Urban developments for dystopian futures: from Metropolis to Cyberpunk 2077

Abstract

The Cyberpunk 2077 video game, developed by CD Projekt RED, is set in Night City, a megalopolis that the player can travel with unprecedented freedom besides with a first-person perspective that provides an evocative immersive experience.

But when touring Night City, the player discovers a city that is familiar to him, both in its urban and architectural design and in the origin of its population, since the megalopolis of Cyberpunk 2077 contains an entire iconography of the representation of dystopian cities in different disciplines artistic that can be traced back to Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), and that reflect both the intuitions of their creators about the cities of the future will be like and their disturbing reflections on the urbanity of their time.