made it nearly impossible to catch criminals. There's a reason a lot of countries refuse to build hostile architecture like this.
The city I work has recently had three large apartment buildings built. They are meant to be affordable housing to help with issues of rising rents. They have courtyards, laundry services, gyms, rec areas, parking garages, and even space for businesses like restaurants and convenience stores. Basically, a megabuilding. Thing is, currently the average one bedroom in our area goes for 1800+ and the cheapest of these units is between 2000-3000 for a small one bedroom. They're all in bad parts of town and it's pretty clear this is an attempt to gentrification the area. The stated target demographic is medical professionals, of which I am. Thing us, I live in a much bigger apartment in a wooded area in one of the suburbs on the outskirts of the city. It's literally a ten minute drive to work for me. There's ample housing here that is far superior to these developments. There's no way these places aren't going to end up subsidized. The one that opened a year ago is still half empty. Feels like I'm watching Cyberpunk 2077 begin.
@@NoEffortMandated I've lived in a house, and apartment that was very separated by many walls. I'd rather drive a few minutes to get to anything with a two bedroom apartment than live in basically one small room that can walk to things. But the Japantown apt was pretty sweet.
Same, however, if my cardboard box was tucked into a trash service corridor inside of a mega building, close to a noodle shop and pistol vending machine ... I'd be living on a cloud 9½
It has a large living room but no place for a washing machine, no private bed rooms or any bed rooms. It's a studio apartment without a kitchen. It's very inefficient
In night city no one cooks thus the vending machines in the apartment I doubt people wash their clothing in their rooms either and yeah V's room is huge I lived in a mega building in seoul wasn't nearly as big as v's room.
There's plenty if you look for it. It's an old idea, albeit with a different name. At the somewhat more realistic level there's vertical cities, which are still very ambitious. Basically putting everything you'd need in one building, from homes and supermarkets to even school and offices where residents work. At the much more ambitious scale there's arcologies, which often come with very evocative designs in their concept art. They do everything a vertical city would, but also aim to make the city truly self sufficient and independent, with their own food production, energy generation and the like. Neither has ended up being all that economical so far though. Besides that, zoning regulations often prevent such things from being even attempted.
Here in Brazil we have a phenomenon called "The Import Market/Fair"/"A feira dos importados" (The translation kinda sucks, sorry) which is a place where you can find basically everything, from unlocked Playstation 2 (we still sell those, including games) to food, clothes and honestly anything imaginable at this point, and it's the closest thing I have ever seen of a "Megabuilding"/"Conveniently super packed area for shopping" as I'd say, because they aren't living spaces (like houses and apartments), but they are right across the street (I am not joking, 5 minutes of walking and I am inside the Market I grew up with), and recently I've been to the Market in the capital of Minas Gerais, one of our states, and unlike the other Markets, that were just long horizontal places, rarely with a floor above or under, this time it was a building with about 5 or even more floors, you take ladders, elevator, walk between stores, go down ramps, it feels chaotic, sometimes I was even wondering if the floor I was in was at the same height of a different place in the same floor. It's packed, it's alive, the people who work there know each other very well, they know each other by name, they were guiding me and my father there. It wasn't the cleanest of places, nor the prettiest by normal means, but it was THE closest thing I experienced to this, it was regulated by the workers there and barely by the government, with it's own anatomy, it's own life. Having experienced that made me think that, even tho you can regulate it, it would always be this chaotic, megabuildings as a whole I mean, there's a fine boundary between what people (here) considers "okay" regulation from the government and "not okay", and honestly a megabuilding probably has to be regulated by government. Not throwing a wrench at your video, I'm just saying that this would be very difficult to maintain, even with all the benefits of a well made megabuilding, people would still find ways to alter it, to modify it and thus make it not as perfect as planned, like it's done in any city, specially planned cities, since I live in one, because here, again, the boundary, people here prefer to make things more like themselves, some hate "the over sanitized look of anything the government does". Me for myself, I think they are fascinating and kinda beautiful in a way, both the megabuildings, their examples and the Markets i've been rambling about, I can't pin why, but I would love to see more of it.
You brought up a lot of the issues that the urban planner channels I follow have universally discussed. However, in our current environment (economic, social, technological, and ecological), the sweet spot for addressing the needs of residents has gravitated towards medium to high density housing (rather than extremely high density like high rise apartments) and mixed use zoning, with all of the urban planners favoring some degree of human scale walkable streets with limited to prohibited vehicle traffic (they mostly cite metro examples in the Netherlands, some parts of Japanese cities, etc). This is the shops, services, amenities, etc you mention, colocated with residential units ranging between apartments/condos and townhomes. Crossing this current urban planning aspirational content with your take on megabuildings, cost is a big obstacle to building bigger. It's expensive to build and maintain big buildings and their infrastructure. This just gets worse the bigger the building is, as we run into limits of our material science and start to replace "free" natural parts of the enviroment with artificially constructed alternatives. Concrete production consumes significant amounts of energy and water, produce significant emissions that affect air quality, and concrete use impacts drainage, flooding, and local ecosystems. Everything becomes more labor, cost, and resource intensive when we build huge concrete projects. Smaller green spaces inside of concrete buildings require more effort to grow and maintain, compared to letting nature do the work for us in larger open spaces. In built-up or confined spaces, the pollinators and animals that use plants and trees become pests that people want to exterminate or at least displace. Built up urban areas cause the heat island effect, which can lead to increased demand for climate control -- thus more cost and energy consumption. I've seen articles about various research efforts to develop cheaper, lower environmental impact, less resource-intensive concrete alternatives, more effective building and technology design for climate control, etc. In aggregate, these slowly move the needle in favor of being able to build bigger. But my overall takeaway has been that while many things are certainly possible, they all come at a price. So there has to be enough demand and profit to make a megabuilding project worth developing. Because there's a constant pressure for developers to turn a profit, they're going to prioritize cost-cutting and revenue generation, minimizing the expensive elements of resident quality of life and health. The economic factors that drive high density development projects tend to not promote proper incentives or regulations for the IRL deficiencies you've pointed out and more: lack of sunlight, poor air quality (insufficient circulation/ventilation increases CO2 ppm, which I've seen some people saying is a factor in our mental health, cognitive performance, and productivity -- but I don't have enough formal background to evaluate these claims/studies), and lack of green spaces (which contributes to and interacts with the previous two points). My final point is least grounded in actual issues with intensive urban development. "Bigger surely must be better" is a corollary to the rule of cool in fiction. It goes back to the early medieval period when local myths grew up around Roman ruins and prehistoric mounds and stone construction -- storytellers attributed these to giants, gods, or heroes. We like spectacular big things, whether it's gravity-defying star destroyers, hovertanks bigger than an M26 Pershing or German Maus, triple-hearted WH40K space marines wielding 20mm bolt guns with no shoulder stock, kaiju-fighting mecha, and yes, cyberpunk megabuildings. In all these cases, that which is merely human is marginalized. No one thinks first about accessibility in a star destroyer. How many toilets are needed for a full crew on the Enterprise? What does the sewage treatment system look like on these ships? What's the average commute time from crew quarters to assigned crew stations at a fast walk? Why are the interior passages so huge when IRL volume and mass always come at a premium? What kind of future economy must underpin such lavish flouting of physics? How much handwavium fuel is required to suspend a space dreadnought in planetary gravity? What prevents that eye-watering power output from turning everyone on the ground below into microwaved crispy critters and flattening every structure that's not a bomb shelter? (As a sidenote, I'm having trouble thinking of any SF author or artist who does a good job balancing a mundane human perspective with grand scale. Cyberpunk and dystopian fiction deliberately marginalizes the individual human perspective in order to convey the genre themes of alienation, isolation, and devaluation of humans. OTOH I can think of a lot of authors who don't balance the human perspective. e.g. Isaac Asimov often used his characters as mouthpieces for various concepts or facets of his larger narratives. Frank Herbert was awful at depicting believable human characters in his breath-taking world-building -- Adam Sandler does a better job of capturing the human condition than Herbert. :D And decades before Godwin's law became a thing, I read about how Hitler's art was criticized for drawing immense buildings that marginalized people. Obviously there were artists before and after Hitler who also drew architecture and landscapes with no people or very tiny people, so favoring the larger-than-human spectacle doesn't necessarily lead to sociopathy and mass murder. But I think it still inherently shows where the creator's priorities are -- big cool concept first, humans second.) If there's no logical extrapolation from current trends in science and society, I've seen this fiction described as science-fantasy as an alternative label to space opera. In fantasy, cost isn't a factor. Human limitations aren't factors. You make whatever you want to fulfill your narrative needs and the rule of cool. So it's contradictory and a bit silly to try to rationalize fantasy. Harder science fiction brings IRL limitations and the human scale back in, to varying degrees. It uses tight spaces, limited resources, and design constraints as drivers for the story. Taken to a pedantic extreme, this can make hard science boring or stifling. Going the other direction, historical fiction or fantasy tries to bring a hard science approach to race, culture, and economics of magic, demihumans, etc. There's less room for a dragon the size of Tolkien's Smaug in harder fantasy -- if it's not magical or less magical, how does it fit into an ecosystem? How many sheep/cattle/humans a year does it have to consume? So I think that looking at cyberpunk megabuildings as a source of inspiration or influence for real urban planning will require tempering the unrestrained fictional concept with real limitations of materials, economy, etc. Just like how concept art and concept cars push the imagination prior to being toned down for actually feasible production, maybe a realistic consideration of megabuildings means making them a bit less uncompromisingly mega.
Very insightful vid, thought merely crossed my mind a few times whenever I walked through V's apartment and thought it was pretty comfy! The complex too, in reach, fostering a sense of community & all as similar faces interact regularly. And that's pretty wild to think about in a dystopian setting where doom & gloom are the norm. Guess there are things we can take inspiration from even from this.
@@95keat Yep, tho' it doesn't seem to be that luxurious (heck, it's still a one room flat), just very effectively made. Way more effective than many of our 2-3 room ones who take up a lot more pace while providing similar or less things.
307 subs, criminally underrated. Many of your points struck my muse to work on considering the depiction of megabuildings in being more hostile and uncompromising to the needs of the people subjected to their very standardized, prefabricated dwellings and limited public spaces. Between Cyberpunk 2077 and Dredd, I think we get the best examples of how theoretical arcological designs can be made to maximize those designing, constructing, and owning them while practically making these spaces a breeding ground for zoochosis type behaviors - things we can see in zoos with animals in subpar roaming space, lack of means to stimulate their movement, arguably, as humans are animals, it remains up for discussion about how zoochosis behaviors may already be present in society. The rate of mental illnesses could be a show of how society is structured as it is now could be impacting our wellbeing. Looking forward to more and checking the rest of your uploads!
I’m living in a much more densely populated area than night city for the past decade. Inequalities based on wealth and mental health issues are very real here, too. If you ever want to experience such lifestyle, come and visit Macao. Not only the casinos but the residential areas. You’d be amazed 😅
Megabuildings were one of my favorite locations in the game and quite frankly may be where most of my hours are in because I’d just enjoy chilling there and listening to all the sounds of venders and advertisements and stuff. Really wish we got to see more of them
Arcologies were a big thing in SimCity 2000, but represented a rather utopian view of the viability of a vertical city given current cultural norms in the West when it comes to property and space development.
In the original cyberpunk novels from William Gibson, those megabuildings are called arcologies were millions live and work with everything the need. Saudi Arabia just tried to build one in an insanly stupid form "the line". They have a lot of very obvious benefits, but we just do not have the need to build those. Because despite the eco propaganda, the world is mostly empty and we have really enough cheap ground to build houses.
I see your point, and this was mostly just a way for me to gush about an aspect of cyberpunk that I really enjoyed. Though I do think these projects could have merit in cities where space is much more limited, but still have a lot of demand for housing. Thanks for the comment :)
Sprawl is a major problem. Density is universally good. Spreading everything is out is a disaster for culture, economy, environment, and simply put time.
I feel the architecture is kinda like cyberpunk as a genre itself: one one hand allures, all the shiny new tech, the cool ideas of space use, the kitsch, the neo-corporatism where glamour meets functionality, but on the other hand you have the rich fucking over the poor amped up to 11, the brutalist architecture as a statement of the corps over the everyday people, both figuratevily and literally with the arasaka tower or millitech building in the inner downtown city towering over EVERYTHING ELSE, that in stark contrast to the improvised huts in Kabuki or Chinatown. In general the city design in CP2077 is unlike any other video game I experienced so far, never before felt a world sl believe to me before.
Rich that fucking over poor? Ey you can come to any 3rd world and my old country Indonesia! All of them have the most absurd wealth disparity. These day it's amplified and getting up to ridiculous level nowadays despite the technology like the internet and smartphones for free education.. and they used it just for entertainment and not for building/assisting to improve their life in terms of skills to become rich soo the cyberpunk stuff is already happened on that part of the world
I don’t like the megabuildings purely because in cyberpunk 2077, there is a hard death barrier both above and below the play area atrium. Though you can quite easily jump up to a higher balcony or down to a lower one with good use of cyberware, you’re just killed outright. You can climb on top of any building in the game if you’re good enough, but for some reason, they put a hard limit in the megabuildings. Makes me mad
Megabuildings certainly are a fascinating idea...and I think one that we'll naturally have to tackle as we start building out into space, either in orbit or in ship designs. I'd personally love to live in one so long as it wasn't my entire world....Covid Lockdowns and the general depression of that time are still impacting myself and dozens of people I care about. If the building becomes a prison, it's no longer a home no matter how 'nice' or well thought out/planned/maintained
I don´t think V's apartment is so compact. It certiainly is much bigger than the apartment of The 5th Element as well as MANY apartments in NY. In games, places usually seem smaller then they really are. You think you are in a cramped space and then when you pay attention, your character height is only HALF of the floor to ceiling height... or even less...
People underestimate scale in videogames more often than not, 2 factors are POV or FOV (field of view) being almost half or less than a humans natural FOV and character speed or travel time being approximately 20MPH by default.
People keep saying that these sorts of things are a nightmare and socialized prison, but frankly speaking, I don't see anything viable being more pleasant and freeing. Cars and the modern use of them are actual living nightmares and self-imposed prisons that people have accepted as normal and defend violently. I mean, you can't get out of your car whenever you want, you're limited to using them on only predetermined places, and they are one of the two major expenses of modern families, consuming easily a third to half of all the money you make. Not to mention that 95% of the time, their only use is to carry your ass to and from work, all the while destroying your physical and mental health. I don't see anybody more full of anger than people who spend hours a day in a car, and I seriously think that the number of people who actually like their car and driving is miniscule as pretty much nobody uses them other than for things they absolutely have to. Megabuildings free us from that actual dystopian nightmare we currently live, and multi-use towers are the early steps towards that. In my city, we're building a lot of new multi-use condos and apartment buildings, where the first floor is dedicated to commercial use. Despite rent for those commercial units being over seven figures, they easily make up for the cost and almost never see one go out of business despite so many other businesses close down these last few years. The proximity makes them especially resilient to downturns, and the high density makes them capable of creating real greenspaces in the middle of high density cities. My city has actual green parks surrounded by a whole bunch of these sorts of towers, that are used extensively because so many people are within walking distance to them. Parking lots aren't needed and thus parking space is extremely limited, yet you can find open spots quite often. People call these sorts of buildings nightmares, but the only nightmare is the realization that people have been living one all this time and are terrified to actually confront that fact by accepting there's a better way.
There's a middle road that requires neither road-raging car addiction nor megabuildings. Most urban planners I've seen who create YT/social media content are advocates for mixed use zoning that restricts motor vehicle access (either outright, reducing lanes, and/or scheduling times of day to permit motor vehicles). Just eliminating or reducing car-scaled space use is a huge step. On a residential street, 20 feet (6 meters) is considered narrow for car traffic (this includes the sidewalks for pedestrians). Allowing for proper safe spacing and braking distances, each car needs approx 250+ feet (80 meters) combined in front and behind. That's a bubble of about 5000 sq ft or 50 sq m. On highways, speed is doubled but lane width is halved by eliminating the sidewalks, so the car's space bubble is stretched and squished to be twice as long, but half as wide; so space required per car stays relatively constant, to my layman surprise. A pedestrian OTOH needs only about 100 sq ft or 10 sq m, and can be compressed into far less space more safely than a car. The Netherlands is often cited as a positive example, and last I checked, they didn't have to go full monty into dystopian megabuildings in order to improve human scaled accessibility and quality of life. :D
@@dakaodo I didn't really mean to insist that megabuildings were the way to go for all future buildings, but that it was just the right direction. There's a lot of little details that they do poorly, but the general idea of large towers that mix residential and commercial everyday commercial spaces together is not only an efficient use of space, but also has far more benefits, including being a far greater driver of economic growth compared to the current model. My main point was that it was the dogmatic adherence to what we currently have that is the problem and looking at things like the megabuildings with an open mind was the way to bring about a better future for all of us. After all, while population growth has slowed worldwide and I believe has even started to decline in some places, the growth will return in the future and there is frankly no space for suburban sprawl. My own area for about 300 km radius (up to national boarders at least) is almost all used up already. Lots of people already commute hundreds of km for work, which is really insane if you think about it for even a moment. It shouldn't be normal to leave your city, cross another city, all to reach the next city for work, then do that again to come back home. But the modern car culture makes that normal, which is why my city has an average transit time of about an hour and a half, last time I saw the numbers almost a decade ago. Megabuildings solve that, as well as many other problems, including taking back the roads for local use, and mixed use zones are proof of its effectiveness for both housing and economic value. I also want to emphasize that I don't mean for everybody to live in such buildings, just those who want to. If you want to live on your farm and have to use a generator to provide your home with electricity and pay extra bills for plumbing and taxes for a hundred km road that services less people than it has mileage, then that's your right. But not everybody wants to live like that, and those who like the benefits of high density housing should have that option as well.
Eh where I live people say having a license/car is freeing, their argument that you can drive anywhere you want if you have a car, I can see their view but I also agree with you. I've been playing with the idea of giving up my car as of late due to financial reasons.
@@DutchThriceman I mean, I'm not against people having cars. Just that the way cities are set up, it's real difficult to live UNLESS if you take the sacrifice to own a car. I mean, you hear all the soccer mom jokes that's been going around since probably before I was born, and don't think about it beyond just laughing, until you realize that soccer moms exist because kids are basically imprisoned inside their suburban houses unless if mom drives them to some club. Hell, if you don't own a car, you live in a prison if you don't own a car in the suburbs, as it's impossible to get around without one. Some people enjoy driving and like to go about late at night driving around, but find me a person that enjoys traffic and gridlock, who isn't full of stress and rage each and every day because of it, then remember that that person PAID for the PRIVALAGE of going through that experience, spending a third or more of their salary on top of all the licensing, registration, and insurance that comes with driving.
I somewhat disagree. Driving is neither hellish prison nor a nightmare for most people. It opens doors. You live somewhat by the coast? It could be only an hour drive away! Unless everyone you love and care about is in this megabuilding or really close, you'd have to Uber yourself there or something. Eliminating driving sounds like a bad idea. I like driving, and gridlock isn't fun, but driving isn't the issue. It happens because of less efficient design & accidents. Megabuildings definitely could help in places that have high density issues, IF they are affordable. Which they won't be at first. I think a better solution would be to lay out the city better and have housing closer to work.
Great video! Megabuildings (or Arcologies as I first heard of them because of Shadowrun) have always been one of my favorite concepts explored in cyberpunk science fiction. I'd honestly love to play a game as immersive as Cyberpunk 2077 entirely set in one.
Megabuildings can be brought to reality through many different avenues. Personally, my experience in engineering says that current private developers would always try to maximize sale cost per square foot at the lowest cost per square foot. Public spaces would be minimized in exchange for private square footage and units for sale. Something like a Megabuilding can be approached alternatively through Public Development where the Municipality can build the megabuilding itself and sell floor space privately similar to the World Trade Center and the Port Authority of NY and NJ. Like the World Trade Center these metropolitan spaces can be invested in through joint ventures, similar to semi-private toll infrastructure. Regardless of path of development the Municipality needs to be involved beyond just surface level permitting to ensure positive, community forward design. Large capital projects like this will always face pushback without justification. The first megabuilding may have an insurmountable hurdle ahead of it if densification and urbanization does not become a central focus of the public agenda.
Epic vid, you seriously need more subscribers, count me as one of them. If you want to look at the building that the Dredd Megablock is based on (and the Cyberpunk Megatowers by extension) look into the Ponte City (Highest residential tower on the continent for 48 years) in my home town of Johannesburg. It was built exactly for all the reasons you claimed, but today the first three floors are now a garbage heap and luxury penthouses go for dirt cheap in comparison to other places. Gang activity in the 80's and later gang takeover in the 90's knocked the tower off the "desirable places to stay" list. To make it even more Cyberpunk Dystopian, thanks to the hollow design, it was proposed in the 90's to turn the tower into the world's first high tech, high rise, Max Sec, panopticon prison. Something that would have been at home in Demolition man.
Another issue of Mega buildings is that its a lot of eggs in one basket. One decent earthquake or even a war and those buildings are coming down hard and at great human life cost. I think in the most recent Dredd movie they said about 800,000 people could live in one building. Don't get me wrong i like the aesthetics of megabuilding's and contained cities but they only really make sense in geologically stable regions or off world. On another note i am a fan of optimizing space. In star citizen there is a need to conserve space on most ships and i cant get over the design of the restrooms in some of those ships. Silly i know to admire a bathroom but i just like how the room itself is like 4x4x7 and the toilet and sink pop out of the wall, there is a compartment in the wall for toilet paper, soaps and towels, and the floor is a drain for the showerhead above. Its an all in one space and i like that for some reason.
Megabuildings are just hotels. You have some restaurants at the bottom, then rooms, somewhere in the middle some leisure facilities and the rooms again. I know the concept is somewhat fascinating for it to be a residential facility but it's not out of this world.
dude... the cyberpunk universe is a dystopia... and we are heading into it. Wanting Megabuildings is just the direct way into the orwellscenario on highspeed. Wanting to go more and more urban will result in the exact cyberpunk scenario we see in the game. It's not the way to prefer.
Mhmm, this. Nutrient goop may be an answer to food shortages and such but those are gonna be created by the people who end up selling the goop. The goop isn’t necessary if we actually develop for sustainability and not profit
That’s how ends up tho, don’t need mega buildings when there’s space outside. So sure you could go out but it’s just gonna be road and parking lot and more mega building
You pointed out many of the benefits, pitfalls and problems with creating and living in a megastructure style arcology. Sound proofing being a baseline requirement. Interior open spaces along with social space besides food would be on my list must. We have current analogues in luxury high rises and cruise ships, the quality of life can be planned for as long as the socio-economic system underpinning it supports people thriving. You have blade runner on one hand and the star trek enterprise on the other
It's strange to me that people can't understand that some people actually like living in a mega building type scenario. Obviously, a carefully planned one without the crime and sanitation issues. A nice megabuidling with amenities and studio apartments would be incredible. Of course, V's apartment has a large living room but is missing a private bed room, room for a washing machine and doesn't have a kitchen. It's kinda inefficiently designed and more designed to be efficient for the gamer over for someone that actually lives there. Homie has a weird round couch that doesn't seem too comfortable and a tiny tv that is weirdly positioned.
The thing about mega structures is that they are cool but almost never practical, constructing a massive building housing what would essentially be a town condensed into a single unit can cause a myriad of issues in the long term as the community's needs change but the huge monolith of a building doesn't, and also they can become too dependent on the economy of scale that might just not happen like what killed the capsule building in Japan, despite the original plan being that capsules would be replaced as needed in practice none were ever replaced due to how hard to do so was in reality so the whole building just sat there slowly rotting because it wasn't designed for being repaired. And Kowloon walled city is a terrible example because it was 100% an informal settlement created by a legal loophole, that's why they had to keep building upwards instead of to the sides, it was basically a favela with a hard limit to it's maximum area. Most of that thriving industry and comercial district that happened at ground level originated from the fact that regulations couldn't be enforced in there, so we're actually talking a bout a bunch of businesses that set up shop there because they could do whatever the heck they wanted without (much) fear of being closed down by health inspectors, safety inspectors, or raided by the police; in exchange of having to deal with the local mafia. If anything that settlement was, and still is despite no longer existing, studied because it's an example of how far you can push urban density before a complete social collapse. In reality a complex of smaller buildings (max 6 floors ideally) with green spaces in-between and stores and other services at ground level is much more efficient, just keep in mind that they should ideally not be located too far from a downtown and that they will need strong public transit. Trains, buses, and grid city design with smaller roads and wider walkways can fix a good chunk of urban issues.
"this experience led me to wonder why spaces like this, aren't more common in real life" weellll, 1 what your describing was the original design intention of what Malls were thought-up as, and 2 such places never actually happened, because of financial and legal incentives towards accomodation and designs based on or around the car and its capabilities (like stroads, drive-thru fast-food shacks, at-level mega-mega parking lots, and suburbia in general) starting at about 1920, aaaand arguably continuing on through the 2020's. This was then coupled with certain online store and online package-tracking features coming into full development in the 2000's, which basically delivered the death-blow to most sorts of brick-and-mortar mall-buildings (both 'malls-proper' as well as more than afew strip-malls and box-stores) for all time.
I'd love to live somewhere like here I think. I've lived in the middle of nowhere my entire life....I don't get to see a lot of people, it's very lonely
The megabuildings in Cyberpunk are making woefully inefficient use of their space, your starter apartment is way bigger than it really needs to be for no apparent reason. Big wide walkways and open central courtyards are nice, but these are not significantly larger in actual floor real-estate than a low end skyscraper. The thing that's really nice about the megabuildings though is that you have a lot of diversity in the type of things and businesses around you, within a couple floors, while due to things like security concerns, and difficulty of getting utilities to certain floors most "real" buildings tend to have wide swaths of specific use
You say that mega buildings “could” become spaces of inequality. The reality is that they WILL. But to be honest, we already have inequality when it comes to peoples residence. Rich people can afford acres of property while poor people can only rent. I don’t think you’re ever going to completely get rid of inequalities like this, but I think mega buildings would turn out to be bad almost no matter what you do. I could be wrong and maybe people will figure out how to do it in a way that won’t end up that way. But I’m pretty convinced that how our world is the poor are going to end up at the bottom without sunlight.
I currently live in a giant, tall, fucked up subsidized housing project. The walgreens across the street i bleeding money but they aren't allowed to close it down because of some law about creating food deserts (no, not dessert the food, but desert like sand). I can totally see projects starting to have little slum-malls inside of them. I am not looking forward to my future if I remain this fucking broke
No matter how high-end a housing estate starts, it will eventually become dilapidated which will cause local business to up sticks and leave it as a cesspit. Dredd shows this rather well, which is unsurprising considering the times that spawned the comics.
WARNING: This a long one. Not ranting just, long... Sounds to me that the benefits you see of living in a megabuilding are pretty similar to what me and my roommate are experiencing right now without living in one. Hell, we even have a farmer's market and liquor store within walking distance! The apartment complex we live in used to be part of the campus of the private school my roommate works at right next door. Since the school got its own dorms, the complex was handed off to another corporate body with a few strings attached so the rent for employees and students is lower than those who are for lack of a better term "outsiders". It's a development that troubles me because it sounds like a lot of the same mentalities that make people afraid of immigrants or tourists (a mentality I totally understand living in FL dealing with all the Snowbirds), seem to be at play here. If Dredd is anything to go by, megabuildings seem more like gated neighborhoods owned and ran by real estate companies rather than small towns ran by a peoples' government. BTW, working for a real estate agency as the groundskeeper of said neighborhoods is the WORST! The residents were nice but the corpos as you'd expect were greedy, negligent and abusive. (BURN CORPO SHIT!) There's also engineering to consider and speaking now as a guard of one of the high rise apartments I helped build... I wouldn't wanna live here, not with all the corners cut and redundancies sacrificed to put these buildings up faster and cheaper while gouging out residents for twice the money me and my roommate pay for a far better constructed and managed property.
Where'd you get the info that the capsule tower was a failure? IIRC it only "failed" because there weren't more capsule towers built, which made the capsules expensive. That, and the integrated electronics couldn't be updated (which wouldn't be a problem if a continuous supply of new capsules had been produced, with updated tech in the newer ones).
I don't wanna be mean, but the way you write sounds like ChatGPT. (Not that I care if it is, you can do what you want) But like, if you do want feedback, I'd say work on finding your writer's voice a little more. Also sorry if this comes off as more of a deliberate insult. You clearly put a lot of effort into this over all.
No offense taken, I appreciate the feedback! I definitely agree that there is plenty of room for improvement. Is there anything specific to my writing that gave you the ai-generated feeling?
@@NoEffortMandated Don't take these as gospel obviously, because it's more of a vibe than anything specific, but the way you use lists to make your points so often, certain phrases like "such fiction warns that without careful planning..." and the general structure of "[positive thing to say]" followed by "yet [negative thing to say]" is all just very reminiscent of ChatGPT. But honestly, upon thinking about it a little more, I think my brain just expects a more casual/conversation writing style from youtube videos. Like if this were a written essay, I probably wouldn't blink twice at what you wrote. I think hearing a very stiff academic writing style in a youtube video probably just set my brain off in a weird way. Don't read too far into it. In hindsight it wasn't a very productive comment. Anyway, subscribed.
Holy shit thank you for the detailed reply! This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. I totally agree that my writing comes across as kinda stiff, as most of my writing experience comes from school/college. Thanks for subscribing, and I hope you'll see improvement in future videos :)
@@NoEffortMandated Fwiw, I liked the video but just thought you were going for a Jacob Geller style of phrasing and videography. I subbed from my main channel though and from what I can tell in the comments your subscriber count is heading upward over the past two days, so congrats!
There is americans, who think megabuilding is the future and there is Europeans, who experienced megabuildings and can tell you it's not the future you really want.
A much less glamorous example are commie blocks. They achived a pretty decent balance between all of the factors you named. The only big problem is that there is barely any parking space leading to people parking on the sidewalk. Honestly just building those but with underground parking (or just good public transport but thats never happening) could be the solution for the current housing crisis.
Living in St. Petersburg, I can confidently say that they were one thing commies DIDN'T FUCK UP. Parking is a problem, though, as they were built with cars being hard to obtain in the USSR in mind. They're actually quite cozy when the buildings themselves and the areas around them (lawns, pavements, parks) are maintained well. As far as public transport goes, it's actually pretty decent in the post-Soviet countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. That said, most buses, trams and trains, while following well-planned routes and doing a really good primary job of helping people get where they need, are ancient rusty wrecks that constantly break, that make insane amounts of noise and damage rails, have leaking roofs and shitty ventilation and only meet the BARE MINIMUM comfort standards.
Great Video. How do you have so little subs? You just got one more for sure. Imo these Megabuildings are super interesting, but usually not feasible in the real world for a variety of reasons.
megacity buildings be bad due to how dense & compact them be. and especially wayy too tall. id say the 'college dorm' setup is more ideal. actually, there was an apartment building across from my college dorm that was setup the same as the college dorm heh. the biggest issue with these megacities is they are just inherently hazardous. natural disasters & man made disasters become even more deadlier if there's so many people living in one place. ...... and also, a future were we dont actually own anything and everything is just rented to us by a megacorp that owns everything .... yeah that just be dystopic by itself. condo's would be the better option there atleast, with people mutually paying for the land.
Closest you can get are the east European "Blocks" with like thousands of appartments in a giant concrete building. And they are not exactly the nicest place to live. So a "realistic" megabuilding wouldn't even be close to what you see in this game.
Hi, nice video, I really like your highlight of places like the Capsule tower and Hangzhou's Regent International (There are a lot of good footage on Tiktok and rather shady websites btw) because I've never heard of them. However, no offense, I find your conclusion to be rather... repetitive, especially towards the end where it felt like you were just repeatedly saying how Cyberpunk's spacious and efficient design is contrasted with real world failures. I wish you would've delved a little deeper on say, how might health concerns (such as those faced by the Kowloon walled city) could be tackled and whether places like those in media have depicted such things. I feel like you include really interesting tidbits but not really expand on them, I get that this might be too much for a short essay but I feel like the last 2-3 minutes of this video could be more interesting if you had gone slightly more on the issues than just a mere mention. Anyways, sorry about the unsolicited critique, the video is really nice and informative, I hope you keep honing your craft!
Various settlements or towns or whatever in SF do a better job of showing you how slum it would actually be (the mars settlement for example), and CP2077 is a nice fantasy where the hyper capitalism is somehow not actually hyper capitalism and there is all this wasted space (from the dollar per sq-foot pov) that would never happen - your best comparison is NYC (Manhattan specifically) or Tokyo. You like CP2077 because that's how it was designed, to be diverse enough and pleasant enough within its size - its utterly fails to make an ACTUAL hyper capitalist hellscape. Many games have this problem, form the newer Zelda's to SF's older brothers - things are both bad enough for your adventure to happen, but also just pleasant and idealistic most places you go. A nice, safe, comfortable apocalypse.
I never thought someone would play cyberpunk and go "actually, you know what, I'd like to live in that corporate slum"
Depends how you define slum. I live in a 2200 sq ft apartments. There are 96 such apartments in 1 building and there are 8 such buildings in a gated community. The corpo that built left after selling the apartments and the entire community is now union owned. There are like 700 families in the union.
appartment buildings are slums ???
@KazuhiraMiller-y1w thats less because that comparison is apt and more because its a game, and they wont actually have the plethora of poor slums that would actually exists. BAsically, CP2077 is far to nice and diverse vs what the real thing would be, because videogame. What the game does have is the original idea of what a mall would be (a bunch of stores and entertainment experiences right on top of apartments, surrounded by woods.
Bro the modern world is already cyberpunk just without all the lights
Beats being homeless tbh.
The problem with megabuildings, as it stands today, is more about bureaucracy, costs, corporate greed and safety. The thing that the game fails to showcase in the dystopian future is that the owners would maximize costs per square footage, so there wouldn't be the wide areas that we see in the game, but rather small hallways leading to stairs or elevators. Sure, the shopping floors might resemble malls, but that's it. The single occupant efficiency apartment we see in V's apartment is about as large as my 1 bedroom apartment (RL) too, with the exception of the floorplan not being an open floorplan like in the game (which gives the illusion of a larger area).
This is...a pretty convincing case. Can I ask what you majored in?
*Maximize revenue per square foot while minimizing costs.
I thought that too, but then I realize V probably makes good money working as a merc, so he had to good flat. Look at the cop we help out for a quest who turtle died. His flat is what I would imagine majority of all apartments in the megabuilding look.
Actually the mega buildings were designed as "role models", believe it or not. That's why they may be pretty spacious.
@@thaedleinad Aren't the mega-buildings also considered to be "high tier living areas" for the non-elites? For those outside of mega-buildings, their apartments are pretty much slums. Pretty much "middle class living" per se?
I once actually LIVED in a megabuilding--the Lefrak City Complex in Queens. Nice apartments, shops, gyms, restaurants, even nearby schools. And it worked for a while...but when I came back twenty years later, Lefrak had become a combat zone with drug gangs and wrecked infrastructure. So when I write about Night City megastructures, I know exactly what I'm writing about.
Any idea what happened there to cause such a significant change?
@@judi1009 politics
@@Rootiga Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
@@judi1009democrats being dumb and republicans not letting the very few smart/moral democrats get positive bills passed. and black culture
@@judi1009
Either you know or you don't.
If you know, you don't need to be told.
If you don't know, you'd deny the truth regardless.
Clearly you do not know. And thus you cannot discern what caused the issues.
I will be nice and give you a hint: Demographics and their arrival.
1:22 pressing E thinking its the "use" keybind and activating sandy/berserk/overclock is so relatable
this is why i almost never have grenades equipped, cause i may have accidentally thrown them into a crowd once (or twice)
Lol I've never thought about that. I always play with controllers
As someone who's a sci-fi fan AND who works in the building industry AND has hundreds of hours on Cyberpunk 2077, this video was made just for me.
I've always been fascinated by arcologies because they're such a natural fit for dense urban design. In ancient Rome most regular people lived in "insula" which were mixed use tower blocks up to seven floors high. So they were basically ancient arcologies.
The insula ground floor was always retail shops or other businesses because they could serve passing pedestrians as well as the building inhabitants, while also accepting bulk deliveries of goods without having to carry everything upstairs. The lower residential floors were the upmarket larger apartments because you didn't have to climb too many stairs to get to them, while the upper floors at the top of the stairs were the cheaper apartments. (This is the opposite of many cyberpunk scenarios, where the wealthy live higher up). Most of the insula housing units also had no kitchen (like V's apartment) because it was assumed you would buy and eat all your food in one of the taverns downstairs.
Insula living must have been an intensely communal experience. You automatically got to know the owner of your favorite tavern downstairs because you interacted with them daily. The owners of these businesses also usually lived in the building themselves. You would also meet your neighbors in the tavern because you all ate your meals there.
The main reason we don't have these structures anymore is because of zoning regulations. These regulations often force developers to build for one use only, so we end up with different buildings such as office blocks, apartment blocks, and shopping malls. Relaxing these regulations would see developers building apartment blocks on top of shopping malls which would give us a building very similar to a megabuilding.
The only drawback is that high-rise concrete towers are the most expensive buildings to build per square foot. That's why you only see them in high-demand areas.
Ha ha, I should have just skipped writing my own much more rambling take on this. :D
I realize that social media urban planner content isn't reflective of actual industry or regulatory practices, but all the articles and videos I've seen tend to endorse mixed use zoning, mid to high density housing (townhomes up to apartments/condos that are only tall enough to skirt the low side of requiring heavier concrete construction; maybe 3-5 stories?), and semi/full restrictions on motor vehicles through the area (using a combination of traffic flow, fewer lanes, less parking, scheduled times of day).
In my city, there are a few areas where trendy developers have tried to cash in on the mixed zoning concept. In downtown/midtown, makes economic sense. In an immense bedroom community with central planning, it seems a bit forced -- but maybe in a few decades if that bedroom community grows enough to become its own metro hub, it'll make sense.
@@dakaodo Some fascinating work has been done on how the built environment effects the psychology of people living in it.
It turns out that 3 - 5 floors is the optimum number, and even correlates to lower crime. Lower than 3 floors is inefficient for public transport, forcing people to use cars. On the other hand more then 5 floors leads to alienation and a disconnect from the communal space of the street.
In my jurisdiction developers have the added incentive that only buildings over 5 floors are required to have an elevator, which is a huge added expense. So we get a lot of buildings up to 5 floors and a lot of buildings of 10 floors and more. There are very few buildings with 5 - 10 floors.
Wow my guy that was a lot to learn in an instant thank you for the knowledge n honestly it reminds me of Minneapolis in downtown where you have certain buildings that are apartments or hotels and below them is a sprawling shopping center if dozens if not hundreds of stores at one point
I think you’d enjoy the Jerry Pournelle novel “Oath of Fealty”, if you haven’t read it. It’s speculative fiction set mostly in an arcology, and goes into both the technical details of such a building, and the sociology.
@@Blu3bonic Minneapolis is one of the only cities in the US outside of Texas that hasn't embraced NIMBYISM. They still let people build multifamily housing.
The building that took me away was the rooftop of Hanson's DogTown HQ. The building is in construction until the very top where it fades into a complete form which is ironic that the rooftop was finished before anything else.
probably some symbolism for him building up his empire and connections, ignoring how dogtown is decaying and suffering
@@bp42s56 and it also looks more like a penis
I just thought that Hanson finished the top, form over function
Compact is crazy, that apartment is massive
It's not massive but it's also not very large. I mean it has one couch. a horribly placed small screen (makes no sense to me since I figure you'd have a whole wall dedicated to a screen and technology would likely have progressed enough that they are dirt cheap, bought in panels/pieces that you can add too) but his apartment is missing some crucial stuff .. like a kitchen, and place for a washing and drying machine. Other than that it's relatively spaceous
One thing I found out today is that if V's apartment is reminds people of college dorms and is "compact" than American education system is not overpriced
We’ve tried megastructures many times before. They’re always inhuman in the end and not places people want to live. Not to mention the upkeep of such structures are insane
Ultimately we don’t need megastructures, we need to stop building the least efficient housing possible (suburbs). Amsterdam and such have the most effective type of housing, no absurdly ugly building necessary
They are soooo friggin cool tho, Judge Dredd really nails it
what kind of buildings does Amsterdam have?
@@SuperTinku883-5 floors of apartments, arranged like a square with a "courtyard" style hole in the middle, generally full of shops and civic amenities. Walkable blocks.
@@_zurr So basically an apartment complex. There's plenty of those around the world.
@@SuperTinku88its diversified bij apartment complexes townhouses rowhouses en some single standing housing sprinkled in en some high rises here and there and very good planing with shops everywhere for walkable infrastructure plus safety
@@ArawnOfAnnwn No, Apartment complexes, especially the poorer ones in America are generally insulated bubbles of inter-community walk-ability that are immediately cut off by massive multi lane stroads that butt right up against the complex property lines, they have no shops within the walkable area because American zoning laws make it literally illegal, to get to any place to do any shopping you will be forced to wait and cross at least one massive busy road where thousands if not tens of thousands of cars will drive through while flying over the speed limit, if not wait for a bus to travel across town to go to the only store with fresh produce in a 10 mile radius. Most of the time, the sidewalks just end without any alternative but to just walk along the shoulder of a bridge or roadway.
It is literally nothing like Amsterdam, and you are deluding yourself by saying otherwise and accepting a worse designed world than even the one your parents grew up in.
I just watched Dredd with friends minute ago and now we're talking about megabuildings.. good timing!
I hope you enjoyed the video :)
I live in hk, so when i heard you say V's apartment is compact, i can only imagine you are living in a palace of sorts
V's apartment is actually dream house to me
Kaoloun also had massive heroin addiction issues as its design made it nearly impossible to catch criminals.
There's a reason a lot of countries refuse to build hostile architecture like this.
*cop-hostile
The city I work has recently had three large apartment buildings built. They are meant to be affordable housing to help with issues of rising rents. They have courtyards, laundry services, gyms, rec areas, parking garages, and even space for businesses like restaurants and convenience stores. Basically, a megabuilding.
Thing is, currently the average one bedroom in our area goes for 1800+ and the cheapest of these units is between 2000-3000 for a small one bedroom. They're all in bad parts of town and it's pretty clear this is an attempt to gentrification the area. The stated target demographic is medical professionals, of which I am.
Thing us, I live in a much bigger apartment in a wooded area in one of the suburbs on the outskirts of the city. It's literally a ten minute drive to work for me. There's ample housing here that is far superior to these developments.
There's no way these places aren't going to end up subsidized. The one that opened a year ago is still half empty.
Feels like I'm watching Cyberpunk 2077 begin.
I’m good in my cardboard box
To each their own ;)
@@NoEffortMandated I've lived in a house, and apartment that was very separated by many walls. I'd rather drive a few minutes to get to anything with a two bedroom apartment than live in basically one small room that can walk to things. But the Japantown apt was pretty sweet.
Same, however, if my cardboard box was tucked into a trash service corridor inside of a mega building, close to a noodle shop and pistol vending machine ... I'd be living on a cloud 9½
Didn’t expect this take but found it really insightful. It’s a refreshing shift of perspective on a concept that seemed exclusively dystopian to me.
V's home is HUGE.
You can raise a family of 5 people is so much space ez.
Most people can't afford such thing in middle of a city
It has a large living room but no place for a washing machine, no private bed rooms or any bed rooms. It's a studio apartment without a kitchen. It's very inefficient
In night city no one cooks thus the vending machines in the apartment I doubt people wash their clothing in their rooms either and yeah V's room is huge I lived in a mega building in seoul wasn't nearly as big as v's room.
Ever since I was a kid watching the original Blade Runner, I was always disappointed of the fact there's no real talk of building megabuildings.
There's plenty if you look for it. It's an old idea, albeit with a different name. At the somewhat more realistic level there's vertical cities, which are still very ambitious. Basically putting everything you'd need in one building, from homes and supermarkets to even school and offices where residents work. At the much more ambitious scale there's arcologies, which often come with very evocative designs in their concept art. They do everything a vertical city would, but also aim to make the city truly self sufficient and independent, with their own food production, energy generation and the like. Neither has ended up being all that economical so far though. Besides that, zoning regulations often prevent such things from being even attempted.
I remember in Cyberpunk 2020 the existence of Mallplexes, contained apartment complexes built into massive shopping malls.
the malls in my area are starting to do that in order to keep afloat
Here in Brazil we have a phenomenon called "The Import Market/Fair"/"A feira dos importados" (The translation kinda sucks, sorry) which is a place where you can find basically everything, from unlocked Playstation 2 (we still sell those, including games) to food, clothes and honestly anything imaginable at this point, and it's the closest thing I have ever seen of a "Megabuilding"/"Conveniently super packed area for shopping" as I'd say, because they aren't living spaces (like houses and apartments), but they are right across the street (I am not joking, 5 minutes of walking and I am inside the Market I grew up with), and recently I've been to the Market in the capital of Minas Gerais, one of our states, and unlike the other Markets, that were just long horizontal places, rarely with a floor above or under, this time it was a building with about 5 or even more floors, you take ladders, elevator, walk between stores, go down ramps, it feels chaotic, sometimes I was even wondering if the floor I was in was at the same height of a different place in the same floor.
It's packed, it's alive, the people who work there know each other very well, they know each other by name, they were guiding me and my father there. It wasn't the cleanest of places, nor the prettiest by normal means, but it was THE closest thing I experienced to this, it was regulated by the workers there and barely by the government, with it's own anatomy, it's own life.
Having experienced that made me think that, even tho you can regulate it, it would always be this chaotic, megabuildings as a whole I mean, there's a fine boundary between what people (here) considers "okay" regulation from the government and "not okay", and honestly a megabuilding probably has to be regulated by government. Not throwing a wrench at your video, I'm just saying that this would be very difficult to maintain, even with all the benefits of a well made megabuilding, people would still find ways to alter it, to modify it and thus make it not as perfect as planned, like it's done in any city, specially planned cities, since I live in one, because here, again, the boundary, people here prefer to make things more like themselves, some hate "the over sanitized look of anything the government does".
Me for myself, I think they are fascinating and kinda beautiful in a way, both the megabuildings, their examples and the Markets i've been rambling about, I can't pin why, but I would love to see more of it.
You brought up a lot of the issues that the urban planner channels I follow have universally discussed. However, in our current environment (economic, social, technological, and ecological), the sweet spot for addressing the needs of residents has gravitated towards medium to high density housing (rather than extremely high density like high rise apartments) and mixed use zoning, with all of the urban planners favoring some degree of human scale walkable streets with limited to prohibited vehicle traffic (they mostly cite metro examples in the Netherlands, some parts of Japanese cities, etc). This is the shops, services, amenities, etc you mention, colocated with residential units ranging between apartments/condos and townhomes.
Crossing this current urban planning aspirational content with your take on megabuildings, cost is a big obstacle to building bigger. It's expensive to build and maintain big buildings and their infrastructure. This just gets worse the bigger the building is, as we run into limits of our material science and start to replace "free" natural parts of the enviroment with artificially constructed alternatives. Concrete production consumes significant amounts of energy and water, produce significant emissions that affect air quality, and concrete use impacts drainage, flooding, and local ecosystems. Everything becomes more labor, cost, and resource intensive when we build huge concrete projects. Smaller green spaces inside of concrete buildings require more effort to grow and maintain, compared to letting nature do the work for us in larger open spaces. In built-up or confined spaces, the pollinators and animals that use plants and trees become pests that people want to exterminate or at least displace. Built up urban areas cause the heat island effect, which can lead to increased demand for climate control -- thus more cost and energy consumption.
I've seen articles about various research efforts to develop cheaper, lower environmental impact, less resource-intensive concrete alternatives, more effective building and technology design for climate control, etc. In aggregate, these slowly move the needle in favor of being able to build bigger. But my overall takeaway has been that while many things are certainly possible, they all come at a price.
So there has to be enough demand and profit to make a megabuilding project worth developing. Because there's a constant pressure for developers to turn a profit, they're going to prioritize cost-cutting and revenue generation, minimizing the expensive elements of resident quality of life and health. The economic factors that drive high density development projects tend to not promote proper incentives or regulations for the IRL deficiencies you've pointed out and more: lack of sunlight, poor air quality (insufficient circulation/ventilation increases CO2 ppm, which I've seen some people saying is a factor in our mental health, cognitive performance, and productivity -- but I don't have enough formal background to evaluate these claims/studies), and lack of green spaces (which contributes to and interacts with the previous two points).
My final point is least grounded in actual issues with intensive urban development. "Bigger surely must be better" is a corollary to the rule of cool in fiction. It goes back to the early medieval period when local myths grew up around Roman ruins and prehistoric mounds and stone construction -- storytellers attributed these to giants, gods, or heroes. We like spectacular big things, whether it's gravity-defying star destroyers, hovertanks bigger than an M26 Pershing or German Maus, triple-hearted WH40K space marines wielding 20mm bolt guns with no shoulder stock, kaiju-fighting mecha, and yes, cyberpunk megabuildings.
In all these cases, that which is merely human is marginalized. No one thinks first about accessibility in a star destroyer. How many toilets are needed for a full crew on the Enterprise? What does the sewage treatment system look like on these ships? What's the average commute time from crew quarters to assigned crew stations at a fast walk? Why are the interior passages so huge when IRL volume and mass always come at a premium? What kind of future economy must underpin such lavish flouting of physics? How much handwavium fuel is required to suspend a space dreadnought in planetary gravity? What prevents that eye-watering power output from turning everyone on the ground below into microwaved crispy critters and flattening every structure that's not a bomb shelter?
(As a sidenote, I'm having trouble thinking of any SF author or artist who does a good job balancing a mundane human perspective with grand scale. Cyberpunk and dystopian fiction deliberately marginalizes the individual human perspective in order to convey the genre themes of alienation, isolation, and devaluation of humans. OTOH I can think of a lot of authors who don't balance the human perspective. e.g. Isaac Asimov often used his characters as mouthpieces for various concepts or facets of his larger narratives. Frank Herbert was awful at depicting believable human characters in his breath-taking world-building -- Adam Sandler does a better job of capturing the human condition than Herbert. :D And decades before Godwin's law became a thing, I read about how Hitler's art was criticized for drawing immense buildings that marginalized people. Obviously there were artists before and after Hitler who also drew architecture and landscapes with no people or very tiny people, so favoring the larger-than-human spectacle doesn't necessarily lead to sociopathy and mass murder. But I think it still inherently shows where the creator's priorities are -- big cool concept first, humans second.)
If there's no logical extrapolation from current trends in science and society, I've seen this fiction described as science-fantasy as an alternative label to space opera. In fantasy, cost isn't a factor. Human limitations aren't factors. You make whatever you want to fulfill your narrative needs and the rule of cool. So it's contradictory and a bit silly to try to rationalize fantasy.
Harder science fiction brings IRL limitations and the human scale back in, to varying degrees. It uses tight spaces, limited resources, and design constraints as drivers for the story. Taken to a pedantic extreme, this can make hard science boring or stifling.
Going the other direction, historical fiction or fantasy tries to bring a hard science approach to race, culture, and economics of magic, demihumans, etc. There's less room for a dragon the size of Tolkien's Smaug in harder fantasy -- if it's not magical or less magical, how does it fit into an ecosystem? How many sheep/cattle/humans a year does it have to consume?
So I think that looking at cyberpunk megabuildings as a source of inspiration or influence for real urban planning will require tempering the unrestrained fictional concept with real limitations of materials, economy, etc. Just like how concept art and concept cars push the imagination prior to being toned down for actually feasible production, maybe a realistic consideration of megabuildings means making them a bit less uncompromisingly mega.
longest comment ever seen on yt… wow
🤓
Very insightful vid, thought merely crossed my mind a few times whenever I walked through V's apartment and thought it was pretty comfy! The complex too, in reach, fostering a sense of community & all as similar faces interact regularly. And that's pretty wild to think about in a dystopian setting where doom & gloom are the norm. Guess there are things we can take inspiration from even from this.
found ya 😊
@@olderbadboy and here I was rockin' a stealthy cyberpunk build
Iirc from what we see of the other room like the sad cops, V's apartment is in the top percentile.
@@95keat Yep, tho' it doesn't seem to be that luxurious (heck, it's still a one room flat), just very effectively made. Way more effective than many of our 2-3 room ones who take up a lot more pace while providing similar or less things.
Not sure about that, most of the room is literal empty space, yet doesn't even have a kitchen. You could count Vs furniture on one hand.
307 subs, criminally underrated. Many of your points struck my muse to work on considering the depiction of megabuildings in being more hostile and uncompromising to the needs of the people subjected to their very standardized, prefabricated dwellings and limited public spaces. Between Cyberpunk 2077 and Dredd, I think we get the best examples of how theoretical arcological designs can be made to maximize those designing, constructing, and owning them while practically making these spaces a breeding ground for zoochosis type behaviors - things we can see in zoos with animals in subpar roaming space, lack of means to stimulate their movement, arguably, as humans are animals, it remains up for discussion about how zoochosis behaviors may already be present in society. The rate of mental illnesses could be a show of how society is structured as it is now could be impacting our wellbeing. Looking forward to more and checking the rest of your uploads!
I’m living in a much more densely populated area than night city for the past decade. Inequalities based on wealth and mental health issues are very real here, too. If you ever want to experience such lifestyle, come and visit Macao. Not only the casinos but the residential areas. You’d be amazed 😅
I highly recommend exploring the hotels in Vegas, it’s so crazy having anything you’d want 24/7. The Wynn is just Arasaka Tower
The urbanistic layout of Cyberpunk always fascinated me.
Man every time I looked out of V's window all I could think about was "man I could go for some Mac N' Cheezus."
I’ve been binging your videos while. Subbed. Keep up the good work!
Great video man, underrated channel fr
Megabuildings were one of my favorite locations in the game and quite frankly may be where most of my hours are in because I’d just enjoy chilling there and listening to all the sounds of venders and advertisements and stuff. Really wish we got to see more of them
Gz on the views man! Extremely well made video.
Arcologies were a big thing in SimCity 2000, but represented a rather utopian view of the viability of a vertical city given current cultural norms in the West when it comes to property and space development.
I don’t need to play this game again, but just seeing your thumbnail made me redownload it. Damn you!!!
In the original cyberpunk novels from William Gibson, those megabuildings are called arcologies were millions live and work with everything the need. Saudi Arabia just tried to build one in an insanly stupid form "the line". They have a lot of very obvious benefits, but we just do not have the need to build those. Because despite the eco propaganda, the world is mostly empty and we have really enough cheap ground to build houses.
I see your point, and this was mostly just a way for me to gush about an aspect of cyberpunk that I really enjoyed. Though I do think these projects could have merit in cities where space is much more limited, but still have a lot of demand for housing. Thanks for the comment :)
Sprawl is a major problem. Density is universally good. Spreading everything is out is a disaster for culture, economy, environment, and simply put time.
I feel the architecture is kinda like cyberpunk as a genre itself: one one hand allures, all the shiny new tech, the cool ideas of space use, the kitsch, the neo-corporatism where glamour meets functionality, but on the other hand you have the rich fucking over the poor amped up to 11, the brutalist architecture as a statement of the corps over the everyday people, both figuratevily and literally with the arasaka tower or millitech building in the inner downtown city towering over EVERYTHING ELSE, that in stark contrast to the improvised huts in Kabuki or Chinatown. In general the city design in CP2077 is unlike any other video game I experienced so far, never before felt a world sl believe to me before.
Rich that fucking over poor? Ey you can come to any 3rd world and my old country Indonesia! All of them have the most absurd wealth disparity. These day it's amplified and getting up to ridiculous level nowadays despite the technology like the internet and smartphones for free education.. and they used it just for entertainment and not for building/assisting to improve their life in terms of skills to become rich soo the cyberpunk stuff is already happened on that part of the world
ytou already have this in places like singapore and other asian cities, americans still live in the 1950s
When the cyberpunk dystopia has nicer affordable housing than real life.
I don’t like the megabuildings purely because in cyberpunk 2077, there is a hard death barrier both above and below the play area atrium. Though you can quite easily jump up to a higher balcony or down to a lower one with good use of cyberware, you’re just killed outright. You can climb on top of any building in the game if you’re good enough, but for some reason, they put a hard limit in the megabuildings. Makes me mad
Megabuildings certainly are a fascinating idea...and I think one that we'll naturally have to tackle as we start building out into space, either in orbit or in ship designs. I'd personally love to live in one so long as it wasn't my entire world....Covid Lockdowns and the general depression of that time are still impacting myself and dozens of people I care about. If the building becomes a prison, it's no longer a home no matter how 'nice' or well thought out/planned/maintained
Soviet urbanization has some of that, having a focus on community spaces and public transportation
You should look into Robin Hood Gardens in London. I think it will be a social centered architecture project you will find interesting.
damn this vid and channel underrated af
i thought you woulda had like 50k or 5k subs instead of 115 subs
I don´t think V's apartment is so compact.
It certiainly is much bigger than the apartment of The 5th Element as well as MANY apartments in NY.
In games, places usually seem smaller then they really are. You think you are in a cramped space and then when you pay attention, your character height is only HALF of the floor to ceiling height... or even less...
People underestimate scale in videogames more often than not, 2 factors are POV or FOV (field of view) being almost half or less than a humans natural FOV and character speed or travel time being approximately 20MPH by default.
People keep saying that these sorts of things are a nightmare and socialized prison, but frankly speaking, I don't see anything viable being more pleasant and freeing. Cars and the modern use of them are actual living nightmares and self-imposed prisons that people have accepted as normal and defend violently. I mean, you can't get out of your car whenever you want, you're limited to using them on only predetermined places, and they are one of the two major expenses of modern families, consuming easily a third to half of all the money you make. Not to mention that 95% of the time, their only use is to carry your ass to and from work, all the while destroying your physical and mental health.
I don't see anybody more full of anger than people who spend hours a day in a car, and I seriously think that the number of people who actually like their car and driving is miniscule as pretty much nobody uses them other than for things they absolutely have to.
Megabuildings free us from that actual dystopian nightmare we currently live, and multi-use towers are the early steps towards that. In my city, we're building a lot of new multi-use condos and apartment buildings, where the first floor is dedicated to commercial use. Despite rent for those commercial units being over seven figures, they easily make up for the cost and almost never see one go out of business despite so many other businesses close down these last few years. The proximity makes them especially resilient to downturns, and the high density makes them capable of creating real greenspaces in the middle of high density cities.
My city has actual green parks surrounded by a whole bunch of these sorts of towers, that are used extensively because so many people are within walking distance to them. Parking lots aren't needed and thus parking space is extremely limited, yet you can find open spots quite often.
People call these sorts of buildings nightmares, but the only nightmare is the realization that people have been living one all this time and are terrified to actually confront that fact by accepting there's a better way.
There's a middle road that requires neither road-raging car addiction nor megabuildings. Most urban planners I've seen who create YT/social media content are advocates for mixed use zoning that restricts motor vehicle access (either outright, reducing lanes, and/or scheduling times of day to permit motor vehicles). Just eliminating or reducing car-scaled space use is a huge step. On a residential street, 20 feet (6 meters) is considered narrow for car traffic (this includes the sidewalks for pedestrians). Allowing for proper safe spacing and braking distances, each car needs approx 250+ feet (80 meters) combined in front and behind. That's a bubble of about 5000 sq ft or 50 sq m. On highways, speed is doubled but lane width is halved by eliminating the sidewalks, so the car's space bubble is stretched and squished to be twice as long, but half as wide; so space required per car stays relatively constant, to my layman surprise. A pedestrian OTOH needs only about 100 sq ft or 10 sq m, and can be compressed into far less space more safely than a car.
The Netherlands is often cited as a positive example, and last I checked, they didn't have to go full monty into dystopian megabuildings in order to improve human scaled accessibility and quality of life. :D
@@dakaodo I didn't really mean to insist that megabuildings were the way to go for all future buildings, but that it was just the right direction. There's a lot of little details that they do poorly, but the general idea of large towers that mix residential and commercial everyday commercial spaces together is not only an efficient use of space, but also has far more benefits, including being a far greater driver of economic growth compared to the current model.
My main point was that it was the dogmatic adherence to what we currently have that is the problem and looking at things like the megabuildings with an open mind was the way to bring about a better future for all of us.
After all, while population growth has slowed worldwide and I believe has even started to decline in some places, the growth will return in the future and there is frankly no space for suburban sprawl. My own area for about 300 km radius (up to national boarders at least) is almost all used up already. Lots of people already commute hundreds of km for work, which is really insane if you think about it for even a moment. It shouldn't be normal to leave your city, cross another city, all to reach the next city for work, then do that again to come back home. But the modern car culture makes that normal, which is why my city has an average transit time of about an hour and a half, last time I saw the numbers almost a decade ago.
Megabuildings solve that, as well as many other problems, including taking back the roads for local use, and mixed use zones are proof of its effectiveness for both housing and economic value.
I also want to emphasize that I don't mean for everybody to live in such buildings, just those who want to. If you want to live on your farm and have to use a generator to provide your home with electricity and pay extra bills for plumbing and taxes for a hundred km road that services less people than it has mileage, then that's your right. But not everybody wants to live like that, and those who like the benefits of high density housing should have that option as well.
Eh where I live people say having a license/car is freeing, their argument that you can drive anywhere you want if you have a car, I can see their view but I also agree with you. I've been playing with the idea of giving up my car as of late due to financial reasons.
@@DutchThriceman I mean, I'm not against people having cars. Just that the way cities are set up, it's real difficult to live UNLESS if you take the sacrifice to own a car.
I mean, you hear all the soccer mom jokes that's been going around since probably before I was born, and don't think about it beyond just laughing, until you realize that soccer moms exist because kids are basically imprisoned inside their suburban houses unless if mom drives them to some club. Hell, if you don't own a car, you live in a prison if you don't own a car in the suburbs, as it's impossible to get around without one.
Some people enjoy driving and like to go about late at night driving around, but find me a person that enjoys traffic and gridlock, who isn't full of stress and rage each and every day because of it, then remember that that person PAID for the PRIVALAGE of going through that experience, spending a third or more of their salary on top of all the licensing, registration, and insurance that comes with driving.
I somewhat disagree. Driving is neither hellish prison nor a nightmare for most people. It opens doors. You live somewhat by the coast? It could be only an hour drive away! Unless everyone you love and care about is in this megabuilding or really close, you'd have to Uber yourself there or something. Eliminating driving sounds like a bad idea. I like driving, and gridlock isn't fun, but driving isn't the issue. It happens because of less efficient design & accidents.
Megabuildings definitely could help in places that have high density issues, IF they are affordable. Which they won't be at first.
I think a better solution would be to lay out the city better and have housing closer to work.
Great video! Megabuildings (or Arcologies as I first heard of them because of Shadowrun) have always been one of my favorite concepts explored in cyberpunk science fiction. I'd honestly love to play a game as immersive as Cyberpunk 2077 entirely set in one.
Megabuildings can be brought to reality through many different avenues. Personally, my experience in engineering says that current private developers would always try to maximize sale cost per square foot at the lowest cost per square foot. Public spaces would be minimized in exchange for private square footage and units for sale.
Something like a Megabuilding can be approached alternatively through Public Development where the Municipality can build the megabuilding itself and sell floor space privately similar to the World Trade Center and the Port Authority of NY and NJ.
Like the World Trade Center these metropolitan spaces can be invested in through joint ventures, similar to semi-private toll infrastructure.
Regardless of path of development the Municipality needs to be involved beyond just surface level permitting to ensure positive, community forward design.
Large capital projects like this will always face pushback without justification. The first megabuilding may have an insurmountable hurdle ahead of it if densification and urbanization does not become a central focus of the public agenda.
Soviets did it and still sucked. They’re very bad for the environment too, they can’t even rip em down because the impact is so immense
@@Nick-cs4oc”soviets did it and it still sucked” as if soviets did anything and it didnt suck?😂
Utopian dystopianism. It's sort of like how antiwar movies fail almost automatically.
I find them absolute fascinating as well. I would totally live there lol.
On the other hand, you have Dread's mega-buildings. Fortress for criminals. Nice essay.
yess, another small channel with a banger 2077 video baby
Epic vid, you seriously need more subscribers, count me as one of them.
If you want to look at the building that the Dredd Megablock is based on (and the Cyberpunk Megatowers by extension) look into the Ponte City (Highest residential tower on the continent for 48 years) in my home town of Johannesburg. It was built exactly for all the reasons you claimed, but today the first three floors are now a garbage heap and luxury penthouses go for dirt cheap in comparison to other places. Gang activity in the 80's and later gang takeover in the 90's knocked the tower off the "desirable places to stay" list.
To make it even more Cyberpunk Dystopian, thanks to the hollow design, it was proposed in the 90's to turn the tower into the world's first high tech, high rise, Max Sec, panopticon prison. Something that would have been at home in Demolition man.
Another issue of Mega buildings is that its a lot of eggs in one basket. One decent earthquake or even a war and those buildings are coming down hard and at great human life cost. I think in the most recent Dredd movie they said about 800,000 people could live in one building. Don't get me wrong i like the aesthetics of megabuilding's and contained cities but they only really make sense in geologically stable regions or off world.
On another note i am a fan of optimizing space. In star citizen there is a need to conserve space on most ships and i cant get over the design of the restrooms in some of those ships. Silly i know to admire a bathroom but i just like how the room itself is like 4x4x7 and the toilet and sink pop out of the wall, there is a compartment in the wall for toilet paper, soaps and towels, and the floor is a drain for the showerhead above. Its an all in one space and i like that for some reason.
Megabuildings are just hotels. You have some restaurants at the bottom, then rooms, somewhere in the middle some leisure facilities and the rooms again. I know the concept is somewhat fascinating for it to be a residential facility but it's not out of this world.
This had no reason to being this fucking interesting. Thanks for the effort, you earned my sub.
dude... the cyberpunk universe is a dystopia... and we are heading into it. Wanting Megabuildings is just the direct way into the orwellscenario on highspeed.
Wanting to go more and more urban will result in the exact cyberpunk scenario we see in the game. It's not the way to prefer.
Mhmm, this. Nutrient goop may be an answer to food shortages and such but those are gonna be created by the people who end up selling the goop. The goop isn’t necessary if we actually develop for sustainability and not profit
its better to have good people prefer it and make it than bad people.
Your thought process genuinely doesn’t make any sense here at all lol
@@quagmoe7879 it does... and if you can't comprehend it... that's on your side.
@@DecoTunes28 Explain then how creating more efficient urban living spaces would lead to an Orwellian society?
Great video man! Keep up the consistency and your channel will blow up in no time!
I would love living in a mega building. It’s not like we can’t just go outside.
That’s how ends up tho, don’t need mega buildings when there’s space outside. So sure you could go out but it’s just gonna be road and parking lot and more mega building
it will literally never be cost effective to make a mega building
I live in hk, so when i heard you say V's apartment is compact, i can only imagine you are living in a palace of sorts
Good idea in theory. Time and time again these mega buildings become run down and demolishing all that concrete gives off a lot of co2.
You pointed out many of the benefits, pitfalls and problems with creating and living in a megastructure style arcology.
Sound proofing being a baseline requirement. Interior open spaces along with social space besides food would be on my list must. We have current analogues in luxury high rises and cruise ships, the quality of life can be planned for as long as the socio-economic system underpinning it supports people thriving. You have blade runner on one hand and the star trek enterprise on the other
It's strange to me that people can't understand that some people actually like living in a mega building type scenario. Obviously, a carefully planned one without the crime and sanitation issues. A nice megabuidling with amenities and studio apartments would be incredible. Of course, V's apartment has a large living room but is missing a private bed room, room for a washing machine and doesn't have a kitchen. It's kinda inefficiently designed and more designed to be efficient for the gamer over for someone that actually lives there. Homie has a weird round couch that doesn't seem too comfortable and a tiny tv that is weirdly positioned.
I would move into a mega building in an instant
The thing about mega structures is that they are cool but almost never practical, constructing a massive building housing what would essentially be a town condensed into a single unit can cause a myriad of issues in the long term as the community's needs change but the huge monolith of a building doesn't, and also they can become too dependent on the economy of scale that might just not happen like what killed the capsule building in Japan, despite the original plan being that capsules would be replaced as needed in practice none were ever replaced due to how hard to do so was in reality so the whole building just sat there slowly rotting because it wasn't designed for being repaired.
And Kowloon walled city is a terrible example because it was 100% an informal settlement created by a legal loophole, that's why they had to keep building upwards instead of to the sides, it was basically a favela with a hard limit to it's maximum area. Most of that thriving industry and comercial district that happened at ground level originated from the fact that regulations couldn't be enforced in there, so we're actually talking a bout a bunch of businesses that set up shop there because they could do whatever the heck they wanted without (much) fear of being closed down by health inspectors, safety inspectors, or raided by the police; in exchange of having to deal with the local mafia. If anything that settlement was, and still is despite no longer existing, studied because it's an example of how far you can push urban density before a complete social collapse.
In reality a complex of smaller buildings (max 6 floors ideally) with green spaces in-between and stores and other services at ground level is much more efficient, just keep in mind that they should ideally not be located too far from a downtown and that they will need strong public transit. Trains, buses, and grid city design with smaller roads and wider walkways can fix a good chunk of urban issues.
"this experience led me to wonder why spaces like this, aren't more common in real life"
weellll, 1 what your describing was the original design intention of what Malls were thought-up as, and 2 such places never actually happened, because of financial and legal incentives towards accomodation and designs based on or around the car and its capabilities (like stroads, drive-thru fast-food shacks, at-level mega-mega parking lots, and suburbia in general) starting at about 1920, aaaand arguably continuing on through the 2020's.
This was then coupled with certain online store and online package-tracking features coming into full development in the 2000's, which basically delivered the death-blow to most sorts of brick-and-mortar mall-buildings (both 'malls-proper' as well as more than afew strip-malls and box-stores) for all time.
Check out the DJI Tower in Shenzhen China. The building was pulled straight out of Night City
Scifi apartments and megastructures are just fun to wonder what it would be like to live there
I hope that the megacity enjoys the problems that they are going to face when they have to refurbish or demolish their megabuildings.
Super interesting videos, you really should have more subscribers.
Mr. Nibbles the cat is the H10 megabuilding owner. He collects the rent! He told me after I abducted him, and now he sleeps in my laundry basket.
I'd love to live somewhere like here I think. I've lived in the middle of nowhere my entire life....I don't get to see a lot of people, it's very lonely
The megabuildings in Cyberpunk are making woefully inefficient use of their space, your starter apartment is way bigger than it really needs to be for no apparent reason. Big wide walkways and open central courtyards are nice, but these are not significantly larger in actual floor real-estate than a low end skyscraper. The thing that's really nice about the megabuildings though is that you have a lot of diversity in the type of things and businesses around you, within a couple floors, while due to things like security concerns, and difficulty of getting utilities to certain floors most "real" buildings tend to have wide swaths of specific use
I live in the wide open country... and even I loke the idea of megabuildings. I have liked them since Judge Dredd.
mega buildings are an inhuman nightmare
You say that mega buildings “could” become spaces of inequality. The reality is that they WILL. But to be honest, we already have inequality when it comes to peoples residence. Rich people can afford acres of property while poor people can only rent. I don’t think you’re ever going to completely get rid of inequalities like this, but I think mega buildings would turn out to be bad almost no matter what you do. I could be wrong and maybe people will figure out how to do it in a way that won’t end up that way. But I’m pretty convinced that how our world is the poor are going to end up at the bottom without sunlight.
I currently live in a giant, tall, fucked up subsidized housing project. The walgreens across the street i bleeding money but they aren't allowed to close it down because of some law about creating food deserts (no, not dessert the food, but desert like sand). I can totally see projects starting to have little slum-malls inside of them. I am not looking forward to my future if I remain this fucking broke
These are supposed to be horror shows in the game just like they would be in real life. Density is dehumanizing.
No matter how high-end a housing estate starts, it will eventually become dilapidated which will cause local business to up sticks and leave it as a cesspit. Dredd shows this rather well, which is unsurprising considering the times that spawned the comics.
WARNING: This a long one. Not ranting just, long...
Sounds to me that the benefits you see of living in a megabuilding are pretty similar to what me and my roommate are experiencing right now without living in one. Hell, we even have a farmer's market and liquor store within walking distance! The apartment complex we live in used to be part of the campus of the private school my roommate works at right next door. Since the school got its own dorms, the complex was handed off to another corporate body with a few strings attached so the rent for employees and students is lower than those who are for lack of a better term "outsiders". It's a development that troubles me because it sounds like a lot of the same mentalities that make people afraid of immigrants or tourists (a mentality I totally understand living in FL dealing with all the Snowbirds), seem to be at play here. If Dredd is anything to go by, megabuildings seem more like gated neighborhoods owned and ran by real estate companies rather than small towns ran by a peoples' government. BTW, working for a real estate agency as the groundskeeper of said neighborhoods is the WORST! The residents were nice but the corpos as you'd expect were greedy, negligent and abusive. (BURN CORPO SHIT!)
There's also engineering to consider and speaking now as a guard of one of the high rise apartments I helped build... I wouldn't wanna live here, not with all the corners cut and redundancies sacrificed to put these buildings up faster and cheaper while gouging out residents for twice the money me and my roommate pay for a far better constructed and managed property.
Sounds like we gotta a corpo apologist over here 🤨
Check out Habitat 67! Every unit has a free space exposed to direct sunlight. One of my favorite buildings ever
Just checked it out, it looks super cool! The actual interior of the apartments are pretty nice as well :)
Where'd you get the info that the capsule tower was a failure? IIRC it only "failed" because there weren't more capsule towers built, which made the capsules expensive. That, and the integrated electronics couldn't be updated (which wouldn't be a problem if a continuous supply of new capsules had been produced, with updated tech in the newer ones).
fascinating analysis, tysm for sharing! I enjoyed it! 🥂🥂🙏🙏
Ngl imagine the que for the lifts 😅
Like having all of your eggs in one basket, too many people in too small of a space is always a bad idea. All it would take is one arsonist.
OP def a corpo-rat
I don't wanna be mean, but the way you write sounds like ChatGPT. (Not that I care if it is, you can do what you want)
But like, if you do want feedback, I'd say work on finding your writer's voice a little more.
Also sorry if this comes off as more of a deliberate insult. You clearly put a lot of effort into this over all.
No offense taken, I appreciate the feedback! I definitely agree that there is plenty of room for improvement. Is there anything specific to my writing that gave you the ai-generated feeling?
@@NoEffortMandated Don't take these as gospel obviously, because it's more of a vibe than anything specific, but the way you use lists to make your points so often, certain phrases like "such fiction warns that without careful planning..." and the general structure of "[positive thing to say]" followed by "yet [negative thing to say]" is all just very reminiscent of ChatGPT. But honestly, upon thinking about it a little more, I think my brain just expects a more casual/conversation writing style from youtube videos. Like if this were a written essay, I probably wouldn't blink twice at what you wrote. I think hearing a very stiff academic writing style in a youtube video probably just set my brain off in a weird way. Don't read too far into it. In hindsight it wasn't a very productive comment.
Anyway, subscribed.
Holy shit thank you for the detailed reply! This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. I totally agree that my writing comes across as kinda stiff, as most of my writing experience comes from school/college. Thanks for subscribing, and I hope you'll see improvement in future videos :)
@@NoEffortMandated Fwiw, I liked the video but just thought you were going for a Jacob Geller style of phrasing and videography. I subbed from my main channel though and from what I can tell in the comments your subscriber count is heading upward over the past two days, so congrats!
Dude I think you just went mainstream
when the housing situation in your country is so wild the cyberpunk dystopia look like a more viable option in comparison 💀💀💀
There is americans, who think megabuilding is the future and there is Europeans, who experienced megabuildings and can tell you it's not the future you really want.
A much less glamorous example are commie blocks. They achived a pretty decent balance between all of the factors you named. The only big problem is that there is barely any parking space leading to people parking on the sidewalk. Honestly just building those but with underground parking (or just good public transport but thats never happening) could be the solution for the current housing crisis.
You would need soooo much parking for that. Then the roads… oh boi I don’t think you know the scale of such a thing
Living in St. Petersburg, I can confidently say that they were one thing commies DIDN'T FUCK UP. Parking is a problem, though, as they were built with cars being hard to obtain in the USSR in mind. They're actually quite cozy when the buildings themselves and the areas around them (lawns, pavements, parks) are maintained well. As far as public transport goes, it's actually pretty decent in the post-Soviet countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. That said, most buses, trams and trains, while following well-planned routes and doing a really good primary job of helping people get where they need, are ancient rusty wrecks that constantly break, that make insane amounts of noise and damage rails, have leaking roofs and shitty ventilation and only meet the BARE MINIMUM comfort standards.
The mega building in cyberpunk does have underground parking actually so it seems they thought of that
Great Video. How do you have so little subs? You just got one more for sure. Imo these Megabuildings are super interesting, but usually not feasible in the real world for a variety of reasons.
How do you only have 19 subscribers
mfs looking at whats supposed to be a comically dystopian setting and thinking "why arent real cities more like this"
megacity buildings be bad due to how dense & compact them be. and especially wayy too tall.
id say the 'college dorm' setup is more ideal. actually, there was an apartment building across from my college dorm that was setup the same as the college dorm heh.
the biggest issue with these megacities is they are just inherently hazardous. natural disasters & man made disasters become even more deadlier if there's so many people living in one place.
...... and also, a future were we dont actually own anything and everything is just rented to us by a megacorp that owns everything .... yeah that just be dystopic by itself.
condo's would be the better option there atleast, with people mutually paying for the land.
to solve house shortage will be enough to just forbid banks to own houses as active
This is a very glass-half-full view on this topic, while I feel crowded living in a first floor flat (apartment). I guess perspective is paramount.
Closest you can get are the east European "Blocks" with like thousands of appartments in a giant concrete building. And they are not exactly the nicest place to live. So a "realistic" megabuilding wouldn't even be close to what you see in this game.
V's apartment isn't compact, it's quite large.
It's a huge pitty the other mega buildings in the game are just empty boxes.
You should watch
‘Monumentality’ by Solar Sand
Great vid
Hi, nice video, I really like your highlight of places like the Capsule tower and Hangzhou's Regent International (There are a lot of good footage on Tiktok and rather shady websites btw) because I've never heard of them. However, no offense, I find your conclusion to be rather... repetitive, especially towards the end where it felt like you were just repeatedly saying how Cyberpunk's spacious and efficient design is contrasted with real world failures. I wish you would've delved a little deeper on say, how might health concerns (such as those faced by the Kowloon walled city) could be tackled and whether places like those in media have depicted such things. I feel like you include really interesting tidbits but not really expand on them, I get that this might be too much for a short essay but I feel like the last 2-3 minutes of this video could be more interesting if you had gone slightly more on the issues than just a mere mention. Anyways, sorry about the unsolicited critique, the video is really nice and informative, I hope you keep honing your craft!
Various settlements or towns or whatever in SF do a better job of showing you how slum it would actually be (the mars settlement for example), and CP2077 is a nice fantasy where the hyper capitalism is somehow not actually hyper capitalism and there is all this wasted space (from the dollar per sq-foot pov) that would never happen - your best comparison is NYC (Manhattan specifically) or Tokyo.
You like CP2077 because that's how it was designed, to be diverse enough and pleasant enough within its size - its utterly fails to make an ACTUAL hyper capitalist hellscape. Many games have this problem, form the newer Zelda's to SF's older brothers - things are both bad enough for your adventure to happen, but also just pleasant and idealistic most places you go. A nice, safe, comfortable apocalypse.