It should come as no surprise to anyone living in a major urban centre that overcrowding is going to be a massive problem in the future. The very near future if you live in Melbourne. One of the huge issues here is that people in Western countries are simply not willing to give up their “quality of life” (read: massive mansions that are far too large for their actual needs and only serve to live out fantasies put upon most people by 1960s sitcoms, and current Hollywood dramas), and live in places that are actually of a suitable size to their needs. Everyone needs a mansion, but there’s not actually enough land for everyone to have one.

The Cyberpunk genre gives us two solutions to this quandary:

1. Massively unchecked urban sprawl, leading into megacities that span multiple state boundaries, and have impressively large buildings situated in the middle, where all the work is done by an underclass of artificial humanoid life that totally doesn’t resent us like in Appleseed; or
2. Arcology type structures.

If you’re familiar with that second word, it’s probably because you used to play SimCity 2000. For those unfamiliar with it, the idea of an arcology was basically a massive, vertical city. Hundreds of stories tall, with self contained power generation facilities, commercial and entertainment complexes, huge residential zones, and in some of the more amibitious, even some agricultural or industrial base to the building.

The idea was to minimise residential and commercial land usage so it could be better put to agricultural uses. Ironically, since then the concept has been reversed, and the idea of vertical farming in inner city areas seems more popular. Of course, this would be entirely for agricultural purposes. No animals. So no meat. The future is soy!

Soy, and modular housing. Let’s face it, if Saudi Arabia has taught us that attempting to build gigantic buildings all in one investment is actually a really bad idea should something happen to the economy. Really what you want to do is start making housing estates where you can actually just add a new level in the middle of the day when no one’s paying attention, and at minimal cost. You want buildings that are going to stack like office in-trays… or lego blocks…

… or Shipping crates come to mind.

Oh wait, they’re already doing that! In Sweden, because they can’t make student housing fast enough, they’re adding insulation and stucco to the inside of old shipping containers, welding a balcony on the end, painting them funky colours and stacking them. These are not actually all that small once you add in efficient shelving, either. The Japanese live in much smaller places… somehow. Either way, this is the plan that’s been suggested for the way that both Melbourne and Sydney can deal with the fact that the population growth rate is far outstripping the development of new housing.

But this leads us to a whole bunch of social isses:

1. What’s to stop poor scummy people from banding together to buy a single block of land in your nice neighbourhood, like Brighton, and slowly stacking themselves in there so they can also have a classy address and Gainsville furtniture?
2. If you want to expand your own house, will you able to have the slot next to you? Or will you have to walk up/downstairs into your other unit? And if you do want to move, how are you going to move both of your houses at once if you can’t really afford that second truck?
3. Can you take your whole house with you in the cargo bay of your relaxing sea cruise vacation and not have to pay for berth in a suite?
4. How badly is the metal of the shipping crate going to interfere with the wireless signal for your brain-computer interfacing?
5. What happens if the neighbourhood kids prank you by posting your house somewhere else?

You might also like to read:

1. Cyberpunk pt13: Rapture, Rome & The US Economy

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