https://aftermath.site/cyberpunk-urban-design
"The first time I get a good view of
Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City is from the
window of a private taxi. The driverless flying car departs from a portal high
up in the side of my corporate employer’s headquarters and soars over a packed,
four lane traffic circle. I sip champagne as neon towers slide past,
megabuildings whose gargantuan size would make Denis Villeneuve blush.
The car is taking me to a bar to meet a friend. As the vehicle swoops down, the
automation warns me that there is no suitable landing place for an aerial
vehicle. In other words, there’s nowhere to park.
I override the warning. The cab parks illegally on a basketball court,
upsetting the people currently shooting hoops. I punch them in the face,
because this seems like the kind of thing a corpo like me would do.
Parking isn’t a big deal in Night City, because
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game and
nobody enjoys parking. You can leave your car, motorcycle or neo-militarist
armoured SUV wherever you like and recall it later with the press of a button.
Cars are almost always in motion, and it’s rare to see street parking or a
parking lot. There aren’t even bike lanes; Night City is a place where the car
is king.
Clearly the designers at CD Projekt Red understand what many real world urban
planners are starting to grasp: parking sucks the life out of a city. This
representation of a car-centric dystopia can’t actually be too car-centric.
It’s fun to drive around, sure, but
Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t a game about
driving.
“We were creating a game, an experience that has to be super fun for the player
to enjoy,” Kacper Niepokólczycki, environment art director at CD Projekt RED,
told me. “You can explore the world in a vehicle, on foot, or swimming. We
tried our best to make sure any of those methods gives you a fun and different
experience.”
If only North American cities thought the same way."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
