5
Overview
Note: To follow high-quality screenshots, click this Sub-Reddit link.
Welcome to my 'intermezzo' (as they say in Chess) project. I had two choices: downsize the Great Palace Library or accept my fate and break it up with other projects. I decided upon the latter. It's actually more of an overlapping project.
The Texture Pack is one of the very few modern-style Packs I found that works or is downloadable for my Minecraft: BladeCraft.
Battle Runner (1982) in Manhattan. What more do you want?!
Since this project is so vast, I'm starting it early, building them concurrently. To ensure it gets completed at some point this decade, I'm radically limiting the physical dimensions, but hope to give the illusion of vastness. It's going to be a slice of the whole project, like a massive diorama.
Note: This is just fun fan fiction and not perfect in terms of the film, so don't hold it against me. It's a mixture of actual Blade Runner worldbuilding and my own. Not set within the Blade Runner universe, but an alterative one. :)
Manhattan is not only the archetypal fixture of New York -- and, perhaps, the world -- it's also a curiosity: at once one of the most densely populated locations on Earth and yet one of the most marvellous and beloved, and expensive (per-property). Should we fall hence, Manhattan must be the crowning jewel of humanity, though we hardly talk this way. By the 1920s, New York City became the most populous and important metropolitan area in the world, surpassing that of London, England. I believe it was written in the 1930s that New York was the 'world capital', culturally and economically.
My setting supposes a post-prime jewel of humanity trapped in stasis. Like the ruins of Rome under glass, sat on a museum shelf somewhere. There is a certain sadness to the awe. Tragic yet magnificent. Like a snowman unable to move his snow feet but with a burning desire to do so. You can feel the past and the silent yearning for life.
I'm impinging a post-Nietzschean world in this way, where humanity means to pick up the pieces but doesn't know how. We drowned ourselves and are ready to reflect, but the future is unknown and unknowable.
Recall what Nietzsche hath said (Will to Power (1901)): 'For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.'
Plans
The city they call The Big Apple is in more films than any city on Earth, and more photographed than God. You may not realise just how centralised a lot of New York is, to where but Mid- to Lower Manhattan. As an Englishman and cinephile, you can understand where my basis came from: American movies.
Anyway, I'm managing that they built downward instead, to avoid the elements (somewhat mirroring the Great Palace Library project and Dubai, though they have a habit of building in all directions). The New York bedrock is only a few metres. My setting goes to a depth of 500 metres at the deepest (in other words, an inverted skyscraper). This is technically durable, as there is a 2000,000 metre-thick lithosphere under New York City, though I wouldn't think it's wise to go beyond the upper-crust (5,000 metres at the shallowest).
Setting year is 2219 (homage to Blade Runner's 2019 time period, merely 200 years into the future). Evidently, it's not the real Earth but an alt Earth with almost everything the same for most of history, at least.
Back to Blade Runner (1982). I'm guessing the elevator car sections of the Tyrell Corporation pyramid were inspired by Antonio Sant'Elia's air and train station drawing. Looking at in-film shots and otherwise data, we can conclude that the Tyrell Corporation pyramid is actually closer to 800 metres tall, not 3,000, though the latter is the established size. The former makes more sense, and is more in line with the Jedi Temple from the Star Wars universe, still making it one of the largest sci-fi structures on film. Although the height itself is not unthinkable, the base structure is unworkable at 6,000 metres or so (seeming about twice the height). That's a city, stacked, in a building.
But, I was in awe of the grander scale. I also concluded that such would be possible with super-tech in the year 2219 as opposed to 2019. The most significant difference between the two is that my city hub is much wider (800,000 metres) but also much shorter (200 metres), whereas, Blade Runner's L.A. is possibly even beyond 6,000 metres tall and roughly 80,000 metres long.
In this way, I'm leaning more into Egyptian architecture of width, and trying to stretch out Art Deco structures. A key inspiration, for example, was Battersea Power Station (England) and various Art Deco-era elongated buildings of the Americans and Soviets. I'll just call these 'edgescrapers', as they are 'horizontal skyscrapers'. For example, 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Expo (Paris). I hope that makes sense. You'll get a better understanding when I show plans for actual buildings and areas.
See below for mapping of the actual project.
(1) New York Great Node (city hub) (800,000 metres in diameter; 1.5 billion population)
(2) Urizen Arcology (within the Node) (160,000 by 80,000 metres; 1 billion population)
(3) Golgonooza (city within Urizen) (80,000 by 50,000 metres; 700 million population)
(4) The Nassau (central barrio (Filipino for 'district') within Golgonooza) (40,000 by 30,000 metres; 300 million population)
(5) Tri-Barrio area (the area I'm actually building (2,000 by 1,600 metres; 5 million population))
Nassau means 'water meadow' from the Germanic root Naz, 'damp/wet'. This is in reference to the fact this entire area is flooded at street-level due to greater sea levels. Urizen (reason and law God, as worshipped by humans) and Golgonooza (City of Imagination) are from William Blake's mythos.
This is why I'm building parts of the barrios Los (human creativity), Tharmas (sensation), and Albion (primordial man) (from William Blake mythos), and Afr Building Barrio. Not even the entire barrios, as they are also too large. This rough area houses roughly 500,000 people in the real world. Mine holds most of New York City (5 million). This is likely pushing the limits of population density. (The area is roughly a single square mile at 2,000 by 1,600 metres. In just 1,600 by 1,600 square metres, a square mile, you can, in theory, hold 25 million people. But, it wouldn't function even slightly. Instant mass death and mass murder would follow.)
Kowloon Walled City (-1993) population density: 3.2 million/square mile
Population: 30,000-50,000
Area: 0.001 square miles
Tri-Barrio area population density: 500,000/square mile
Population: 5 million
Area: 1.2 square miles
Blade Runner's L.A. population density: 200,000/square mile
Population: 109 million (?)
Area: 500 square miles (?)
Manila population density: 111,000/square mile
Population: 1.8 million
Area: 17 square miles
Evanston, Illinois population density: 10,000/square mile
Population: 80,000
Area: 7.7 square miles
Kowloon Walled City was apparently the inspiration for Blade Runner, and it was the most densely populated place on Earth before it was destroyed in 1993. However, it's far below this range. Mine is twice that of Blade Runner, which is itself 31 times that of Tokyo.
This area, the tri-barrio area as I'm calling it for the purposes of these updates, will nonetheless be massive. Some of this population density is dealt with via sheer volume (skyward and underground). At worst, it's roughly 10 million/square mile, and at best, it's closer to 10,000/square mile. This is below an ideal range, but within this setting, it's 'luxury'. This was modelled on Evanston. For the elites of society and a few key locations, however, it's closer to 100/square mile, which is positively idyllic.
The area is as follows: 190 metres (blocks) tall, and 2,000 by 1,600 blocks, and 65 blocks deep (in-game). That's much smaller than the Great Palace Library's total area; however, we must consider the unthinkable volume. 2,000 by 1,600 by 250 gives a volume of 800 million cubic blocks. This itself already means I can only use a fraction of the space (1% of the surface = 64 million blocks, likely twice that of the Library). I'm going to fix the counter at 50 million until I have a clearer idea, regardless. (Ground level is about 65 to avoid Bats spawning, though I'll be forced to use sub-65 for the Central Park traffic system idea.)
I chose this area of Manhattan since I wanted inland space near Chinatown (though it's nowhere near Chinatown, it's directly northward, so felt justifiable if we assume Chinatown spreads outwards in the future), and also some of Central Park. In reality, it's the neighbourhoods Midtown, Diamond District, Time Square, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Square, some of Hell's Kitchen, and some of Lenox Hill, and the very bottom of Central Park (roughly 650 metres/blocks). Most notably, this area includes a few building-landmarks. Primary is Grand Central Terminal, Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Chrysler Building, the New York Public Library, and a dozen more.
Note: The Filipino administrative division words are there merely as another Asian/non-Western feature to make it feel 'futuristic'. (More on this in the next update.)
I'll comment on the style and various inspirations in the next update.
Liberty, at All Costs
Syd Mead said, regarding the film: 'The consumer delivery system has sort of broken down. The available capital is all going to research and development and the consumer base is being neglected.'
As a general rule, you should be very weary of any form of globalised body speaking on your behalf. I hate to repeat the truism, but I must: all politics is local. To forget this vital truth is to hide the human spirit behind an iron mask. No good can come of it, and you cannot mean well with it. The stepping stones to a cyberpunk hellscape are public displays of large-scale social moralism. Today, many come through the news and down the streets with open arms. They claim to hold the cure to our ills, but we must make ourselves well. We don't know the future, as the citizens of Urizen don't know the future. Could be dark, or bright, depending on how we choose to step forward.
Dostoevsky, now (Notes from Underground (1864) (worth reading Huxley's Brave New World (1932), also):
'And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.'
-
Block counter: 0/50,000,000
Hours counter: 0/3,000
-
'To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.' - Nietzsche
'Live not by lies.' - Solzyentiyn
'Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.' - Tolkien
Note: To follow high-quality screenshots, click this Sub-Reddit link.
Welcome to my 'intermezzo' (as they say in Chess) project. I had two choices: downsize the Great Palace Library or accept my fate and break it up with other projects. I decided upon the latter. It's actually more of an overlapping project.
The Texture Pack is one of the very few modern-style Packs I found that works or is downloadable for my Minecraft: BladeCraft.
Battle Runner (1982) in Manhattan. What more do you want?!
Since this project is so vast, I'm starting it early, building them concurrently. To ensure it gets completed at some point this decade, I'm radically limiting the physical dimensions, but hope to give the illusion of vastness. It's going to be a slice of the whole project, like a massive diorama.
Note: This is just fun fan fiction and not perfect in terms of the film, so don't hold it against me. It's a mixture of actual Blade Runner worldbuilding and my own. Not set within the Blade Runner universe, but an alterative one. :)
Manhattan is not only the archetypal fixture of New York -- and, perhaps, the world -- it's also a curiosity: at once one of the most densely populated locations on Earth and yet one of the most marvellous and beloved, and expensive (per-property). Should we fall hence, Manhattan must be the crowning jewel of humanity, though we hardly talk this way. By the 1920s, New York City became the most populous and important metropolitan area in the world, surpassing that of London, England. I believe it was written in the 1930s that New York was the 'world capital', culturally and economically.
My setting supposes a post-prime jewel of humanity trapped in stasis. Like the ruins of Rome under glass, sat on a museum shelf somewhere. There is a certain sadness to the awe. Tragic yet magnificent. Like a snowman unable to move his snow feet but with a burning desire to do so. You can feel the past and the silent yearning for life.
I'm impinging a post-Nietzschean world in this way, where humanity means to pick up the pieces but doesn't know how. We drowned ourselves and are ready to reflect, but the future is unknown and unknowable.
Recall what Nietzsche hath said (Will to Power (1901)): 'For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.'
Plans
The city they call The Big Apple is in more films than any city on Earth, and more photographed than God. You may not realise just how centralised a lot of New York is, to where but Mid- to Lower Manhattan. As an Englishman and cinephile, you can understand where my basis came from: American movies.
Anyway, I'm managing that they built downward instead, to avoid the elements (somewhat mirroring the Great Palace Library project and Dubai, though they have a habit of building in all directions). The New York bedrock is only a few metres. My setting goes to a depth of 500 metres at the deepest (in other words, an inverted skyscraper). This is technically durable, as there is a 2000,000 metre-thick lithosphere under New York City, though I wouldn't think it's wise to go beyond the upper-crust (5,000 metres at the shallowest).
Setting year is 2219 (homage to Blade Runner's 2019 time period, merely 200 years into the future). Evidently, it's not the real Earth but an alt Earth with almost everything the same for most of history, at least.
Back to Blade Runner (1982). I'm guessing the elevator car sections of the Tyrell Corporation pyramid were inspired by Antonio Sant'Elia's air and train station drawing. Looking at in-film shots and otherwise data, we can conclude that the Tyrell Corporation pyramid is actually closer to 800 metres tall, not 3,000, though the latter is the established size. The former makes more sense, and is more in line with the Jedi Temple from the Star Wars universe, still making it one of the largest sci-fi structures on film. Although the height itself is not unthinkable, the base structure is unworkable at 6,000 metres or so (seeming about twice the height). That's a city, stacked, in a building.
But, I was in awe of the grander scale. I also concluded that such would be possible with super-tech in the year 2219 as opposed to 2019. The most significant difference between the two is that my city hub is much wider (800,000 metres) but also much shorter (200 metres), whereas, Blade Runner's L.A. is possibly even beyond 6,000 metres tall and roughly 80,000 metres long.
In this way, I'm leaning more into Egyptian architecture of width, and trying to stretch out Art Deco structures. A key inspiration, for example, was Battersea Power Station (England) and various Art Deco-era elongated buildings of the Americans and Soviets. I'll just call these 'edgescrapers', as they are 'horizontal skyscrapers'. For example, 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Expo (Paris). I hope that makes sense. You'll get a better understanding when I show plans for actual buildings and areas.
See below for mapping of the actual project.
(1) New York Great Node (city hub) (800,000 metres in diameter; 1.5 billion population)
(2) Urizen Arcology (within the Node) (160,000 by 80,000 metres; 1 billion population)
(3) Golgonooza (city within Urizen) (80,000 by 50,000 metres; 700 million population)
(4) The Nassau (central barrio (Filipino for 'district') within Golgonooza) (40,000 by 30,000 metres; 300 million population)
(5) Tri-Barrio area (the area I'm actually building (2,000 by 1,600 metres; 5 million population))
Nassau means 'water meadow' from the Germanic root Naz, 'damp/wet'. This is in reference to the fact this entire area is flooded at street-level due to greater sea levels. Urizen (reason and law God, as worshipped by humans) and Golgonooza (City of Imagination) are from William Blake's mythos.
This is why I'm building parts of the barrios Los (human creativity), Tharmas (sensation), and Albion (primordial man) (from William Blake mythos), and Afr Building Barrio. Not even the entire barrios, as they are also too large. This rough area houses roughly 500,000 people in the real world. Mine holds most of New York City (5 million). This is likely pushing the limits of population density. (The area is roughly a single square mile at 2,000 by 1,600 metres. In just 1,600 by 1,600 square metres, a square mile, you can, in theory, hold 25 million people. But, it wouldn't function even slightly. Instant mass death and mass murder would follow.)
Kowloon Walled City (-1993) population density: 3.2 million/square mile
Population: 30,000-50,000
Area: 0.001 square miles
Tri-Barrio area population density: 500,000/square mile
Population: 5 million
Area: 1.2 square miles
Blade Runner's L.A. population density: 200,000/square mile
Population: 109 million (?)
Area: 500 square miles (?)
Manila population density: 111,000/square mile
Population: 1.8 million
Area: 17 square miles
Evanston, Illinois population density: 10,000/square mile
Population: 80,000
Area: 7.7 square miles
Kowloon Walled City was apparently the inspiration for Blade Runner, and it was the most densely populated place on Earth before it was destroyed in 1993. However, it's far below this range. Mine is twice that of Blade Runner, which is itself 31 times that of Tokyo.
This area, the tri-barrio area as I'm calling it for the purposes of these updates, will nonetheless be massive. Some of this population density is dealt with via sheer volume (skyward and underground). At worst, it's roughly 10 million/square mile, and at best, it's closer to 10,000/square mile. This is below an ideal range, but within this setting, it's 'luxury'. This was modelled on Evanston. For the elites of society and a few key locations, however, it's closer to 100/square mile, which is positively idyllic.
The area is as follows: 190 metres (blocks) tall, and 2,000 by 1,600 blocks, and 65 blocks deep (in-game). That's much smaller than the Great Palace Library's total area; however, we must consider the unthinkable volume. 2,000 by 1,600 by 250 gives a volume of 800 million cubic blocks. This itself already means I can only use a fraction of the space (1% of the surface = 64 million blocks, likely twice that of the Library). I'm going to fix the counter at 50 million until I have a clearer idea, regardless. (Ground level is about 65 to avoid Bats spawning, though I'll be forced to use sub-65 for the Central Park traffic system idea.)
I chose this area of Manhattan since I wanted inland space near Chinatown (though it's nowhere near Chinatown, it's directly northward, so felt justifiable if we assume Chinatown spreads outwards in the future), and also some of Central Park. In reality, it's the neighbourhoods Midtown, Diamond District, Time Square, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Square, some of Hell's Kitchen, and some of Lenox Hill, and the very bottom of Central Park (roughly 650 metres/blocks). Most notably, this area includes a few building-landmarks. Primary is Grand Central Terminal, Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Chrysler Building, the New York Public Library, and a dozen more.
Note: The Filipino administrative division words are there merely as another Asian/non-Western feature to make it feel 'futuristic'. (More on this in the next update.)
I'll comment on the style and various inspirations in the next update.
Liberty, at All Costs
Syd Mead said, regarding the film: 'The consumer delivery system has sort of broken down. The available capital is all going to research and development and the consumer base is being neglected.'
As a general rule, you should be very weary of any form of globalised body speaking on your behalf. I hate to repeat the truism, but I must: all politics is local. To forget this vital truth is to hide the human spirit behind an iron mask. No good can come of it, and you cannot mean well with it. The stepping stones to a cyberpunk hellscape are public displays of large-scale social moralism. Today, many come through the news and down the streets with open arms. They claim to hold the cure to our ills, but we must make ourselves well. We don't know the future, as the citizens of Urizen don't know the future. Could be dark, or bright, depending on how we choose to step forward.
Dostoevsky, now (Notes from Underground (1864) (worth reading Huxley's Brave New World (1932), also):
'And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.'
-
Block counter: 0/50,000,000
Hours counter: 0/3,000
-
'To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.' - Nietzsche
'Live not by lies.' - Solzyentiyn
'Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.' - Tolkien
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