Future Shock in the Countryside
In the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049, a flying craft navigates California over an endless expanse of solar farms and tessellated plastic fields on its way to a desolate farmstead. Watching it, I was struck by the dazzling futuristic spectacle, but also surprised to see the countryside at all in a science-fiction film.
Often in speculative fiction, the future belongs to the city alone. Rural areas are conspicuously ignored, as if urbanization will expand inexorably. When the countryside does appear, it mostly offers stark contrast to the technologically advanced metropolis. A lost arcadia, rural life falls into desolate ruin, populated only by scavengers and exiles.
We have had a century, at least, of visions of future cities. They come now as greenwashing corporate sales pitches and escapist fantasies. Shorn of its radical edge, cyberpunk has largely become a form of retro-futurist nostalgia. Even when civilization is obliterated in fiction, the stories offer reassuringly simple tales of adversity and heroism, in contrast to the intractable problems of the present. With notable exceptions (Afrofuturism is one), the countryside upon which all cities are reliant is largely disregarded.
What would it be like to take a flight like the one from , beyond the city limits, above the rural landscapes of the Earth today? Developments in motion—including climate change, technological innovations, and their side effects—already point the way to plausible outcomes. Those near futures show that the city’s fate is
