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Ask HN: The most cyberpunk city in the world?
I'm currently re-reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. I Love how he describes the different cities in the book and I was wondering which city in our current time best fits the archetype. (Shanghai comes to mind but I'm curious to know your opinion)
- z3ugma 10y agoDubai! The tallest building in the world, 2 of the tallest residential buildings, fringed by uninhabitable desert. Built on credit, on the backs of south Asian and Filipino indentured servants. An Instagram paradise for the global elite.
- konart 10y agoNorilsk http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/26/09/3094F19C00000578-3416963-image-a-28_1453800639491.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/26/09/3094F19C0000057...
- hprotagonist 10y agoCity 17, indeed.
- cjauvin 10y agoIs this intended to reference Half Life's City 17? I never thought of it as "cyberpunk" in genre or ambiance though..
- ilogik 10y agoHalf Life 2 was heavily inspired by East-European cities (mostly Romania and Bulgaria)
- beaconstudios 10y agoit's more dieselpunk than cyberpunk tbh. The whole X-punk scene seems to devolve into arbitrary differences between very similar genres.
- konart 10y agoNah, just a coincidence. 17 is the part of the address here.
- rb808 10y agoThere is a great video showing Norilsk from last year https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/my-beautiful-deadly-city.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/my-beautiful-dead.... Very miningpunk, not sure about the cyber part.
- deathtrader666 10y agoMaybe Seoul, South Korea?
- thedailymail 10y agoSeoul definitely has the cyber but is a bit light on the punk. Same goes for Japanese cities, IMO. Old Kowloon had the right vibe. If you could put Akihabara on Gunkanjima, that would be a new contender.
- gcmartinelli 10y agoWatching this documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY) about Shenzhen I got a very strong cyberpunk vibe, especially the last 1/3 of it. People at the streets fixing electronics, cheap/pirated circuit boards being sold at the curb, etc.
- _jdams 10y agoI was in Shenzhen not long ago. Good shout, but the city is actually very new. It's very clean and the subway is near spotless, so it doesn't give off a dark, dystopian cyberpunk kinda feel to it. Hong Kong is another good shout, specifically Kowloon region. Many Asian cities like these have lots of old neon signs, architecture, and technology that definitely gives off the Cyberpunk vibe
- philsnow 10y agoHK is a really good example of cyberpunk, you have both the kowloon side which is... it's hard to say "dark" but I would say it's more "real", "intense", and "chaotic" than the island, whereas the island itself has the shadowrun-esque clique of the mega-rich business conglomerates. the only issue I see with HK being the perfect example of cyberpunk is victoria harbor keeps these two sides separate, whereas to fit the genre more I think they should be jammed up uncomfortably next to each other. some HK films make use of the separation of kowloon / island, by placing the immaculate police headquarters on the island, but requiring the policeman/hero to go to the other side to get their hands dirty / get shit done / rescue the uncle/wife/child from the triad or whatever. when they go over to kowloon you know shit's going to go down.
- Risse 10y agoHong Kong is a great contender
- spangry 10y agohttp://www.urbancapture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/101212-2301-Day-2-Airport-Transfer-Nathan-Road-Hong-Kong1.jpg http://www.urbancapture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/10121... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Hong-Kong_skyline.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Hong-Kong_sky... The setting in the original 'Ghost in the Shell' anime was modelled on Hong Kong.
- boutcher 10y agoDefinitely not Shanghai (unless you consider everyone heads-down on their phones a symptom of cyberpunk.) Shenzhen is a good choice though. How about Tallinn
- Nothorized 10y agoTallinn is a very small city. When I travel, I love to walk alone in the city during the night, and despite a few big buildings (mainly hotels), Tallinn does not look that much futuristic.
- Baeocystin 10y agoJudging by Marilyn Mugot's photography, I'd say somewhere in China. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/mar/02/marilyn-mugot-neon-china-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/mar/02...
- ttam 10y agoEither somewhere in Asia or Berlin
- Nutomic 10y agoI don't see how Berlin could be considered Cyberpunk at all. Sure there are some modern buildings, but most of it is at least 50 years old. And there's no real high-tech.
- ttam 10y agoI'd say Berlin definitely has a cyberpunk aura at night, with its post-industrial setting, electronic music scene and hacker/tech/anarchist vibe
- adrianN 10y agoI live in Berlin. Some parts are punk, some parts are cyber, no parts that I know are cyberpunk.
- altern8tif 10y agoDefinitely Hong Kong. I just came back from a holiday there and the bus ride from the airport to Kowloon amidst towering brutalist apartments made me feel like I'm entering a dystopian metropolis.
- pmarreck 10y agoSeconding this. Hong Kong all the way, no contest. I also went there a year or 2 ago and (besides being reminded everywhere about what inspired the styles in the cyberpunk game Deus Ex that take place there) it just felt very cyberpunk. Also, I LOVED IT, and sadly only spent 24 hours there (yet a VERY memorable 24 hours!). I want to go back!
- sAbakumoff 10y agoInteresting..I love Hong Kong for its beautiful hiking trails where I don't need any tech stuff at all. It really feels like back to the nature :)
- pmarreck 10y agoHeh. I only saw Hong Kong nightlife... and Victoria Peak. (It was a very productive 24 hours, I think we only slept about 4 of it LOL)
- 19eightyfour 10y agoOkay, tbh, I'm going to vote against all map points on the de rigeur "tech metropolis" list. TOKYO, HK, SHANGHAI, SHENZHEN, SEOUL, or <insert yet-another East-Asian megacity here.> No to all of them. Why? They're really more capitalist mega-aggregations of labour and value...tech, either consumer-side or industry-side and any, cyber-punk under-side to these places is really, despite their (arguably somewhat faded) romance, these days is a side effect ( okay, maybe 1990s-era Harajuku FRUiTS style aside ). I'm going to vote for someplace in Africa as actually the most cyberpunk. I've never been there, but bear with me. High mobile phone usage but lots of shanty towns, mobile finance but still open air barter markets. And they do a lot of destroy/recycle/resell of tech ( old computers, old tvs, old batteries, old ships ). It's technologically advanced, but it's also still animist and voodoo. The internet didn't just "get adopted", it got "inhaled" and started changing everything, because things were still flexible enough to be changed. Look maybe I'm just TOOMA, and someone who actually knows and has lived there can set this perspective straight. But for sake of freshness of updating the conception of "cyperpunk" I'm going against the grain of passing the crown around the clique of Asian megacities, to someplace maybe a little more grungy, maybe a little more deserving of the mantle of "cyberpunk". A place where you could still imagine, perhaps, an organic "phreaking" culture existing even today, accompanied by reverse engineering and zines, distributed by bicycle couriers to people cool enough to be included in such secrets. I know Africa is not glittering spires of glass and steel, but is that really so cyberpunk in our current time? Isn't the essence of cyberpunk something a little more bustling but raw-and-real, and digital but down-to-earth?
- stuxnet79 10y agoHere's a cyberpunk short story called VIRUS! that is set in Accra Ghana http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/virus/ http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/virus/ I've been following the author for some years but I believe he has yet to complete a full manuscript. In general I agree with most of what you have said. The Sprawl Trilogy is almost 30 years old, a completely different era. A re-evaluation of what "cyberpunk" means in this day and age is necessary in my book.
- 19eightyfour 10y ago
- arethuza 10y agoI don't know about "cyberpunk" but every time the Dubai screensaver comes on my Apple TV I'm pleased to find I must be living in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bucV8Y_p0ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bucV8Y_p0ME Edit: All that video needs is an Elysium style flying Bugatti.
- hack_edu 10y agoOakland, CA is a strong contender if you step back. Especially for one of a Stephensonian-styled second-wave cyberpunk. It even plays a part in Neuromancer. It has its dark parts along with strong facets of common cyberpunk themes: drastic social stratification, the social acceptance of regular drug usage, urban decay meets technocratic renewal, a renewed definition of suburbia, and a greater acceptance of non-binary genders.
- philsnow 10y agoI like it, especially because there's a strong artist population there, and a common theme in cyberpunk is showing what the non-techies' life is like (to contrast it to the main characters' lives), and it's quite often artists.
- cx1000 10y agoFor those not familiar with the term cyberpunk (like me), this is what Wikipedia has to say > Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting that tends to focus on society as "high tech low life" featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as information technology and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
- wlesieutre 10y agoSome of the better known examples are Neuromancer, Blade Runner, and Deus Ex
- dollaholla 10y agoThere are pockets of it everywhere. There's a filthy bodega in uptown Manhattan with expired produce on the shelves, but there's a Bitcoin ATM and young kids hang out there and barter stolen Uber accounts for Bitcoin.
- Raphmedia 10y agoKowloon Walled City. It is no more but it was amazing that such a city ever existed. Read on it. It was a city build on itself, cube shaped. Some people would spend their entire day inside or in the middle of the city and would never see the sun. Search it on Google Image and you will understand what I mean.
- thejones 10y agoA big part of the game Shadowrun: Hong Kong is actually set in Kowloon, so that would support your view.
- beaconstudios 10y agothe now-demolished Walled City of Kowloon was a great example of the dereliction/"street culture" side of cyberpunk fiction, very reminiscent of the "underbelly" image of cities like Midgar from FF7 or Hengsha in DX:HR. Also places like Lagos with a high rate of internet technology paired with scrap pickers and DIY recycling. For the economic side of cyberpunk (the capitalist dystopia side), I'd say Hong Kong. A city with a booming economy and ample opportunity for international corporations but where the poorest citizens live in literal cages: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/cage-homes-hong-kong http://all-that-is-interesting.com/cage-homes-hong-kong For the neon/e-billboard aesthetic, you can't really beat Tokyo or Times Square, NY.
- alphydan 10y agoNot a city, but close to Barcelona there is an old factory which has been occupied and had a strong cyberpunk vibe when I visited https://greenhousingwelfare.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/ca-la-fou-colonia-ecoindustrial-postcapitalista/ https://greenhousingwelfare.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/ca-la-f... (they self describe as an eco-industrial post-capitalist community)
- sailfast 10y agoBangkok, Thailand.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoTaipei. I was only there for a couple of days but where I stayed had that Kowloon walled City feel to it and I went to a rave in the lush, jungle like mountains.
- arcaster 10y agoMaybe an unlikely choice, but I actually think Boston, especially chinatown in Boston is incredibly cyberpunk. Yes, I might be biased since I went to school in Boston and a huge fan of the Fallout series. If I had to give a structure / area outside chinatown, the trench that the commuter lines and orange-line run through are incredibly cyberpunk.
- konart 10y agoSomething like this is almost Oshii's gits https://twitter.com/archillect/status/699657007599656962/photo/1 https://twitter.com/archillect/status/699657007599656962/pho...