Science fiction cities

One of the panels I attended last Saturday at the Magical Cities conference was titled Sci-Fi Cities.  I'm not a fan of cities, and as an environmental SF writer I rarely write about them.  If they do figure in my work, my characters are likely to be running away from them.

Cyberpunk cities are 'a radical rejection of the Enlightenment ethos' one of the speakers claimed.  Certainly with their the emphasis on tall buildings, shiny tech, and hyper-commercialisation, they are very alienating places.  Yet strangely, one of the classics of this genre, William Gibson's Neuromancer, was influenced by the video arcades of Vancouver's Granville Street. Which just goes to show that you see what you want in a place.  Vancouver is surrounded by water, and has a large green space (Stanley Park) close to its downtown centre.  To me, it seems a strange place to influence cyberpunk.

Abandoned cities feature a lot in SF, usually as relics of some apocalyptic event.  Sometimes they've been drowned by rising oceans, sometimes a plague wiped the people out.  But often, when these cities are explored, the truth is not as the newsnets would have the citizens of that world believe.

Steampunk cities are places where steam-based tech has replaced our current-day electronics.  I've never been drawn to writing about these, as they often import the social structure of the Victorian era too.  Which means that women don't have freedom and agency, and I can't be doing with that.

Underground cities sound like my worst nightmare,  I have to get out and feel the sun on my face and see the sky every day.  Living underground would be hell for me.  And if you add in a system like the one in Hugh Howey's Wool, where in the end the reader discovers that living that way isn't necessary, it's even more of a nightmare.

I do have ideas to write about cities, but these will be places where the natural world predominates.  They will have large green spaces, and lots of living walls on the sides of buildings.  And there will be wildlife corridors running through them, to help the other species we share the planet with.

Now the problem is to how to reduce the human population to a level the planet can cope with. I think that will involve all that greenery in the city somehow, but I'm still working on that idea.