Imaginary Cities_A Tour of Dream Cities, Nightmare Cities, and Everywhere in Between by Darran Anderson

Author:Darran Anderson [Anderson, Darran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Sealess Ships, Grounded Spacecraft and the Curse of the Genie

The problem with the future is not simply that it does not come true but that it sometimes does. Fred McNabb’s charming 1956 prediction ‘This is your future’ offers a material utopia that was largely achieved by the middle-classes of the First World. Flat screen 3-D televisions, moving staircases, microwave ovens, glass walls, slide-back roofs and Photo-vision Receivers are there for the purchasing, even if the helipads and ultra-sonic laundry remain elusive. Yet these things seem so tawdry, hollow and duplicitous as to make the title more a threat than a promise. ‘Civilisation transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind and body . . .’ Marcuse wrote. ‘The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.’64 You are what you own.

In Dodd’s The Republic of the Future, innovations in technology and advances in rights produce an unsatisfied listlessness:

‘For a traveller, bent on a pleasure trip, machinery as a substitute for a garrulous landlord, and a score of servants, however bad, is found to be a poor and somewhat monotonous companion. I amuse myself, however, with perpetually testing all the bells and the electrical apparatus, calling for a hundred things I don’t want, to see whether they will come through the ceiling or up the floor.’

The buildings ‘are all architecturally tasteless, as utility has been the only feature considered in their construction [. . .] this modern city is the very acme of dreariness. It is the monotony I think, which chiefly depresses me. It is not that the houses do not seem comfortable, clean and orderly, for all these virtues they possess. But fancy seeing miles upon miles of little two-story houses!’

The author is clear about what the problem is: ‘Freedom is the ability to live dangerously, inefficiently’. His reasons for this however would be laughable were he not serious; an axis of Irish anarchist dynamiters, Machiavellian Germans and feminists (‘there is not even a servant to welcome the master with a smile’) brought about this age of pellet food, two hour working days and Ethical Temples65. The value of such a hysterical account is that it is just that; it provides a telling indication of contemporary neurosis and who the targets/threats were.

For all the innovations and lateral thinking, it seems remarkably and contemptibly difficult for many to envisage any other future for the female half of our species than ongoing domestic servitude, discrimination and harassment. The 1950s seem a golden age for this combination of Futurism and Neanderthalism. Better Homes and Gardens in September 1958 boasted ‘Six idea homes of the year!’ complete with a gleaming cartoon with the byline, ‘What does a woman do all day?’ It is a question and scene repeated ad nauseam. In Pathé footage from 1939,

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