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Science

2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey 134

Posted by Hemos from the thinking-about-the-future dept.
desoumal writes " In the blog 2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey published in WorldChanging, which covers a recent challenge presented to the student teams from 80 Indian colleges that entered in NASA '04 (National Association of Students of Architecture's annual design event), held in Mumbai, India, by Hiray College Of Architecture, Rohit Gupta writes about the highlights of the event - a city based on a giant question mark, a city inside a giant genetically-modified tree trunk, cities that grow like viruses, cities that look and function like holes made by earthworms... my personal favorite amongst them being a city with a photovoltaic dome 'designed so that it literally followed the path of the sun round the year, to maximize the solar energy, down to individual housing units'. Damn cool. "
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2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey More

2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey

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  • Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CommanderData ( 782739 ) * <kevinhiNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:23AM (#10297206)
    My brain hurts from reading that incredible run-on sentence summary. Remember boys and girls, the period is your friend. [penny-arcade.com] Read on for even more punctuation pointers! [penny-arcade.com]

    It is ironic that one of the proposed structures (see the picture in TFA) is a giant city-structure in the shape of a question mark!

    • Re:Ouch! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is ironic that one of the proposed structures (see the picture in TFA) is a giant city-structure in the shape of a question mark!

      Even more ironic is that the entire Earth is structured in the shape of a period.

    • Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)

      by tomee ( 792877 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:31AM (#10297279)
      I, at this point, having read (and reread) the sentence that you, in your post, which I am replying to, mentioned, agree.

    • Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Informative)

      by robslimo ( 587196 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:34AM (#10297307) Homepage Journal
      I tried editting it a little for readability. Still didn't make any sense to me.

      Then I clicked the first link and, viola!

      "Create a foundation for a perfect world in the next century (2250 A.D.) that would sustain life and habitat in the future but would not interfere in the surrounding eco-system. The structure should have basic functional areas catering to 5000 families."

      Perhaps if that description of the challenge had been in the article summary...

      • Then I clicked the first link and, viola!

        A musical interlude???
        I hate embedded midi files on webpages.
        Maybe the word you were looking for was voila!

    • Damn cool.

      This second sentence is pretty short.

  • problem solvers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:23AM (#10297207)
    most of the teams assumed that the world would be largely submerged in water, that the atmosphere would be far too polluted to be breathable, and energy would be scarce, b) the designs took little note of human nature or costs and c) almost all of them approached growth vertically.

    Why would these guys assume that the majority of the world would be under water? Surely, I can believe that the air might be too polluted to be breathable...

    However, if society can figure out how to place entire communities of people under water... certainly we can figure out how to clean some air.

    Honestly, I love contests like this. We used to have them when I was in college. You are given a scenerio then you find all the potential losses and gains around this situation, you think of solutions, and then you write a detailed plan around the best solution.

    The majority of the winners that I remember from my ole college days have come true. We explored internet growth, viruses, loss of fossil fuels, and such...

    Oh, those were the days.

    • Re:problem solvers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by robslimo ( 587196 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:41AM (#10297363) Homepage Journal
      Why would these guys assume that the majority of the world would be under water?

      The funny thing about this (their statement and your followup question) is the that the majority (around 70%)of the world is already covered by water!

      Seems like a safe assumption to me.
    • Why would these guys assume that the majority of the world would be under water?

      Uh... last time I checked, the planet was about 70% under water [blueplanetbiomes.org].

      --Rob

      • yes but how much difference would it make if the south pole melted?

        like, would there not be any land over the waterline? because that's what the contest was really suggesting. then again, it's just a scenario.

        • Is there more ice at the south pole than the north pole?
          • Depends on the season. The north pole melts considerably in the summer.

          • The ice at the north pole is floating. It's melting won't raise sea level.

            The real difference in sea level comes from water expanding when heated. It's most dense around 40deg f (~2deg c). If the water heats up just one or two degrees, it expand, and when water in something as deep as the ocean expands by even as little as 1%, that's not a negligible rise in sea level.

    • Thats interesting, and I agree with you. I just wish people wouldnt be so pessimistic though. Why is there always a focus on the future being bad. This is the cop out that gets us where we are today. "This disaster will happen and the world will have to adapt this way.."
      Instead of. "We are taking steps to get to this position in the future. By then the environment will have been restored".
      Its never a case of living in harmony with nature, rather continuing on in our destructive path, then making nature as i

      • Its staggering how far we could have advanced technologically if we made the right moves in the beginning.

        And which great seer can tell everyone what the right moves are ?

        You cant fix what you dont know. hindsight is always 20/20.

        • I think we consulted that great seer already!

          'O great seer, and supreme overlord, what system should America pursue - what way can we set an example for the rest of the world to follow'

          The seer:
          'Build me anr arrrrmy. Worrrrthy of Morrrrdorrrr.'

    • I found it more interesting that the article writer assumed that the nuclear family would be history by 2250AD. I don't understand the reasoning; it's survived some 8,000 years of recorded history, and it's not about to go away any time soon.

  • Oh good god (Score:5, Funny)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:25AM (#10297225)
    One of them, Vishal, told me why they had constructed a city in the shape of a giant question mark, floating on the water, just off the coast of Marine Drive, Bombay. "It represents the invisible actual, and metaphorically, the unknown perfect design that will stand there in 2250 AD. Obviously, this is not that working design but only a notion of it. Only the question remains.."

    WTF? Somebody care to translate. Please?

    • Re:Oh good god (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "We've not made an actual design yet, so we've put a giant question mark there for now."
    • Translation: "No matter how high we got, around 5:00am we realized there was no way we were going to get this project done."

      Back home we used to call this "baffle 'em with the bullsh*t". (And then hope they don't notice that we didn't actually do the project.)

    • Re:Oh good god (Score:5, Funny)

      by joib ( 70841 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:35AM (#10297320)
      It means "So long, and thanks for all the tax money", to paraphrase D. Adams.
    • "Send more crack"

    • Re:Oh good god (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It represents the invisible actual, and metaphorically, the unknown perfect design that will stand there in 2250 AD. Obviously, this is not that working design but only a notion of it. Only the question remains

      Basically he's saying, "I have no idea. And I have no idea what i'm saying. But just pretend that i do have an idea. This ridiculous image symbolizes that idea. And this psuedo-intellectual speech symbolizes that i know what i'm saying."
    • WTF? Somebody care to translate. Please?

      Sure! It translates as follows:

      ?


      -

  • Banyan trees for home-grown homes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:29AM (#10297264)
    I've always thought that Banyan trees [backpacker...gammon.com] would make a good basis for organic architecture. By weaving the dangling prop roots, people could make walls, doors, halls, rooms, etc. The tree could grow with the family.

  • Here's what I'd do (Score:5, Funny)

    by sizzzzlerz ( 714878 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:30AM (#10297272)
    I'd build a city that floats on clouds. It would be called, oh, lets say Stratus. We'd enslave those who remained on the earth to mine the minerals we would need to survive (always a good idea).

    Oh, and the women would wear these top thingies that looked like the bandoliers on Mexican bandits.

  • Sea vs. space (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <stevehenderson.gmail@com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:31AM (#10297283)
    Am I the only one that thinks a nautical settlement is less likely for the future than space settlements? If I had to guess, the circumstances that would drive us to inhabit a new frontier would likely make the seas uninhabitable as well.

    • Re:Sea vs. space (Score:3, Interesting)

      by carlmenezes ( 204187 )
      Well, seeing as how we're going to have a LOT of people by then, I think floating cities that are impervious to storms and the like wouldn't seem to be that much a stretch of the imagination. In fact, I won't be surprised if 200 years down the line, the earth looks like a floating mesh of cities and causeways
    • Option 1. City in space. Big dome, sealing out vacuum. Plenty of light, I suppose, but not much else.

      Option 2. City on remote planet. Big dome, sealing out planet's unbreathable atmosphere. Plenty of dirt and rocks around, I suppose, and you can mine.

      Option 3. City in the ocean. Big done, sealing out water. Plenty of water nearby, AND a good seabed with plenty of mining capabilities. Not as good on the light/energy deal, but you can't win 'em all: maybe you could do fusion by then, or maybe you could drill

    • Primarily, we already have nautical settlements, oil rigs. However, more to your idea. I believe that nautical settlements are a certainty (within a hundred years maybe). Probably not for general purposes, but as the worlds population grows, offshore aquaculture becomes necessary to provide the world with protein. Settlements will have to grow around these farms to provide support. Animal farming seems to inefficient a use of arable farmland.
      Brandon
    • It would probably be easier, and possibly cheaper to build nautical cities. We'd still have to create an environment in a dome (or whatever shape you prefer), but it's a lot easier and cheaper to get underwater than it is into space.

  • A few years after 2021... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We'll be able to transport our brains into robot bodies. But the robots will only be five feet tall, because that's as big as they come.

    Derek 'Stormy' Waters : Okay, okay. So, say I put my brain in a robot body and there's a war. Robots versus humans. What side am I on?

    Debbie DuPree : Humans! You have a human brain.

    Sparks : But... the humans discriminate against you. You can't even vote!

    Marco : We'd better not have to live on a reservation. That would really chap my caboose.

    Captain Murphy : Yea

  • Bleh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlipJig ( 184130 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:32AM (#10297291) Homepage
    As one of those whiny former architorture students (studied it for four years), these contest submissions remind me of everything I hated about the subject. Namely: lots of pseudo-intellectual babble, and a propensity to design buildings based on arbitrary objects with no eye towards function. For example, my classmates used to do things like base the building design on a "found object" (piece of junk) from the site, or maybe on some random patterns generated by a pet with a marker. The fact that this rewarded is incredibly frustrating to someone who demands any kind of rational justification for their own design ideas.

    I should state that I don't have these objections to the profession of architecture itself (I have other ones); just the way it's taught. My wife is a licensed architect, and she suffers from the scars inflicted by a typical architecture school, but from few of the goofy delusions enjoyed by its students.
    • Dude, it's called art. Sometimes, you just have to put form over function.
    • lots of pseudo-intellectual babble, and a propensity to design buildings based on arbitrary objects with no eye towards function. For example, my classmates used to do things like base the building design on a "found object" (piece of junk) from the site, or maybe on some random patterns generated by a pet with a marker. The fact that this rewarded is incredibly frustrating to someone who demands any kind of rational justification for their own design ideas.

      Yes, these are the reasons that I also got out
      • I got the impression the profs were always looking for the next F. L. Wright (or Corbu or Gaudi) and wouldn't give us any insight into their (or any "real") design thought process, for fear of influencing our creative development.

        I'm also much happier in the tech world... have gone back to study business now and am enjoying it. Like you, my only regret is that I didn't switch majors after one year instead of quitting in disgust after four.
      • Staying up all night getting stoned before the project was due

        Thank goodness some college skills translate well into the real world.

    • Re:Bleh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LaCosaNostradamus ( 630659 )
      Oh, goody, one of the anointed. Try this on for size, chum:

      The architecture of 2250AD? This is after the high-energy West falls to the current World War it has provoked and is waging against the low-energy Islam, right?

      Leaving aside the lack of political reality, this is all of course the usual "heavy urban" view, as if people really want to live in Human hives under strict authoritarian controls, living lives of essential slavery while somehow the system acts to make them as confortable as possible

    • Re:Bleh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 )
      Namely: lots of pseudo-intellectual babble, and a propensity to design buildings based on arbitrary objects with no eye towards function. For example, my classmates used to do things like base the building design on a "found object" (piece of junk) from the site, or maybe on some random patterns generated by a pet with a marker. The fact that this rewarded is incredibly frustrating to someone who demands any kind of rational justification for their own design ideas.

      It's the same in many fields- not just ar



    • In my college years I would have agreed with you. People like you make bad architects. Architecture is issentially the fusion of creativity and problem solving. The goal of those design classes was to get you to think outside of the box, thus we dont have more re-invention of roman classism, or some other over burdoned style but somethign true and unique. eg.
      http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Gugg e nheim _Bilbao.html
      http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bi n/gbi.cgi/New_ National_Gallery.html/cid_239980

  • "inside of a tree trunk...." (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Shiver me timbers, they stole me bloomin' idea! Now I has t' come up with some other way t' hide me secret lair from scurvy lubbers who feels like snoopin' around.....
  • Staying away from Pod 6 [pod-six.net] though.

  • What I'd like to know is... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by carlmenezes ( 204187 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:42AM (#10297374) Homepage
    the names of the students who came up with these ideas. Surely, they deserve some recognition and credit too?

  • Holy Crap (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 )
    This has to be one of the worst descriptions ever. Firstly because it's one big, incomprehensible run-on sentence, but more importantly because it doesn't even give a summary of the challenge,despite going into some detail about the variety results.

    Both the original author and Hemos deserve to be sacked. I mean, come on, I know they're not going to catch every mistake, but they're called editors for a reason and if they're not going to even bother to fix a horrible description like this then they're just n
  • "In nxt 250 yrs cncpts of sustnblty'd mk us thnk'f dffrnt apprches for svng energy. Wstge of papr and ink'd be rducd thru chnging th way v wrte. Th wrds v use rgulry'd b wrttn in shrtst possible way" Or, we could continue to move towards soft copies and remove ink and paper completely. I have to wonder what influenced that entry. I suppose there is a chance that the submitter's world region is simply less progressive...
    • There are a number of languages which are written in a similar manner (Hebrew is a good example). Perhaps one of the students on that team writes one of those languages. I don't think that a change in writing of this manner is really desirable for English ("pck'p th bt? Do y'mn boot, boat, bat, bet?") as the shortest possible way in general is highly non-regular.

      However, I can think of a way to change English writing which would have huge savings - make it actually phoenetic! Imagine cutting a year off
      • It's been tried. From 1934 to 1955, the Chicago Tribune used simplified spelling. A whole generation of Chicagoians grew up with "tho" and "frate" as normal spelling. But nobody went along with the Tribune, and they gave up.
        • Of course it won't work if only a single institution tries to get others to follow it. Language is a networked process, and a single entity changing its use to non-standard results in a penalty for the entity. A broad consensus would need to be reached before instituting the change nation- or world-wide. The best place to start would probably be something like a teacher's union or confederation of English teachers, who would be both the people who would see the greatest need for it and also the ones most

  • In reality ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cyburbia ( 695748 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:51AM (#10297456) Homepage
    The typical city in North America doesn't look that different than the city of 50 years ago, except that it's less dense, the limited access highway network then under construction is mostly complete, and some mixed or incompatible land uses have been filtered out by zoning.

    What was the newest land use trend 50 years ago? Relatively low density, automobile-oriented suburbs. Today, the suburbs dominate the urban landscape, though not to the exclusion of older built environment patterns such as denser urban neighborhoods.

    What's making the pages of urban planning-related publications today? Gentrification, urban infill, and new urbanism, along with semi-rural exurban sprawl. Expect to see more of that, along with "kinder, gentler suburbs"; traditional lower-density suburbs with higher-quality architecture, low-profile signage and plentiful landscaping in commercial areas, and so on.

    Cities are organic, living entities. Planning to shape and guide the development of existing urban areas is a Good Thing; without it, most urban North Americans would be subject to Houston-like chaos. However, contemporary cities planned from the start tend to be sterile and lacking in character; Canberra, Brazilia, planned industrial cities in the former Soviet Union, and sylvan 1970s-era New Towns in the US, for example.

    • Exactly.

      Everyone likes to bemoan the United States' dependence on foreign oil, and somehow blame the auto industry. Th real culprit isn't the cars, it's the zoning.

      We live in a car culture, not because of some rugged American individualism, but because that's the way we've zoned it. We've made it impossible to live without a car (except in Manhattan -- possibly the only place in the US where a car is a liability.) People can talk till there blue in the face about public transportation, but it just does
    • This may be slightly off topic .. but here is a good article on the direction building architecture should take according to this architect -> thought I'd share.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3553376.stm

    • The planning sucks - that's the reason. One of the most beautiful cities in the world - St. Petersburg, Russia - was planned. Peter the Great drew the plan and the city was built according to it (the central part, obviously).

      And Soviet urban planning was quite good, actually (though subject to many real-life limitations). Much better then the American suburbs/inner city ghettos.

      The biggest problem is that planning was rarely attempted on a large enough scale and with sufficient consistency over time. We n

  • city "planning" (Score:4, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:55AM (#10297499) Journal

    cities that grow like viruses

    You mean like Houston?

  • For a minute I wondered if this was the other NASA's contribution and they meant following the galactic path of the sun through interstellar space.....

  • This is not what I'd call "useful" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Control Group ( 105494 ) * on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:58AM (#10297519) Homepage
    To be succinct and unfriendly (it's Monday, I'm tired, and my office is out of coffee!!), this article is singularly useless. With no justification for any of the designs, they might as well be crayon doodlings on construction paper.

    A question mark? What possible advantage does building a city in the shape of a question mark have? Shaped like the human body? Why? If the reactor becomes unstable, dump it in the ocean? What?

    Not to mention the ridiculous assumption that most of the world will be covered by water...I realize burning fossil fuels creates water, but WTF?

    Looking at cities worldwide today, it seems fairly clear that they accrete over time in whatever fashion is most functional as they grow. Form following function. This seems to be exactly the opposite, "build it and they will come" on a ridiculous level. That doesn't even work for professional sports venues, much less for entire cities.

    Which, incidentally, is the problem I always have with proposals to build cities on the bottom of the sea, or on the surface of the moon, or any equally-remote location. You can't just "build a city" there, it has to develop there. Cities grow where there's a reason for people to congregate. Along trade routes - roads and rivers (as a US-centric parenthatical, I wonder if, after the apocalypse, new cities would gradually grow up around the intersections of interstates, assuming they survived...which would mean mostly where the cities already were). If we want to have a city under the sea, we have to have first, a practical and relatively inexpensive way for people to get to and from there. Second, a good reason for people to want to live there (crowding would have to become pretty bad to make living under the sea more appealing to most people). And third, a revisiting of the laws governing who owns what parts of the sea (IIRC, "territorial waters" extend 20 miles off the coast of a nation; that's not enough space to both populate with cities and maintain the buffer zone that the current "territorial waters" area provides), though this last could easily happen after population started moving there.

    Oh, and: the one idea in the article that was kind of neat was the sun-following city...but without any implementation details, it's still not real useful. I mean, I could propose a city that harnessed the awesome power of zero point energy, and it's really cool, but not too helpful.

    OTOH, all my problems with it could be a function of the writeup that was linked, rather than of the event itself.

    • Not to mention the ridiculous assumption that most of the world will be covered by water...I realize burning fossil fuels creates water, but WTF?

      Wow, would it be just as ridiculous to look at any current-day globe & realize that most of the world is already covered by water?

      • To quote the article: most of the teams assumed that the world would be
        largely submerged in water

        This certainly implies a change in the current state. The fact that more than two thirds of the planet is already covered in water isn't much of an assumption, is it? Particularly when the quote above (helpfully labelled point "a)") is immediately followed by point "b)", assuming that the atmosphere will be unbreathable.

        So why don't you valet park your high horse, and at least pick legitimate nits.

    • Shaped like the human body? Why? If the reactor becomes unstable, dump it in the ocean?

      Sure. You can imagine what city tunnel looks like that does the dumping. What worries me is after the dump, when the city decides to "flush". {shudder}
    • Not to mention the ridiculous assumption that most of the world will be covered by water...I realize burning fossil fuels creates water, but WTF? What are you talking about? The world is mostly covered by water. Between 70 and 75% apparently [usgs.gov]
    • As others have said, the world is already mostly covered with water - Not a bas assumption it will remain.

      As to the city in the shape of a question mark, if you'd read the article, you'd have seen that the student did this as a statement that he also had no freaking clue as to what the perfect city of 2250 would be like (Nice cop out answer.)

      I agree about the human body one though. Odd.

      As for 'form following function', dispite what you think, there ARE cases in the world right now, where the city was bui
    • There are nations in the world with large amounts of territorial water. Fiji, for instance, not only owns the actual islands that it's on, but also a LOT of the water around it, far more than the normal 20 nautical mile limit. I suspect the Fijian government would be overjoyed to see an influx of new taxpayers moving into underwater cities in its territory.
    • You don't need a reason for people to congregate today. In the past it made sense to build them on the rivers, so that they have access to transportation or serve as nodes in a large transportation network.

      But in 1703 Russian emperor Peter the Great said [www.vor.ru] "A city shall be found here" (to spite the Swedes and to become a new capital). He drew the original plan himself and so the city grew orderly from the very beginning [years.spb.ru] (though fortunately it was improved by architects better than the Emperor, such as ober-a

  • Okay... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @11:01AM (#10297555) Homepage
    How is this much more than an art project? I mean, there's no practical reason for a city shaped like a question mark and a plethora of reasons why it's impractical. And even the artistic rationale for its symbolism is really bullshit: "It represents the invisible actual, and metaphorically, the unknown perfect design that will stand there in 2250 AD. Obviously, this is not that working design but only a notion of it. Only the question remains."

    A few of these designs are more successful artistically, but most of them still fail practically. How about this, I'd like to form a city in the shape of a giant toilet to symbolize that society is going down the crapper.
  • 2250 AD is going to be post technological singularity. Given that, probably the most accurate description of a city to house 5000 people would be a 1 meter by 4 meter by 9 meter featureless solid black rectangle.

    -

    • Re:Post singularity (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A rectangle has only two dimensions.
    • Maybe you mean kilometer? As it is, I'm just shy of 2m tall, so that'd be pretty small for 5000 people. Unless we made them really tiny...

      *strokes chin in thought*
      • Nope, he means METER. The concept would be that human beings would get rid of their bodies and become fully simulated. They would only exist as living "programs" in a vast virtual reality contained in the RAM of a post-singularity computer system.

        Not necessarily the most popular view of what could happen after the singularity, but theoretically possible. See the writings of Ray Kurzweil [kurzweilai.net] for some more information.

  • Family (Score:2)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    From the article:

    The only far-fetched assumption I found in the design of the contest itself was
    the assumption that in 2250 A.D., there would still be a social entity called family...

    We've had families for thousands of years. Why would we suddenly get rid of them? I think the only way to get rid of families is by cloning people, and that is not a good idea.
    • actually it is the idea of what a "family" is that has changed in many ways, especially in the last century.

      Single parent families and same-sex parents (who may both be the biological parents), families which are the joining up of two single-parent families (brady bunch anyone??) are part of the evolution of the family.

      this would seem more apparent to a person from india where the extended family concept has been more prevalent (i'm from sri lanka and we have the same issues)

      personally i think we would b

  • Calvino (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @12:50PM (#10298687) Homepage
    Kind of random, but if any one else here enjoys reading about different city ideas, you should check out Invisible Cities [amazon.com] by Italo Calvino. Its a VERY short book that details the trip of Marco Polo through many different types of cities with different customs and cultures, all very fascinating and out of the norm.

    Supposedly, the author was writing about all the various sub-areas of Venice, and each little area became a city after being given a deeper, extropolated look.

    • I just returned _Invisible Cities_ - I second your recommendation, but I'd describe it differently. It's a travelogue of fictional & fantastic cities. I'd recommend it for people who like Neil Gaiman.

      I'm surprised; I expected references to All Your Base & Sealab 2021 in this thread, not Calvino.
      • Well, yes, it IS a travelogue about fictional and fantastic cities, but try reading it with a grain of salt...many of those cities match up with different areas and subcultures of Venice and it is very likely the author was basing it off of that. I believe a quick googling could find some examples. And I say that not to be a nazi, but to give people and interesting new perspective in which to read the book as it really does change things when you read it the second time around with that thought on your mi
  • I can see the headlines now.. "Ampersand City Officals Face Interecetion Chaos, While Question Mark-tonians Are Left Wondering Where The Road Ends" Ahh..the future..the meek inherit the earth, but its the clowns that run it!

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