Dystopias: Real Ones vs. the Movies
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 มี.ค. 2024
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_Special Thanks_
+ Dr. Dan Bashara for their expertise
+ Evan Montgomery for editing and co-production
_Description_
This video explores the line between utopian ideals and dystopian realities. These fictional scenarios might not be as far removed from our own reality as you think. Discover the architectural and social designs that subtly influence our everyday lives, often without our conscious awareness. I interviewed Dr. Dan Bashara to outline six critical points that can help identify dystopian elements in our surroundings. These points serve as a guide to understanding the deeper intentions behind urban designs and how they might be affecting our autonomy and quality of life. By assessing transportation options, interactions with life forms, accessibility of space, environmental hazards, service efficiency, and levels of surveillance, we provide a toolkit to gauge the dystopian or utopian nature of your city.
With this guide you should be able to recognize and understand the subtle ways our environments shape your life. Whether you're an urban planner, a social scientist, or simply someone curious about the spaces we inhabit, it offers valuable insights into the intersection of architecture, control, and societal wellbeing. Join the conversation and reflect on the role of design in our daily lives.
Keywords: Dystopia, Utopia, Urban Design, City Planning, Surveillance, Public Space, Urban Environment, Seaside Florida, The Truman Show, Personal Freedom, Urban Life, Architectural Analysis, Dr. Dan Bashara.
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_About the Channel_
Architecture with Stewart is a TH-cam journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
_About Me_
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
_Contact_
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
_Special Thanks_
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
#architecture #urbandesign
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I love how you’ve gone dark and doomy while remaining cheerful and bright on the surface.
It's very punk
Utopia where I can pee on the trees in public.
The dark side of Stew.
Utopia where I can pee on the trees in public.
The tonal incongruency indicates deception. He doesn't believe what he's saying, he's just playing devil'a advocate
Ironically, I was served an ad for Google Ads while I watched this.
So much content is about what's wrong with our world while dishing us rental car and financial guru commercials.
We all need to get paid somehow, and yet that's not included in a discussion about dystopia.
Dystopian film about bureaucracy = Brazil... an all-time favorite film.
It is more a movie about authoritarianism.
Memorably, there's the malevolent repairman played by Bob Hoskins, who takes visible pleasure in being unhelpful and then drowns in shit. I think we all enjoyed that
@@barryrobbins7694 Is it tho?
@@richardh8082It depends. Do you think *Citizen Kane* is a movie about a sled?😀
Film? More like Country
To me, one of the hallmarks of a dystopia are the giant screens everywhere. I started seeing them on the New York City subway in 2019 and immediately felt like we had taken a leap further into a dystopian 1984-like landscape. Fast forward 5 years and we now have screens all over the insides of subway and commuter trains, with brightness turned way up and constantly moving and flashing ads in our faces. Not to mention the screens on various street corners of New York.
Why do you feel this way?
Totally agree. As lighting technology advances there is no question of how bright is bright enough, it's just full brightness all of the time limited only by what is the maximum lux of the device being used. If a billboard is bright enough to be seen in full sun it will be configured to be just as bright at midnight. In a few years the advertising screens will be twice as bright, the question is at what point do they transition from sound off to sound on?
Capitalism, gotta shove adds in your face 24/7
People from all over spend lots and effort, time, and/or money to live in New York. It is definitely one of the least dystopic places in the US
This vid is an ad for a really entertaining and thought-provoking list of films.
Part of my job involves picking up kids for an ECE centre. Driving around, I've noticed a particular low socioeconomic suburb has only 2 entry/exits which themselves are accessed by a single arterial street. It always seemed designed to pen up the maximum number of citizens with the minimum amount of police should it be required. & whether the residents are conscious of their street geography , they act (out) in reaction to it. I have long felt it was no accident.
They chose it for themselves. A prison cell and a panic room are the same thing. They are keeping themselves bottled up and isolated to stay insulated from the "others". I feel like apartment buildings and condo complexes have the same feeling / functionality.
You point out all the cameras on the streets, but we’ve invited all that surveillance into our homes. Phones, smart devices like thermostats, doorbells, internet browsers. We’ve surrendered all that information to the corporations and the government (who just gets it from the companies). Even this comment will be logged somewhere by someone and add to the portfolio they have on me. It might not be actively observed, but they’ll be able to look at it if they want to. 👋🏻 hi overlords!
9:17 - I somewhat disagree. From our 2024 point of view, the world of Star Trek is closer to a utopia than we are. The premise underlying the entire Star Trek universe is the existence of a post-scarcity, post-monetary, mostly post-malady, pro-self-actualization, pro-individual-autonomy society actively striving towards utopian goals. The series isn't about bureaucracy per se, but the Federation bureaucracy is always there and it is sometimes highlighted in episodes where the characters must act in accordance with, or in opposition to, their position as a bureaucrat. So yes, sometimes Star Trek is about bureaucracy in a semi-utopia.
Uhh, Marlin, this comment ended up on a GeoBeats pets video which is not even 3 minutes long. Might want to disable whatever playlist the Star Trek video was on since it seems the video player moved to next video on the list before this comment got entered. (by the way, I like Star Trek) [edit -see my next comment, some TH-cam oddness is happening]
Or is something wrong with TH-cam? Web page here is for GeoBeats Animals, 20 hours ago, "We adopted a sad and obese chihuahua" yet as I scroll down the computer monitor, the comments being show under the video are not at all about the dog video. "Curiouser and Curiouser, said Alice"
Was it "about" bureaucracy? Because that's the quote.
@@scottfw7169 It's something wrong with youtube haha. Sometimes it will load comments for an entirely different video. If you want context, the video that was being loaded was "The Sci-Fi Dystopias we're heading Toward."
@@atwcat9370Ahh yes, "The TH-cam Dystopia We Already Have." Anyway, thanks for the assurance it was not hallucination or falling through a portal in to an alternate reality or something.
4:13 *"One person's Utopia is another person's dystopia"*
Case and point, Plato's original "Utopia". It is a strictly stratified society with its citizens under a lot of control, many of which we modern people will frown upon. From the very start the concept was *his* Utopia, not *the* Utopia.
With machine learning and pattern recognition, camera systems are getting really sophisticated. A former employer of mine was trial running a system would create searchable 'time event points" for various things it saw, such as when each different door was opened, triangulation with wifi for knowing where anyone was, traffic pattern analysis to note when people went to less likely destination and who those people were, Etc.
As useful as all those things are they should not be used on an unwilling public.
@@GoingtoHecq Long as we can urinate in public we're in a utopia.
Great video. Although it does kind of assume that all these systems are visible and observable, when that is often not really the case.
A great example is wifi tracking. Many shopping malls, shops and even cities make use of it to map where people have been. who knows if they sanitize/anonymize the data, where/for how long they store it, and for what other purposes the data is used.
Kind of begs the question, "if the systems that monitor/control you are not visible, and you dont notice them working, are you really imprisoned?" which (going along with the video) would hook up well with 'The Matrix'.
One city that struck out to me during a vacation in Finland was a small town called Kokkola. Beaches and Forests are very easily accessible, on foot! Furthermore, the geniuses who designed this towns public walkways and all of that - and here I mean geniuses in the most positive sense of the word - made it so that you rarely have to cross a street when walking in the surrounding areas: Almost every major street in the outskirts is tunneled, meaning that you cross the road by walking under it. Sure, that has it's own problems in a way, but it's very nice all things considered.
It appears they also made walkways go through greenery/forests, used greenery/forest to separate bike and walking lanes from the streets for the cars, etc.
Compared to big cities, especially what one can see in the US (where in some cases you can't even walk to the store that's near the back side of your house, but need to drive your car instead), it really does seem like an utopia.
Yeah. It's a shame that so many things about US you can understand are thought off, designed and finally brought to life, in some certain specific way, exactly as concious desicion to make some sort of business essential or profitable. If it wasn't for urban sprawl, then you would likely not have such strong automotive industry still.
Meanwhile, average persons quality of life goes down.
One man's dystopia is another man’s utopia
guess my garden city is hell for everyone in it
"This is a sign you live in dystopia"
Nah, this is a sign you are living in UK
that's what he said
Cmon 15 minute cities are great, its just right-wing conspiracies
Congratulations, you can fight back...oh, wait, the government is trying to make protest illegal.
I Dont like Pollens and Tree Smmots.. It's cold .. Yess mmm yeesso
Exactly
One of the dystopic aspects not listed here is the sheer amount of biometrics implemented with all these surveillance systems, and how the majority of folks were so easily coaxed into trusting it and seeing it as "the ultimate form of security" for their own homes, phones and other tech. Arguably it's the most dystopic, dangerous of the surveillance tech out there.
I can’t pee outside this is truly a dystopian nightmare.
You shouldn't force public indecency on people and kids. Nor dump your gross and smelly discharge in public. It's double standards that people wouldn't want to dirty their homes like that. But destroy public spaces that some people and poor people only have or want. Maybe push for public restrooms or for businesses to allow people to use them.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c That didn't used to be a problem, what changed is the people using those things. It used to be customers. I mean, it still is now, but only after they go request a key or a code to use the facilities. I can't even access my expensive PO Box after hours anymore, because homeless people were shooting up and sleeping in there at night, so they had no choice but to lock it up. Ten years ago that would be completely unheard of. So yes it's a dystopia, but it's not because of a police state, It is almost exactly the opposite. Because of lack of enforcement of the most basic standards of public decency that people didn't used to have to be told to do.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c "Maybe push for public restrooms or for businesses to allow people to use them"
I can't hold it that long.
Literally 1984 /s
Right, it's kind of a silly example, but also a most on point about how easily we label things extremely when controls are put on our behavior.
Being stupid can feel like you live in a dystopia when you just don't understand how to navigate the world because it's too complicated for you.
Exactly
They are only trying to help you. They love you.
With like 17 years of youtube under my belt I’m finally thinking of hitting the ‘bell’ just for Stewart hicks channel. I just don’t want to miss any.
I like it how you walk through the tunnel full of tents without even the slightest acknowledgement, and somehow it's the fact that people put padlocks on things or that you're not allowed to pee in public that strikes you as dystopic. FFS.
Cameras not only watch us physically from anywhere, but they even watch and listen to what we do online and then show us results accordingly and wait for our reactions just as Truman show. Even such a utopian element as the internet has now become so dystopian. I say what has been shown to us with AI is that we can now live in a virtual utopia thanks to Virtual realtiy. But while we think we live in a perfect utopia, just like Truman, they will actually watch and rule us from the outside.
Records are kept for AI and algorithms to read which are served automatically by google. This isn't really what the dystopian meaning of surveillance means, since dystopian surveillance is meant to have consequences and implies some level of draconian law enforcement behind it. You can imagine a low-tech world where surveillance is even worse than in a place with a camera in every corner. The surveillance of the Stasi in East German GDR for example was almost entirely done through word of mouth. 2% of the population were informants to the secret police, so you had neighbors reporting on "anticommunist" actions of their neighbors.
I love how you explore many different aspects of design that can get somewhat abstract yet very relatable. Also thanks for all the great film recs!
Pretty darned ironic that the film "The Minority Report" stars Tom Cruise, a member of a dystopian science fiction based cult that monitors its adherence by many means.
Well he didn’t need to attempt any acting…xx😂
Everyone is living in a dystopian nightmare right now
I've spent most of my life in NYC or its immediate environs. I've lived in every borough of New York except Staten Island, and in Yonkers, which is just north of the Bronx. Most of the neighborhoods I've lived in have been low-income, urban areas that, on the surface, would seem to have many of the qualities of dystopias: lots of crime, drugs, hostile local police, etc. Yet I did spend nine months living on the upper east side of Manhattan in what is probably the most wealthy zip code in the country, with many celebrities living within a few blocks of me. It is the only neighborhood in which I had problems. For example, I was held up at gun point twice -- once by a bunch of boys dressed in uniform from a private high school near where I lived. Worst of all, the cops took a report but took no action on these kids, even though they seemed to know who they were. I guess their parents were too powerful. There was a reason I stayed at a job that provided my housing for only nine months. After just a month I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could manage it.
I now live in Providence, RI, near Brown University, in a neighborhood known for its beautifully restored colonial-era houses. It is definitely upper-class and almost entirely white. I live here thanks to the generosity of the owner of my building. Otherwise there is no way I could afford to live in a place like this. There is a small rose garden just outside my door, and my apartment overlooks a colonial-era graveyard with graves dating back to the late 17th century. Since my mobility is now extremely limited, all my groceries, etc., are delivered, so all my needs are wonderfully provided for. And there's even wild life, even though we're right in the middle of downtown. (My immediate neighbor calls me the "squirrel whisperer" because all the squirrels come to me for handouts when I'm in the garden. We've got tons of rabbits and some coyotes around.) This neighborhood comes close to being a utopia, although as a older, cis-gender white man I know I have a lot of built-in privilege. I doubt these benefits would be so automatic for a person of color. I am extremely grateful for the generosity that allows me to live in a place like this, but I'm also extremely bored. I miss living in a place with more street life, where I know all my neighbors, and where people are dealing with life-and-death issues every day.
Utopia and dystopia are really in the eye and experience of the beholder.
yeah i agree that "nice" areas can often be actually the worst. i live in chicago and to me gold coast, a very wealthy neighborhood on the north side of downtown, is the most uncomfortable area. 95% unfriendly wealthy white people who will call the police on you in a second with cameras on every lamppost. i live in rogers park which is racially diverse, lower to middle class, and everyone is chill and friendly and i've never felt unsafe
@@Zelda_Thorn Second this. I live on the south side and spend a lot of time working in/around the gold coast. Nowhere have I been sholder checked as many times as I have in the Gold coast. Likewise, there's nothing like the experience of being the least weathy looking person in any given elevator.
Is this a struggle session or what? Don't have to apologize for being who you are
@@runswithraptors not sure what you mean here
This is such a beautiful comment. A lot of ppl here seem very doomsday-ie. I totally agree it all depends, with the exception of some very objective subjects. The video itself stated, what’s a utopia for one, may be a dystopia for someone else.
We all live in a dystopia, and if we don't stand up for ourselves we're all gonna be living out 1984 IRL. The lack of action and protest from people is the one thing that angers me more than anything else, sometimes more than the actual evil itself, since at least the evil can be stopped when the good people that are there to see it are competent. When there are more people that are incompetent, the evil continues and will get worse.
This is a wonderful video! Great insight and relation to planning principles
Wow, amazing video! Intriguing look at utopia vs dystopia through city design and planning, sci-fi, films, etc.
I live in the county but work in a factory as big as a small city with cameras and bureaucratic management.
The property all around in the rural community I live in is all private property and no places to really be with nature.
I work and go home and sit in my house. To do anything fun requires driving over an hour.
Dystopia is a world created for moving automobiles and isolating people instead of using automobiles only when necessary as a tool and allowing people to walk around outside and enjoy nature and each other's company.
Agreed. Stroads are very Dystopian.
Unless your personal utopia is driving and socializing with people on road trips, and enjoying car culture. Going to classic car shows, being in a club that enjoys a certain type of car, and socializing with those people.
A dystopia would be having nowhere to use their car, and having to walk, because car usage has become isolated and restricted.
@@jonnda I hear where you're coming from about the enjoyment some people get from car culture and driving. That's a valid perspective. At the same time, I think it's important to consider the broader societal impacts of how our communities are currently built around car usage.
The key issue many people have is not with cars as a hobby or for optional road trips, but with the lack of viable alternatives for routine transportation needs due to car-centric urban planning. This forces car ownership as a necessity rather than a choice.
I'm curious to better understand your views on this - do you feel there are ways to preserve the positive aspects of car culture while also redesigning communities to expand transportation options and access? I believe there could be a balanced approach that serves diverse needs and preferences.
Historically, highway construction has also had a disproportionate negative impact on minority neighborhoods. How do you think we can address those past harms and inequities as we shape transportation policies going forward?
I appreciate you sharing your perspective and I'm open to discussing this complex issue further. Even if we don't fully agree, I believe there is value in seeking to understand each other's views and find points of common ground. Let me know what you think.
@@totoroben Yeah, so I agree that it's about balance. I am from Chicagoland, and it wasn't until I went to college on a small town in NW Ohio that I really appreciated what Chicagoland has to offer.
In NW Ohio, it's a bunch of small towns that are separated by vast empty fields that are too far apart to for a non athlete like myself to bike out of town. There's There's no busses, or inter-urban rail. Once upon a time there was passenger service to nearby larger towns like Lima, but that was killed off some time in the 1930's or 40's and replaced by busses that later also disappeared. Even getting a connection to Amtrak would have been an ordeal.
Living in Bluffton Ohio without a car and only a bike was fine I guess, but it was like being stuck on a small island without a boat. Everything within Bluffton was easily accessible on foot or bike. But that gets old after a while, and starts to feel a little claustrophobic and isolating.
In the Chicago area, no it's not perfect. Some things are cut off by a road. There's several pedestrian underpasses, bridges, pedways, etc. We do have a veriety of public transportation options. We are also not built like maybe Houston was, where in old pictures half of the space is all ground level parking lots. There's usually enough places to put your car if you really want to, but most of the time I just hop on the red line if there's a crouded event in the city that I want to enjoy. What bothers me, is when entire sections of road are blocked off to make it more hostile to cars. I can't remember where I saw this, but I know I saw it somewhere. There was no need to do that. What if I decided not to take the L that day because my wife is heavily pregnant, and I wanted to double drop her off at the front door and go find a parking garage? Nope, gotta let her off at the end of the block. But that kinda defeats the purpose of getting her in the door, so she doesn't have to walk far and can wait for me comfortably inside. Hypothetically maybe the weather isn't great. What would probably happen is we both park an inconvenient distance away, and walk the rest of the way. It may not be a big improvement over taking the train by that point, and I know one of us would probably reconsider going in the first place, and find something closer to home to do.
In the end, I don't want a place that is hostile towards cars or pedestrians. I don't want endless parking lots and no greenery. I don't want LA style traffic with it's ever widening roads that never seem to help. Traffic jams are hostile to car use. I also want to use my car whenever I feel like it, be it for recreation or convenience. This past Christmas I drove my wife up Sheridan Road, which is old, twisty and scenic. There was no point to it other than just enjoying my recently acquired Acura TSX and being social with my wife. When I was younger, I went to antique car shows and for a while I was a part of the Chicagoland MG club. I worked in Honda dealerships for 8 years. I like cars. Before my wife got pregnant and had a job, she'd walk or take the train to work all the time. If my car is having issues, I can take the train to work. I like this mix.
As for the minorities issues, I don't have anything to say about that except for it's probably no different than what happened to historic Route 66. Car technology changed, car culture and travel culture changed, and road quality improved. It wasn't so necessary to make such frequent stops, but sometimes that just wasn't an option anymore because no easy access was given to the small towns the new road now bypassed. Whenever towns get bypassed, or trains stop passenger service to somewhere, the community suffered. I'm sure it's easier said than done, but places like that need find ways of keeping themselves relevant to keep people flowing through them.
Gary IN used to be a steel mill boom town. Now it's like a little slice of run down Detroit. They built an airport awhile back, and have been trying to recover, but like Detroit, it's a long slow recovery. At the same time, I'd rather bypass it in it's current condition. So it's a tricky thing. They need more businesses and incentives for people to go there in order to recover, but it has a reputation as a dangerous place to go. Catch 22. I don't know how to fix it.
@@jonnda you are a bit mistaken about the minorities neighborhoods issue. It wasn't that highways redirected people away from these neighborhoods, it's that highway planners intentionally chose minority neighborhoods (aka black neighborhoods) to seize and raze under imminent domain in the name of "progress" for highways. It wasn't for lack of relevance, it was intentional. This happened all over the country in various cities.
1:10 This etymology lacks the confusion of Greek ou- (not) with Greek eu- (good), in large part due to being homophones in Modern English, that led to the semantic shift from "imaginery place" to "ideal place".
I really enjoy your guest commentator. Those are all amazing films. And thank you for the clips of those films.
A mix of Handmaids Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984.
don't forget a brave new world
Wow, I just stumbled upon your youtube channel, great videos!
Commercial break for food right after the mention of soylent... What is in that burger?
I get where you’re coming from and am usually against any form of surveillance… however St. Louis’ mayor recently issued an executive order turning our red light cameras back on.
I admit this won’t stop many people from speeding and killing pedestrians, but anything to help restrict cars is good in my opinion!
Surveillance is not inherently bad, but red light cameras are unethical and proven to be unreliable.
I would argue that all rules and laws are aimed at people who will obey them, thus at law abiding citizens.
People who the rules are quote "designed to stop and punish" are usually those who don't follow them.
Of course going completely lawless is not a solution, but we should aim at striking a delicate balance.
I think that the government providing roads and infrastructure and then creating rules to keep people safe on those roads and infrastructure is not particularly dystopian. It is when the government invades things outside of its public domain
@@evanfunk7335 And who gets to decide the boundaries of said "public" domain?
@@jghifiversveiws8729 in theory, the people would vote on it i suppose
Let's make a "DO-TOPIA", together, building paradise collectively piece by piece, peace by peace.
THX-1138 is underrated, I think, because it has forced medicalization of society. Although probably so did Brave New World.
I am a child of dystopia. I was born and raised in Manila, and thank GOD my family moved to California, only to see more of Manila-style poverty in Los Angeles.
I think that the ability to improvise is the #1 empowering feeling. For example everyone is doing this fun thing but "I'm working". Or after work everyone is doing something fun but if you don't leave now you'll miss the one and only way you can commute home. Or everyone from work is going somewhere together but you can't leave your car at the office because it will get towed or because it isn't safe. Or all of your friends are at a 3rd place but you have to travel all the way home first because the available transportation methods make it difficult or impossible to make changes to your route on the fly. Then for me #2 would be do you experience regular opportunities for accidental or unplanned fun where you bump into friends that you can join for a drink or a meal without making an elaborate plan first.
Let's not forget the "allure" of utopian dystopias, in film -- such as seen in "Edward Scissorhands?"
Excellent take on #Distopia & #Utopia -- from a city design perspective.
Excellent video
Absolutely great topic there's so much more you can explore here, too. Fantastic top quality video ❤
4:16 I of course thought of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
Bureaucracy is a plague. A certain amount of control and order is needed, but when it goes too far and becomes a maze of seemingly arbitrary restrictions and nearly ritualistic hurdles to preform what should be simple tasks, that is when the red tape needs to be trimmed.
"One person's utopia is another person's dystopia." That quote reminds me of Wall-E which was clearly trying to depict the state of humanity in that movie as a dystopia yet the older I get the more it started to strike me as an utopia, which kind of ruined the whole movie for me.
Thomas More, author of the book Utopia and originator of the term, chose that name specifically. He knew it meant "no place" (in Greek) because as the book describes - "no place" or society can be perfected as long as it is created by and composed of humans. The ideal of a utopia is inherently false and unattainable because it rejects that fundamental reality.
Pissing outside is absolutely ideal i don't know what you're talking about
I love how you made a video about dystopia and than did the most dystopian thing in the book to close your video😭😮💨😮💨😮💨
The trick is to pee on the CCTV pole itself, it is a blindspot!
Last week my brother and I noticed the increasing proliferation of license plate reader devices along the two lane country roads we were traveling in Wisconsin.
Constant ad interruptions in mid-word, followed by more ads for the creator's other projects are rather dystopian, honestly.
I feel like only at the very very extreme edges of any of these axes, with the exception of the surveillance, do you actually find dystopia. And that's not to say that we've become accustomed to these kinds of things (which would also be an issue in a dystopia), but rather that they're not really very representative of either dystopia or utopia.
Yeah, it started out strong, but the back 60% of this video is more about dystopian tropes. It’s uncanny how following a well demonstrated introduction and noting the importance of frame of reference, it goes on and unflinchingly reifies and reinforces the same ideas as absolute indicators.
Understatement of the Millenium.
9:18 There is an interesting book called *How Infrastructure Works* by Deb Chachra. It digs deeply into the intertwining of humanity and infrastructure. It is not dry or overly technical.
Lived a majority of my life in a very rural area, but also lived in a large city for 3 years. I can confidently say that city living is completely claustrophobic for me personally. A large city is my definition of dystopia. Cameras everywhere, traffic congestion, lack of natural landscapes, very poor air quality, population density, it all made me uncomfortable after a year of city living; the stimuli of new experiences quickly faded, and was replaced by annoyance. I left a very well paying job to return to natural surroundings. Living in a place that smelled like balls every time it rained was not my cup of tea.
You know, the US isnt known for good urban planning so maybe thatd change elsewhere
A lot of world cities are green, clean, efficient, well-architected, etc. Sounds like you moved to a North American city.
I guess it very much depends on how you grew up. For me it's quite the opposite. I like being on the countryside for recreation, but as someone who doesn't own a car I tend to feel uneasy when I'm too far away from civilization (which is like "I can't see occupied buildings"). In a city there is always _someone_ nearby, which gives me a sense of safety. Access to public transportation is never far away. There are plenty of spaces made for humans, not just fields with occasional roads between them. And I'm from Germany, where there are rarely more than a couple of kilometers between settlements. ;D
Like some said it may have to do with living in a North American city.
I live in Europe so maybe that’s why my experience may differ but I’m the exact opposite of you. I lived my entire life in a city. I love living in cities as they are the heart of our cultures and civilizations and it feels like you’re living in the center of everything, with everything you could ever need accessible to you. Consequently, I get a weird feeling if anxiety and dread just imagining living in a rural country side far away from the city and (majority of) civilization. Like the video said, what’s someone’s utopia is someone’s dystopian and I have def noticed it irl with ppl I have spoken to.
Ppl seem to prefer to live in environments they grew up in. Some ppl from uni I know are from islands and they prefer to live there, some from the suburbs (way different to American suburbs) and prefer to live there. I live pretty close to the city center but not downtown and I like to live in such places, likewise so do many of my friends who I grew up with around my neighborhood.
IMHO the bureaucracy section missed the mark a bit. One main characteristic is to strip away authority, except for narrow or limited bands of absolute control. This split of control is a built-in destruction of totalitarianism, by design. It is terrifying because there must be deep initiation to have any degree of understanding of systems, and that complete understanding is unnecessary to the individual administrator; a worker can solidly stay in their narrow band and still succeed, as well as excel. The prevailing aspect is shared resources and divested decisions, with no person in complete control (or, culpability). No issues with the choice of _Brazil_ as the dystopian representation, amidst many great literary and film options. And, a great presentation of the dichotomy between utopia and dystopia.
Your thought experiment of “a walk” made me think of the Ray Bradbury story “the Pedestrian” : while on a walk, were you stopped by police just for walking outside?
As a person living in Shanghai, Chicago is far from a Dystopia haha 😂
There was a time..
Chicago is on of the few North American cities that I really would like to visit though. It looks like an actual city with a lot of interesting places, not just a random collection of buildings surrounded by huge parking lots.
As a resident of chicago, it is probably the most Dystopic American city. Don’t assume things are good because they are American.
@@NeovanGoth You should it is a mesmerizing city was there in 2023 and will come back soon ;)
It is a Cyberpunk dystopia but without all the cool cyberpunk stuff like flying cars, laser guns, cybernetic augments and virtual reality internet browsing.
or as someone called it 💩-punk.
I think people in the 80s would find our world pretty full of "cool stuff"
Stewart; ever read Larry Niven's "Oath of Fealty"? About life in an arcology. It explores similar themes.
"The Chicago Rathole" - isn't that one of those mid - 20th Century housing projects?
I dig the skeleton you mounted on your wall 😎 What were the cut pieces for?
I find the unavailability of homes with decent size gardens and rooms with high ceilings quite inhumane. I am lucky that I was able to buy a modest house with a big garden in what was then an "up & coming" and cheap part of London. My house is part of one of those rare "garden cities" that were built with large size gardens. My garden allows me to breathe, the view of it and the nearby park trees is simply priceless and I'm grateful for it every day. I have no curtains so I can just see at the view from every room and the wildlife is wonderful, squirrels, all sorts of birds, foxes, bats, etc. And (rare for London) none of the neighbours' windows face my windows or garden. I have lived in dumps and they're so depressing. We need more good affordable houses for people. And I believe one room per person is not enough, we should all have another room in addition to our bedroom that we can use for creative outlets/hobbies/study/play, etc. and is ours alone. I have friends who didn't get on the property ladder at the same time as me and missed the boat as prices started to rise soon afterwards, they're in their 50s/60s and still live in rented rooms, expensive ones too, at the mercy of landlords, having to share bathrooms with strangers, with no proper kitchen or the ability to have an overnight guest or just put a picture they like on the wall. I don't know how they can live like this, it's just surviving.
Regarding greenspace and other life forms... I learned recently that the very real London now teaming with public parks only came about because of the war. Previous to that the gardens were ALL surrounded by tall iron fencing and locked, only accessible by the residents surrounding the garden the other side of the road, who had keys.
The path to dystopia is paved with convenience and pointless distractions, until we’re trapped by the first and addicted to the latter
Power wants our body softening in our chairs and emotions dissipating on the screen, like when watching tv or TH-cam, such as Stewart's channel, instead of practicing corporeal politics: Putting it in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people, making new friends and marching with them.
Great, get off the computer and go do something real. If you feel like wasting your time with dopes, go march. I was going to suggest getting a job, but that's your call. In each case you might get come exercise.
I've heared the rat hole was recently filled in (but opened again)
Like a Stigmata
When I had first moved to Seattle (from a Midwestern college town), I stumbled upon a poetry reading in a small bookstore in one of the Northern neighborhoods near Greenlake. The poet was reciting a poetically angry rant about being desperate to pee during a bus commute from Tacoma.
Seattle has so precious few public bathrooms and every shop requires a purchase (ostensibly because of the number of fentanyl overdoses in the bathrooms if they’re made public, but there are other solutions for this. I digress).
In the poem, our protagonist eventually jumps up on the hood of a gridlocked car on Westlake Avenue and lets fly. The closing like was: “TACOMA! AT LEAST YOU CAN TAKE A LEAK THERE!!!”
This is damning because Seattle loves to pick on Tacoma for its crime rate (Pot, stop calling the Kettle names!).
I was new to the city and took public transit. This was well pre-pandemic and I was privileged enough to be able to afford a cup of coffee or something if I needed to pee. However, especially since the pandemic, the city has become an even more of a paragon of hostile architecture. There are maybe five or six publicly accessible beaches on Lake Washington, East of the city center - every other parcel along the coast is private single family residences...
The city is obsessed with clearing unhoused encampments. Those dollars would be better spent on housing the unhoused. Seriously… dystopian. And getting worse.
Washingtonian Here (Born and raised in Bellingham which is basically a bedroom community of Seattle at this point) and I can't help but smile on your take of finding a bathroom in Seattle. It is the absolute worst. one can easily...not make it in Seattle. even when you go into a coffeeshop to buy a $6 cup of coffee just to be able to use the bathroom, you are likely still to get looked at askance, and in the process of getting the key, waiting for the person in there to come out, etc etc. hopefully you are able to make it in time! Anytime I walk anywhere near the Seattle Center I make sure I've gone to the bathroom 5 times before I get to that area, at one's own Peril! :p
I lived in Portland for almost a decade when In College, moved out during the beginning of the great housing crisis / their most prescient socio, economic, environmental problems. Still live in Washington but in the middle of Nowhere these days. perhaps that is why I appreciate Seattle. I used to really enjoy going down to Seattle for the Weekend from Bellingham to "get away from it all" but maybe I would quickly learn not to love Seattle if I was to be there more often / live there (in the magical world where Seattle rents were available to a peon like me :p )
If you think dystopia is bad, wait until you experience an utopia
concerning the word UTOPIA you just might be mistaken about omicron upsilon, it is also just as acurate to be understood epsilon upsilon (eu meaning good, positive) is just as meaningful. that may very well be why Thomas More decided to use a latin form of writing (romance) in the title using just a simple "U" so the reader can conclude for themselves the positive r negative, the right r wrong, the good r bad, the yes r no. A Good wonderful excellent Place or No such Place at all.
Thanks!
In architecture school after a Prof (Bill Menking) asked what Utopia meant I said "No place".
His response was "WRONG! It means a perfect place."
I confronted him after class and he said I was being ridiculous.
I was in an illustration class once where the assignment was an album cover, and the teacher was leading a discussion on jazz. After listening to some tapes, she asked us what defines jazz. We all gave our different impressions, maybe the rhythm, the chord progression, etc. In response she said you're all wrong, jazz is completely random.
After class I caught her returning the tapes to another professor admitting that she never listens to the stuff.
The worst kind of teachers don't care about teaching you anything other than that they are the authority.
Then what's a word for a perfect place? Cause we need that as a ideal to work towards.
Why is it ok to have the word dystopia and something negative but not the opposite?
If you want to get a glimpse of surveillance dystopia, visit any city in China.
1:00 from garden cities idea.
I think by your Rubrik my town would lean towards the Utopian side of things (at least for the remainder of winter as we head into a building boom this area hasn't seen since pre- Great Depression) - but then again as the phone in my pocket monitors every single thing I do on behalf of more than a handful of corporations and possibly the government (mostly for the sake of figuring how to better sell me and other people consumer goods rather than to control my movements per se) than I guess i have chosen to opt into a "Dystopian" form of surveillance while living in an overall Utopian-ish type place. Algorithms or I don't know what TH-cam, Facebook, Or Instagram do but they seem to feed us material that is on our mind at the exact same time we are thinking about it an uncanny majority of the time which almost feels like one's brain is being scanned, or else is kind of tragic how predictable we are I suppose.
It blows me away that there are beaches you can see but not access. All beaches are public access in my home state.
I just had my blood test when I came back to un-pause the video at 11:04🦊
All crime deterrents can be weaponized - that doesn't necessarily mean their potential misuse outweighs their benefits. Life is all about striking the balance to help the largest number of people possible. Also, when he said "People, Machines" was hilarious!
OHHH like Billy clubed by not in jail
The power of anti-crime technology must always be democratized in the hands of the people. The worst dystopias are always those where the actions of those in power are kept veiled in secrecy and where division of power does not exist. Everyone should have the power to determine how stuff like CCTVs are used and where they're used with very little friction between their needs and the bureaucracy. That's a big difference between how North Korea uses cameras vs how something like the London Metro uses cameras.
This technology is already being misused or rather being weaponized against political oppositions, whistleblowers, and "dissidents."
You didn’t talk about the FRUITOPIA!
LOL! 😆 Anyone else get the Fallout trailer before this video started? How apropos. 🙌🏼
I visited the Truman town when I was in Florida, it was pretty cool. The town is called Seaside.
Stewart Hicks is my favorite AI character on TH-cam. :o)
3:38 I was thinking that also, based on my understanding of continua: there's no good nor bad, only perspective in context: if it exists, it exists for a reason but globally the world proceeds from a human outwards and ultimately, a human has specific tolerances in a universal context, which is why we have laws and learn things. "Who you are": despite the obvious control, for Truman, for the most part, everything was fine in the beginning; what he learned changed that. So, utopia/dystopia changes with experience: doesn't it always? My takeawy from this video was that people place value on their own perceptions to the exclusion of reality; and uptopia exists in accepting it.
9 billion humans living on this planet. It’s extraordinary how well it works. They cooperate even though they know they will die, they will never be super rich. That is amazing no matter what wars or crimes happen. It’s a crazy achievement.
Stewart Hicks, refusing to be constrained by narrow definitions of architecture, showers ideas on us all.
Go to cities and towns in Europe where you won't find perfect but you will find better, where the built environment is designed for human interaction rather than efficiency.
The greater New York metropolitan area is basically Norilsk or Pyongyang.
5:43 as someone who did NOT grow up in the city the asaurtion that "we go to cities to interact with other lifeforms" seems wrong. From the outside looking in cities must by their nature be devoid or nature and real interaction
I live in a utopia. That is to say I do not live in a city.
I felt this title and thumbnail alienated me. Great video, but it took a lot of effort to get past the sensational, generic, and loaded presentation of the video and trust that you will make another high quality video
Discussing utopias or dystopias is actually a way of not discussing the Polis and how public/private life is organized there. That's why Aristotle didn't discuss this but something much more important: entropy. Political regimes decay and transform into political versions different from the one originally adopted. Americans believe they live in a democracy, but what characterizes democracy is the separation between religion and politics and these two things are being mixed in American electoral and political discourse. Not to mention the immense power that private money has to deform the functioning of American public power. So what needs to be discussed is the entropy of the American political system and not utopias and dystopias.
Cool. So what happens if the answer to every single one of those questions was "I live in a dystopian hellhole?"
How about the 15 minute city?
"Headed toward"? Dude, we're already there. We got boiling-frog'd. People think dystopia has a Matrix-style green-haze sky, but it's not, as the beginning of the video showed, we're already steeped in it but with the Truman-Show style sunny sky that tricks us into thinking we're not. Look at all the things that old dystopian movies tried to warn us about but are now reality. 🤦
I like being watched :)
Utopias are uninteresting, because you can't have a story where everything is perfect; a dystopia is far more interesting, because it hyperexaggerates the true nature of the worst aspects of the real world. That's why it's called Dystopia; a wrong-place. A place where everything is just a little bit wrong.
I miss the architecture and planning stuff.
Important line at 9:13 Cinema is a great example. More boring; what's signed into law. Further obscured is what those laws influence and incentivize. I think we're feeling a lot of downstream effects right now and not many are paying attention. Plenty are getting paid though.
Next do Cli-Fi pragmatic utopias! Kim Stanley Robinson! I'm tried of negative news, fiction stories, and edu-tainment.
BTW I have that same 3d printed lamp from CW&T!
"There is no utopian movie about bureaucracy." I offer the movie "Defending Your Life" (1991). The main character winds up in an afterlife that is very bureaucratic-but kind of a nice place with good food-and the opportunity to advance to an even better place.
Would "Office Space" qualify as a film about bureaucracy?