When I played Sim City 2000 as a kid, i loaded my city with Arcologies, then they all appeared to blow up and the game provided a notification that they had left the surface of the planet to colonize other worlds. Millions of Sims cheated to escape my taxes!

I love that this episode has Isaac saying "mutant cannibals" so casually like he finds it reasonable or likely that it would happen

Ahh, here in the mega-city there is a near limitless number of places to grab a drink and a snack! Though, in the worst estates, you may not want to ask what went into them...

A solution to the elevator conundrum is to treat the elevator system as a vertical train line: The elevator cars would be self-propelled and driving on rail instead of being pulled by cables. This allows multiple elevator cars to share the same shaft instead of having a seperate shaft for each car. Therefore, there could be a few high-speed shafts that elevators take for most of their journey before branching off into another shaft to slow down and stop their destination. A lot of high-speed train line design principles could be carried over into designing such elevator systems. Self-propelled elevators are already in development as the tallest buildings in the world are facing problems with scaling the cable mechanisms to the extreme shaft length.

0:38 Large Cities in Fiction - _Crowded & Crime-Filled_ & Dirty 3:02 New York City Skyscrapers 🏙 9:48 Movement: The Elevator Conundrum 15:23 Food Shortage Problem 22:11 Technology 26:34 If You Feed It, It Will Grow

"The Government doesn't have to be cruel and callous for massive amounts of gangs to appear" **Cites US statistics**

A simple answer: Pascal, Qurra, Tesla, and Rutherford can be traveled in a circle (P -> Q -> T -> R -> P or P -> R -> T -> Q -> P), only Sagan is "a dead end", so once visiting Sagan, the traveler has to return the same way he arrived, which is through Rutherford. thus Rutherford is the city he visits twice. By the way, modes of transportation and a number of lines between cities are irrelevant, it only matters if there is any connection.

*somewhere in a mega-city of the future* Kid: "Daddy, what is Nature?" Daddy: "I don't know kid, never heard of.."

I feel Megacities would promote more cremation over building a necropolis for their dead. Or in a more darker hue, they'd recycle human corpses just as they recycle everything else, be it as food (soilent green) or soil enrichment (compost)... ^^'

I often find it amusing that Mega City one in the Judge Dredd Comics tend to be considered a dystopia. If you do a deeper dive into the setting you find that it is anything but. Most of the dystopia appearance comes from everyone having to survive on a planet that is radically polluted and dangerous to be out in the environment of. There are actually very few Judges and law enforcement for the size of mega-city one. The amount of crime that actually takes place is far far lower than what exists in most western cities today. Most violence that does take place in mega-city one and other cities like it on the same world in Judge Dredds Universe actually take place in a designated area. This area and the violence which takes place has replaced small claims court. People go there make a register fill out a form and they fight it out to determine who owes who money or some other legal claim that today would be handled in small claims court. It's surprisingly not as violent as it appears to be. The setting appears to be so violent because you are following somebody around in the setting whose job it is to intercede in violent activities. If you have a consistently and radically non-violent Society. Then you have a small group of individuals whose purpose it is to wander around within that and go to where violence is happening. They actually are sent anywhere anytime violence does take place. You're following one of these individuals around on their daily life you will find that the City appears to be incredibly violent even when it is not. Mega City one and the other mega cities on Earth in judge Dredd's fictional universe is depicted as violent because of a matter of perspective. You're following the guys around whose job it is to stop violence so they go to where the violence is.

Hats off to the best youtuber in the entire multiverse!

In my fantasy RPG games, I tend to treat medieval demographics realistically, and my players are always shocked at how many taverns and brothels there actually should be in a realistic medieval city of 20,000. Quantity really does have a quality all its own. Scale is everything.

I think mega cities might be relatively common on exoplanets, bc there isn't a lot of livable space, especially at the start

Happy Arthursday everyone

I must say episodes like this are what inspired my numbers. In the book I wrote (currently looking for a publisher), I have an ecumenopolis with some eight hundred billion people. It is airy, full of parks and green floors. There can be a lot of people in some popular places, but it isn't hard to find nearly empty city blocks. They are also fed on-location through hydroponics.

I wonder what the possible mega-cities of the future will have for people like me, the extreme introverts. I live on about 11 acres, with some woods, with my cats and the racoons and possums and deer that hang out around the house, and the nearest neighbors are hundreds of feet away on other rural properties, so that we go months without running into each other ... and I feel crowded. I grew up overseas, in huge cities, and even worked a few months in Chicago, and loathed being surrounded and packed into places like a bunch of rats in a cage. The very idea of living in some gigantic metropolis with hundreds of people around, nowhere I can just go outside and be utterly alone, makes my flesh crawl.

4:45 okay I actually breathed a sigh of relief that they only wanted her purse that was really uncomfortable to watch

"Massively overpopulated" with 8 billion people, lmfao

"Eat recycled food, it's good for the environment and ok for you..."

"No one goes there anymore, its too crowded." - Yogi Berra If the last few years have taught us anything its that people with very few actual problems will simply invent problems to make their lives more interesting or dramatic. You pack a billion people in a city and the biggest problems you'll have are depression, ennui and boredom. Mega cities like this would have much of their population sedated or on psyche meds or self medicating with booze and drugs, when they weren't joining cults or a mob marching down the street. Sometimes the worst thing you can do is make life too easy for someone. A bunch of lonely, angry, bored people packed together watching robots live their lives for them is a recipe for dystopia. Cities can't just be daycare centers for a useless humanity or they will fail and so will humanity.

I wish the episode "Terrifying Aliens" about how we as humans could scare Aliens ... not the other way around :D

Rutherford, as Sagan is the only location outside of the "loop." Pretty apparent with a quick visualization.

25:30 Regarding warehouses: The advantage of warehouses (and cupboards) is that it gives you a buffer against the unexpected. Otherwise if the supply of food drops below demand you end up with no food in the entire city rather quickly.

Just wanted to say Thursday is my favorite day of the week because of your videos.

Me: I want the Aesthetics of Cyberpunk without the Actual Dystopian aspect. Me in 2020: OH GOD WE ARE ALREADY ON THE PATH TO CYBERPUNK 2077 DYSTOPIA. Great Video BTW :)

Re: Recycling literally everything -- The Zimmerman Wet Oxidation process. Basically an ultra autoclave that also acts like an incinerator. It pretty much reduces anything organic to water and oxides of elements. It's even exothermic, so you just have to get rid of or use the waste heat. This solves sewage, much of the garbage, and mortuary logistics.

"Mega city distopia is something for the future" Detroit left the chat

Thanks as always, Isaac. You really have a knack for putting things in perspective with your very practical "scaling" that you do on a regular basis!

I love this channel. As a New Yorker who lives near the top at one of the city's tallest high-rise residential buildings, I think about these things all the time. Even at my level, the water pressure can be an issue, & elevators are both a blessing & a curse. If they go too fast, people don't like it & can get nauseous. If they go too slow, people feel anxious. My building has grass & trees in "yards" at certain levels that have outdoor space. We also have a roof where there is entertainment, sports fitness classes, a restaurant/ snack bar, etc. There are downsides to living at the top of a high-rise, like the length of time it takes to get out if there is an emergency. However, it's also very safe with great security & a community. The main reason I choose this location is bc I have fairly severe allergies & allergic asthma, & living in a highrise improves our respiratory health, bc allergens decrease dramatically as you go higher.

The most evocative imagery I can remember for a mega-city is Stand on Zanzibar, where a domed over New York City is covered with a constant drizzle of condensed human sweat.

i literally just woke up, opened my 3D modeling software, and got back to work on a megacity project minutes before going to youtube to find something to listen to while I work, and found this in my subscriptions. very good timing, man. my city's main issue i'm trying to figure out right now is transportation. it's a space colony inside of a ring that is double-sided, so you have a city on the ground and one on the ceiling. the aliens that build it have the tech to manipulate gravity easily so i figured that could be their main mode of transport? most vehicles don't have engines, it's just a matter of falling in the direction you want to go. these folks gotta be immune to vertigo for this to work lol

ISAAC: Your videos are helping me keep my sanity, no lie, no joke. I'm hurting so badly right now. You are helping me. Thank you so fucking much. You'll never know how much you will have helped so many, just describing possible positive futures. Even the shit ones. Your voice is soothing, and your content is amazing. Thank you. May whatever deities you feel for Bless you. As for your content here, we will engineer buildings to grow, using tree and food plant DNA. The tree buildings will absorb our wastes, and grow new rooms and homes, as well as producing Plant Based food literally within every person's home. I'm an Aspie. I see this. It will happen.

Happy Arthur's day!

I accidentally grabed a snack and a drink at the beginning of the episode; I didn't notice he DIDN'T tell us to untill he pointed it out, lol.

Love the content, and I love that there’s not an advert every few minutes. Cheers 🤙

Last time I was this early... Ok I'll shut up

Isaac, you forgot the thousands of psychers that need to be sacraficed to keep the Emperor's warp flashlight on. The Emperor protects!

1:30 ngl that 8 billion bit got me, really made me think "wait... 8 billion???" weird knowing were so close to that.

Sooooo, this guy is incredible if you're a scifi writer. My book's city just came to life in my head watching this. Thanks man!!!

Your channel is such an amazing discovery. You are a treasure trove of amazing information. Thank you for such great content.

Large cities are displayed as dystopias because large cities generally suck to live in today. The cost of living makes it rather unpleasant for anyone who isn't pulling a six-figure income

earth overpopulated by 8 billion people? Man that's a lot, I didn't know Asimov made up such extreme ideas in some of his books. What a madman.

You was pushing Brilliant so long, that when I got a new phone I have registered. And it is really cool! Thanks!

>has a wormhole and spaceships >sorry, the airports closed Beautiful world building Issac

One book that hit me was David Weber's Empire of Man series. In it, DC is the capitol of an empire of several hundred world empire with FTL. The old Congressional Bunker under the Greenbriar resort in southern West Virginia is a secret base under a warehouse, lost in the vast urban sprawl.

He has to visit Rutherford twice, since Sagan is not connected to any city but Rutherford.

I loved it. So much subject matter for stories!

I think my favourite thing about 40k Hive Cities is the recycling. The Underhive is clogged with ten thousand years worth of industrial refuse, with ancient hab-domes and industrial blocks now crushed by the weight of the Hive above. Time and pressure has produced new resources from ancient waste, meaning that there are legitimate interests looking to mine, refine and export these materials up-Hive.

Have you watched The Expanse? If so what do you think about it?

Considering how disorderly, dirty and dysfunctional so many of our cities in the world are today, methinks that megacities may be not a particularly good idea.

Thank you thank you! Your channel is one of the rarest refuge for me from reality!

I am a huge fan of your videos, I haven’t had a chance to see them all but was wondering if you have done a video or maybe could do a video on “radial cities” like “the Venus project”.

5:22 I think there is a body in there~!

WE LOVE YOU ISAAC

Isaac : "Note that I did not suggest you get a drink and a snack at the start" Us : "It's treason , then"

I have to say, I really like your storytelling. You're a very gifted person. One detail that I really like also is that you're keeping background music to a minimum; this enables me to play my own music while hearing you speak. "Astropilot" always is a good fit for me while listening to you, check it out. Keep up the good work!

I, for one, welcome my albino mutant cannibal overlords.

He visits Rutherford twice.... Pascal Vacuum to Quarra Airship to Tesla Wormhole to Rutherford Spaceship to Sagan Wormhole to Rutherford Spaceship to Pascal

been waiting for this.

Amazing as always

31:19 He needs to visit Rutherford twice Pascal - Qurra - Tesla - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Pascal.

Funny enough I'm watching this for my fantasy world building

10:00 or so ... thanks for mentioning the elevator problem .... having to pay extra to get out of your appartment is a real dystopia

As someone who chose many years ago to leave a large city and relocate to a rural area, I confess that even the utopian view of the mega-city is horrifying. Still; great video, as always.👍

Judge Dredd, not even a minute in, I'm happy.

Humans: Builds forest into buildings Mosquito's: *It's free free real estate*

Thanks for the episode~

Note the elevator conundrum is solvable with more modern "3D" cable less elevators. Ones that drive up and down or side to side in travel shafts, but slide off onto "docking pads" where they dock to the doors. They have been prototyped by big elevator makers, but so far no buyers. You could in a mega city not only use this for getting around in a mega building, but if the elevators were a municipal Standard, you could go all over the Megacity. Essentially PRT modules ( or standardized personal cars ) rapidly taking you all over to any floor dock, in any building, throughout the city. Or the city sized equivalent or Star Trek Federation "Turbolifts". I can see lighting, especially present sunlight like lighting, could be a limit on the city height/density. Heat and air can be pumped around, but huge floors of low one story height areas, especially with no natural like lighting. Though obviously a mega city doesn't reall need in anyway to be a huge Borg hive. More towers, or pyramids with factories, vertical farms, shopping, theater districts in the core, with terraces of parks and apartments on the surfaces, would do better and be easier to build and refit. Of course this assumes our current low birth rates ( far to low to sustain global population ) don't increase, or life expectancies grow.

“Without science, everything is a miracle.” -- Lawrence Krauss

I know that it may be unimaginable, but the latest development shows that cities are not really necessary. If communication between people and automation of work will evolve why we would sit in the same area? What are the reasons that people flock to single area? Could those reasons disappear in the future?

Keep up the good work Isaac.

Nice one, just the thing to relax to before sleep..

Ha! Simple ... if he wants to start at Pascal, visit other cities and then end at Pascal. The city he'll DEFINITELY find himself in twice will be Pascal.

Great invention - the toll elevator

Arthursday: best day of the week, month, and year and today is no exception!

really brilliant stuff

I learned today that the Earth has 7.8 billion people. I need to get back to nuclear energy activism.

That was a good balanced presentation, on par with the awesomeness of this channel. The fact of my own more optimistic vision of the future notwithstanding, we do have to keep in mind the potential pitfalls. People didn't think Detroit of 1980 could possibly become Detroit of today during their lifetime, either, which is most of why it has. Nothing is invulnerable to corruption and incompetence. However, I'd like to put in a voice and a couple solutions to the troubles shown here, starting with the projection of infinite population growth: For one, the population curve is not exponential or infinite. It's adaptive. The only real reason we have population growth on earth even today is because of the influence of bronze-age irrational fertility cults like some factions of Christianity and Islam that suppress women's rights and over-encourage their members to try to fuck everyone else out of existence. As these religious sects continue to lose influence over society and politics, and as per capita income and life choices in the control of women increases anyway, the earth's population as seen elsewhere has already flatlined or started to decrease. The current projections for break-even population is between 10-15 billion. With increased confidence in the survival of their children, women do not create overpopulations. They just don't. Instead, they concentrate on developing improved opportunities for advancement for the 1-3 kids they do have. That's just the statistical facts. Having an overabundance of basic needs available does not change this behavior. In fact, it reinforces it. When food and physical survival cease to be the primary competing/limiting factors, they also cease to become the prestigious ones. Competition moves to more subtle factors like education, social influence, fashionability, spare income, etc, which are better served by having a smaller family that can concentrate their efforts per child. Then let's move on to the megapolis drawbacks. I think the solution here is to defeat inefficiencies of scale with modularity: I'll agree that if you make cities and even individual buildings to that kind of maximum possible engineering scale presented in the episode, you're going to have issues. The way to beat that is to find the balance of economic scales on the small side of the margin, and space them out across the landscape. Let's say you can make a building 10-20 stories high that takes up a half of a city block, that can feed and recycle for itself. You can put one of those on each block, or even every other block to allow other diversities, leaving 50% green space and still providing more housing and business/shopping per area than the average of a current city. Just require that each design have a comfortable minimum floorspace per inhabitant for residential floors, sufficient on-site parking for itself (underground preferred), produce calories of farming equal to the residential population, and self-sufficiency in energy and recycling. Yes, you could do that today by having in-building/floor zones instead of blocks-area city zones. This would increase local business/service/goods availability. You would shop, get your hair done, get most of your food & restaurants, etc, right on your own block or one nearby, rather than driving miles to specialized districts. This would radically reduce traffic and shipping burdens on the roadways. It's just a matter of proportioning. Consider the life of an average city dweller then. You would have, say, 100 m2 of living space per person. The episode thought that was tight, but that's over a 3000 sq ft townhouse for a couple with 1 child! In most modern countries, that's already considered excessive. You would have food, shops and services from a dozen such buildings within a few minute walk or bike. Produce and utilities would be extremely cheap, with renewable electric nearly free. The magic of this limited-size modularity is that people would have a sensible number of direct neighbors that they would actually know, like small-town safety in the big city. "Street" crime or gang formation would be easily countered by security measures, and the whole building is small enough to be contained and controlled by security/police in the event of some kind of criminal incident. A side effect of this would be to reduce people's dependence on government for their needs and security. A mostly self-sufficient building can deal with its needs and issues a lot easier than some distant government that is more corruptible and has vested interests elsewhere. Each building would be a bit like a little Swiss canton looking out for its own well-being. Well, that's my story for the day. No one has to read it, but I enjoyed projecting it. It's basically a version of Lao Tzu's "small paradise" for modern times, and it would house the likely maximum population of earth in efficient spaces. I don't know that we'll do it, but we could, and at least a few will, and it could be as wonderful as a clean slate can be.

What a good way to start my birthday by a new episode

24:47 Issac my friend you forget that megacities probably would have some type of mass transit system anyway. Because having to keep track of that many cars would probably get problematic.

If humans were cold blooded, could that mean a higher limit for the heat problem ?

My answer to your question: I'm gonna stay home inside my nuclear- and zombie-proof bunker :-p BTW: I just went to Amazon after watching your video and pre-ordered that movie you recommended: 2067. Is that where you got the clip of those zombies slowly climbing those stairs? That one zombie girl was kind'a cute :-p

Talking about cities built on top of older structures makes me think about the Pioneer Square area of Seattle. At one point the city decided to make the second story of that area become the first story. The streets were raised and in some areas filled in with dirt. So counting basements some buildings in that area have two to four stories below ground. There are tunnels and even old streets under what you currently see. The homeless have found there way down there to create underground communities.

New episodes pog

The answer is Rutherford. Simplifying, Rutherford is the only place with three links, all the others have two. The modes of transport are irrelevant, only the nodes and connections matter. Now the fun bit, based on the modes of transport you gave. (I'm referenceing Larry Niven's Known Space setting) Since Qurra and Tesla have aircraft, they're on a habitable planet. Since they only have air travel the surface between them must be impassable. Pascal and Rutherford are each physically connected to one of the surface cities, but use only spaceships between them, meaning they're in space. Sagan is the odd one out, connected only by spaceship and wormhole gate. Qurra and Tesla are the major cities on either a Jinx type world (a highly oblate world where the equator is uninhabitable to to dense atmosphere and the poles are in near vacuum, with two habitable bands between them) or a Plateau type world (a Venus-like world with high mountains that reach up into the habitable layer of atmosphere). Each is in a different habitable band or on a different mountain. Pascal and Rutherford are space colonies, connected to Qurra and Tesla respectively by space elevators with vacuum trains running through them. On a Jinx world, most probably a moon orbiting a gas giant, they'd be at the L1 and L2 points, possibly using multiple tethers to equalise the off centre space elevator. Sagan is on a separate moon, planet or free flying asteroid colony, probably for resource extraction. Tesla is the capital, and probably them most populous and high status. Simple physics says a wormhole generator is going to be more energy expensive than a space ship. The wormhole portal provides instant transport for a premium price. Primarily professional services, education (Ivy League university), finance and possibly some low volume, high tech manufacturing. Qurra is the major manufacturing and industrial centre, and has it's own orbital spaceport. Shuttles are slower and cheaper than wormholes, but faster and more expensive than the space elevator vac trains, which are relatively slow but very cheap. It supplies Tesla with most of it's consumer goods by air transport, possibly zeppelins rather than jet aircraft. Both cities also transport bulk cargo and economy class passengers via the vac tube space elevator to and from space. Pascal is the major receiving centre and orbital space port for raw materials to supply Qurra. It uses low thrust, cheap orbital transports, maybe using light or laser sails to ferry large volumes of cargo. These can only really operate in orbit, not deep space. It probably has some in-vacuo manufacturing of it's own. Rutherford is the main orbital spaceport for the system, acting as a transhipment centre between Sagan and Pascal. It's probably also a resort, with high end luxury leisure complexes and docks for private space yachts. It is the centrepoint for the wormhole network, allowing you to travel from Tesla to Sagan in minutes. Lower levels recieve the interplanetary/cislunar cargo freighters from Sagan and transfer materials to the orbital haulers. Sagan is a giant mining colony. It supplies the raw materials. It must also have at least a few private retreats for the wealthy, effectively summer homes.

I'll take a giant pass on living in any 'mega' city...

Ahh yes, Arthursday!!! Time to get educated about the future and future concepts and wonder why more people are not watching and learning from Isaacs videos. Seriously, we plan too small and unrealistically. SFIA shows us the way.

what an intro! god i love this channel!

Its great to see you making content on cities! Big fans for a long time ! We should make a video together

He must visit Rutherford twice. There are two solutions: Pascal - Qurra - Tesla - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Pascal Or, you could reverse it and get: Pascal - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Tesla - Qurra - Pascal

"And for show regulars, note that I did not suggest a drink and a snack at the start of the episode." He says as I'm literally in the middle of my lunch.

Great information.

It seems like a DLC for Stellaris.

He visits Rutherford twice, Sagan is only connected to Rutherford so he will have to start and return to Rutherford to visit Sagan. Given the general content of this video, why is it when you talk about O'Neill Cylinders you talk about their population being thousands? In the standard old-fashioned 5-mile-diameter by 20-mile-long design, the area of that cylinder is 314.16 square miles, which is more than New York City's 302.6. Wouldn't the population easily be millions? If a person needs 400 square feet of space to feel comfortable you could devote 10% of that area to 10-story-tall apartment buildings (still .99g at the top floor, if a commercial story is 14 feet/a bit less than 5 meters) and house almost 22 million people, leaving 90% for roads, paths, greenspace, commercial, light industrial, etc. It's hard to find good hydroponic estimates online but depending on how you designed the endcaps of those cylinders there should be ample space to grow food for that many. Not me personally, but some people like the dense crowded energy of big cities and since we're exporting culture into space as well as people I can see large populations in more urbanized cylinders.

Hi Isaac, thanks for another excellent episode. So what happened to the “Abstract Aliens” episode you mentioned in reply to Xperim’s comment around 2 years ago in the episode “Mega Earths”? 🙂

Rutherford. Love the brain teaser addition. Great episode.

We gotta run run run to the cities of the future.

When you have gangs of tens or hundreds of thousands of members each, are they really gangs anymore or are they micronations? I can't help but feel like the scale would inherently change how things operate especially as you mentioned how viable it is to grow enough mushrooms for sustenance in the "underhive" as it were. It seems to me like it would end up being outcast communities rather than full on violent gangs at that point.

This is an interesting channel. I just recently found it - started off with the Fermi paradox series. - not yet subscribed but probably will but i cant figure out if this is actually a science channel or a bit more whimsical with science - seeing some of the titles of videos makes me wonder. Obviously i can see that science is the baseline but titles would suggest something more along the lines of a spoof channel or some such.

Rutherford. The only place Sagan connects to is Rutherford, and to visit Sagan, that means two stops in Rutherford (once on the way there, and once on the way back(.