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Ask HN: The most cyberpunk city in the world?

70 points by zabana ↗ HN
I'm currently re-reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. I Love how he describes the different cities in the book and I was wondering which city in our current time best fits the archetype. (Shanghai comes to mind but I'm curious to know your opinion)

66 comments

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konart
Norilsk

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/26/09/3094F19C0000057...

cjauvin
Is this intended to reference Half Life's City 17? I never thought of it as "cyberpunk" in genre or ambiance though..
ilogik
Half Life 2 was heavily inspired by East-European cities (mostly Romania and Bulgaria)
beaconstudios
it's more dieselpunk than cyberpunk tbh. The whole X-punk scene seems to devolve into arbitrary differences between very similar genres.
konart
Nah, just a coincidence. 17 is the part of the address here.
deathtrader666
Maybe Seoul, South Korea?
thedailymail
Seoul definitely has the cyber but is a bit light on the punk. Same goes for Japanese cities, IMO. Old Kowloon had the right vibe. If you could put Akihabara on Gunkanjima, that would be a new contender.
gcmartinelli
Watching this documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY) about Shenzhen I got a very strong cyberpunk vibe, especially the last 1/3 of it. People at the streets fixing electronics, cheap/pirated circuit boards being sold at the curb, etc.
_jdams
I was in Shenzhen not long ago. Good shout, but the city is actually very new. It's very clean and the subway is near spotless, so it doesn't give off a dark, dystopian cyberpunk kinda feel to it. Hong Kong is another good shout, specifically Kowloon region. Many Asian cities like these have lots of old neon signs, architecture, and technology that definitely gives off the Cyberpunk vibe
philsnow
HK is a really good example of cyberpunk, you have both the kowloon side which is... it's hard to say "dark" but I would say it's more "real", "intense", and "chaotic" than the island, whereas the island itself has the shadowrun-esque clique of the mega-rich business conglomerates.

the only issue I see with HK being the perfect example of cyberpunk is victoria harbor keeps these two sides separate, whereas to fit the genre more I think they should be jammed up uncomfortably next to each other.

some HK films make use of the separation of kowloon / island, by placing the immaculate police headquarters on the island, but requiring the policeman/hero to go to the other side to get their hands dirty / get shit done / rescue the uncle/wife/child from the triad or whatever. when they go over to kowloon you know shit's going to go down.

boutcher
Definitely not Shanghai (unless you consider everyone heads-down on their phones a symptom of cyberpunk.)

Shenzhen is a good choice though.

How about Tallinn

Nothorized
Tallinn is a very small city. When I travel, I love to walk alone in the city during the night, and despite a few big buildings (mainly hotels), Tallinn does not look that much futuristic.
ttam
Either somewhere in Asia or Berlin
Nutomic
I don't see how Berlin could be considered Cyberpunk at all. Sure there are some modern buildings, but most of it is at least 50 years old. And there's no real high-tech.
ttam
I'd say Berlin definitely has a cyberpunk aura at night, with its post-industrial setting, electronic music scene and hacker/tech/anarchist vibe
adrianN
I live in Berlin. Some parts are punk, some parts are cyber, no parts that I know are cyberpunk.
altern8tif
Definitely Hong Kong. I just came back from a holiday there and the bus ride from the airport to Kowloon amidst towering brutalist apartments made me feel like I'm entering a dystopian metropolis.
pmarreck
Seconding this. Hong Kong all the way, no contest. I also went there a year or 2 ago and (besides being reminded everywhere about what inspired the styles in the cyberpunk game Deus Ex that take place there) it just felt very cyberpunk. Also, I LOVED IT, and sadly only spent 24 hours there (yet a VERY memorable 24 hours!). I want to go back!
sAbakumoff
Interesting..I love Hong Kong for its beautiful hiking trails where I don't need any tech stuff at all. It really feels like back to the nature :)
pmarreck
Heh. I only saw Hong Kong nightlife... and Victoria Peak. (It was a very productive 24 hours, I think we only slept about 4 of it LOL)
19eightyfour
Okay, tbh, I'm going to vote against all map points on the de rigeur "tech metropolis" list.

TOKYO, HK, SHANGHAI, SHENZHEN, SEOUL, or <insert yet-another East-Asian megacity here.>

No to all of them. Why? They're really more capitalist mega-aggregations of labour and value...tech, either consumer-side or industry-side and any, cyber-punk under-side to these places is really, despite their (arguably somewhat faded) romance, these days is a side effect ( okay, maybe 1990s-era Harajuku FRUiTS style aside ).

I'm going to vote for someplace in Africa as actually the most cyberpunk.

I've never been there, but bear with me. High mobile phone usage but lots of shanty towns, mobile finance but still open air barter markets. And they do a lot of destroy/recycle/resell of tech ( old computers, old tvs, old batteries, old ships ). It's technologically advanced, but it's also still animist and voodoo. The internet didn't just "get adopted", it got "inhaled" and started changing everything, because things were still flexible enough to be changed.

Look maybe I'm just TOOMA, and someone who actually knows and has lived there can set this perspective straight. But for sake of freshness of updating the conception of "cyperpunk" I'm going against the grain of passing the crown around the clique of Asian megacities, to someplace maybe a little more grungy, maybe a little more deserving of the mantle of "cyberpunk".

A place where you could still imagine, perhaps, an organic "phreaking" culture existing even today, accompanied by reverse engineering and zines, distributed by bicycle couriers to people cool enough to be included in such secrets.

I know Africa is not glittering spires of glass and steel, but is that really so cyberpunk in our current time? Isn't the essence of cyberpunk something a little more bustling but raw-and-real, and digital but down-to-earth?

pdexter
Where in Africa? Africa is huge, many different cultures and types of cities.
Cyph0n
Kinshasa, Lagos, Cairo, and Johannesburg would be good candidates I think.
jvdl
Yeah... I don't think Johannesburg conforms to your ideas at all.
Cyph0n
I didn't write the top-level comment. I'm also not intimately familiar with any of these cities, so don't take my word for it.
FullMtlAlcoholc
Never been there, but Johannesburg looked pretty cyberpunk in District 9. Accordim to Neill Blomkamp, during the winter season, Johannesburg "actually looks like Chernobyl", a "nuclear apocalyptic wasteland".
wj
Maybe Lagos? Lots of people. Wealth. Corruption. Cyber-criminals.

Mumbai could be another dark horse.

[dead] MK999
lagos has guys that walk the streets w their pet hyenas
Cyph0n
Mumbai is not in Africa though?
wj
Correct. Top of thread first mentioned looking at cities outside of Asia...though I guess technically Mumbai is in Asia.
cholantesh
Just technically?
wj
I think of the Indian subcontinent differently than the rest of Asia.
cholantesh
That seems kind of arbitrary...if India isn't part of Asia, much of the culture in Indochina and the Malay islands is not Asian, either.
stuxnet79
Here's a cyberpunk short story called VIRUS! that is set in Accra Ghana

http://www.afrocyberpunk.com/virus/

I've been following the author for some years but I believe he has yet to complete a full manuscript. In general I agree with most of what you have said. The Sprawl Trilogy is almost 30 years old, a completely different era. A re-evaluation of what "cyberpunk" means in this day and age is necessary in my book.

19eightyfour
Thank you, I'd like to read this. Added to my reading bookmarks. :)
detaro
Asian cities get closest to the visual aesthetic associated with the word, which is why they are cited often, but I think you are right when talking about everything else. South America might have some candidates as well?
19eightyfour
I even think the visual aesthetic needs revising. It was written about in an age before it existed, in an aspirational sense. Now we've achieve the forms of the aspirations, but we've missed out on the substance that was supposed to come with them. Our cities are marvels, but they lack richness in many ways. A richness that the infinite nets of cyberpunk promised us we'd be able to plug into. So I think a return to something more organic, to pick up some things we might have left behind in our headlong rush, might be needed, to actually get to where we were going.
xyzzy4
I spent a few months in India and I thought it was extremely cyberpunk. I can see Africa being similar.
19eightyfour
I've never been to India nor had an interest, I'm somewhat sorry to tell you. But I think I probably ought to check it out at some point hearing your comment and other things. Thanks!
arcanus
South Africa.

In townships in South Africa you can see high tech low life everywhere: abject poverty but people still find ways to get old flip phones working or running a TV in a home with no electricity: just directly plugging it into a generator.

Nearby, there can be mansions with well-educated folks who hold the typical lawyer/consulting/banking/software set.

19eightyfour
I didn't necessarily have anywhere specifically in Africa in mind but I was not thinking about South Africa. Tho if SA is included, definitely something like what Neil Blomkamp made SA look like in District 9, Chappie, et al, is sort-of cyberpunk to me. Love his aesthetic in those movies. Tho that's not exactly what I was going for here.
dennyabraham
Cyberpunk connotes overcrowded cities where human life is commoditized and tech is widespread. Huge cities in Africa or India are much closer to unevenly distributed technological dystopias than the tech hubs other folks have suggested.
19eightyfour
Wow, thanks for agreeing with me. That's a great way to put it actually.
kkajanaku
Under this definition Luanda would make a great candidate. The most expensive city in the world, ahead of Hong Kong, Zurich, and Singapore on Mercer's Cost of Living ranking. A two bedroom apartment will cost on average $6,800 per month, while the GDP per head is just $7,700 per year. It is also on track to become a megacity by 2030, full of glittering spires of glass and steel.
19eightyfour
That's totally true as well. I didn't even think of that last night. People often think Asian megacities or US megacities as the most expensive. But that's not true. It's actually cities in Africa.

I guess another valid point is the problems African cities are dealing with are sort of indicative of what's projected that most mega cities will deal with in future. A huge income gap, lots of overcrowding and some kind of constant security and resource problems.

arethuza
I don't know about "cyberpunk" but every time the Dubai screensaver comes on my Apple TV I'm pleased to find I must be living in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bucV8Y_p0ME

Edit: All that video needs is an Elysium style flying Bugatti.

hack_edu
Oakland, CA is a strong contender if you step back. Especially for one of a Stephensonian-styled second-wave cyberpunk. It even plays a part in Neuromancer.

It has its dark parts along with strong facets of common cyberpunk themes: drastic social stratification, the social acceptance of regular drug usage, urban decay meets technocratic renewal, a renewed definition of suburbia, and a greater acceptance of non-binary genders.

philsnow
I like it, especially because there's a strong artist population there, and a common theme in cyberpunk is showing what the non-techies' life is like (to contrast it to the main characters' lives), and it's quite often artists.
cx1000
For those not familiar with the term cyberpunk (like me), this is what Wikipedia has to say

> Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting that tends to focus on society as "high tech low life" featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as information technology and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

wlesieutre
Some of the better known examples are Neuromancer, Blade Runner, and Deus Ex
dollaholla
There are pockets of it everywhere. There's a filthy bodega in uptown Manhattan with expired produce on the shelves, but there's a Bitcoin ATM and young kids hang out there and barter stolen Uber accounts for Bitcoin.
z3ugma
Dubai! The tallest building in the world, 2 of the tallest residential buildings, fringed by uninhabitable desert. Built on credit, on the backs of south Asian and Filipino indentured servants. An Instagram paradise for the global elite.
Raphmedia
Kowloon Walled City.

It is no more but it was amazing that such a city ever existed. Read on it.

It was a city build on itself, cube shaped. Some people would spend their entire day inside or in the middle of the city and would never see the sun.

Search it on Google Image and you will understand what I mean.

thejones
A big part of the game Shadowrun: Hong Kong is actually set in Kowloon, so that would support your view.
beaconstudios
the now-demolished Walled City of Kowloon was a great example of the dereliction/"street culture" side of cyberpunk fiction, very reminiscent of the "underbelly" image of cities like Midgar from FF7 or Hengsha in DX:HR. Also places like Lagos with a high rate of internet technology paired with scrap pickers and DIY recycling.

For the economic side of cyberpunk (the capitalist dystopia side), I'd say Hong Kong. A city with a booming economy and ample opportunity for international corporations but where the poorest citizens live in literal cages: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/cage-homes-hong-kong

For the neon/e-billboard aesthetic, you can't really beat Tokyo or Times Square, NY.

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arcaster
Maybe an unlikely choice, but I actually think Boston, especially chinatown in Boston is incredibly cyberpunk. Yes, I might be biased since I went to school in Boston and a huge fan of the Fallout series.

If I had to give a structure / area outside chinatown, the trench that the commuter lines and orange-line run through are incredibly cyberpunk.

FullMtlAlcoholc
Taipei. I was only there for a couple of days but where I stayed had that Kowloon walled City feel to it and I went to a rave in the lush, jungle like mountains.