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heavily from science fi ction in the opening “Dreams of Yesterday” sequence,
which spotlighted dystopian views of the city through large and repeating
clips from the German classic fi lm
Metropolis.
h ese images were accompa-
nied by large banners that set the scene, “a scenario composed of modern
architecture and mythological buildings witness[ing] a world where Gods
rule over humans.” Moving from these black and white clips, the audience
moved through a giant room of topics on urban planning. h ese oversized
piles of topics included Fourier, Archigram, h oreau's
Walden ,
and David
Harvey's
Spaces of Hope.
h is odd collection of topics was set against various
utopian city planning schemes, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre
City and Ebeneezer Howard's Garden City of Tomorrow.
h e next room highlighted gigantic sculptures that represented the “9
themes of urban development.” h ese included “Sustainability” envisioned as
a scale balanced between building and trees, “Harmonious Growth” as a clus-
ter of multicolored light rods, “Nature” as a big shiny rock (what it was—gold
or uranium—was unclear), and “Urban Planning” as gigantic ants on a big
rock. Narratively, the next section proclaimed that “the future is here,” but to
get there, the audience walked past two lonely male mannequins of so-called
old-time Shanghai industrial laborers. After the exhausting walk through
ideas, space, and time, a dimly lit room highlighted brilliant and strange car-
toon images in a revolving loop depicting what the cities of the future—“eco
city, space city, intelligence city and energy city”—will look like.
Here, the convergence of utopia and dystopia returned. In the text intro-
duction to the “Intelligence City,” the screen read: “Well, I'd like to live in a
knowledge city. A Chip would let me learn without any eff ort at all and I'd
spend my time trying to understand more complicated things. h ere would
be big screens in the streets that would help us refl ect and learn.” h e text for
“Eco City” read: “I'd like to live in a city full of woods and animals, full of
historic monuments. h e factories and tra' c would be under the ground
and all of the space above ground would be for walking and entertaining.”
