Complit 131 Brave New World

Naeva Lemme

In both real life and fiction, the design of cities is used to influence both individual lives as well as society as a whole. Often cities have designs for green spaces, sidewalks, and streets that are intended to keep people moving from one place to the next without lingering in public areas. Two such fictional cities exist in the worlds of “The Pedestrian” and “Billenium”. “The Pedestrian” is a short piece of dystopian fiction written by Ray Bradbury in 1950, in which a man attempts to keep up his obsolete hobby of walking despite the inhospitableness of the city and is punished for it. J.G Ballard wrote his similarly dystopian short story about overcrowded cities and stifling solutions to space shortages, “Billenium”, in 1962. In reality, cities are hailed as centers of diversity or “melting pots” where people are free to express their individuality and where people can go to chase their own dreams. However, the design of the city can either help or hinder this diversity. In the two aforementioned short stories, the designs of their respective cities prevent the protagonists from living as individuals and force them to either conform to societal norms or perish by not allowing them to do or own anything unique to themselves, as well as impeding the diversity of their entire society.

Cities are often thought of as homes for extreme diversity thanks to the plethora of job opportunities, as well as social and cultural experiences that they hold. In “The Pedestrian”, Leonard Mead describes what his city normally looks like during the day time. Its wide roads packed with cars coming into the city for work suggest that the city is a central hub for many different jobs. Rather than normal roads, the city has multiple highways to accommodate the high volume of vehicles that travel through it each day (Adams et al. 193). On the other hand, in the over-populated world of “Billenium”, people only live in cities. Apart from farming, the cities are where all of the jobs are, as well as entertainment and food. The protagonist, Ward, mentions that, “intensive cultivation meant that 95 percent of the population was permanently trapped in vast urban conurbations” (Adams et al. 117). In this way, cities become the home of every type of person in the world, making them an undeniable center of diversity.

However, despite the opportunity to be a home to enormous diversity, cities can be turned into places of mass conformity depending on their design of the city. The combination of no real sidewalks, “graveyard-like” scenery, and wide roads throughout the city force the citizens of the world of “The Pedestrian” to stay inside all day and never leave their houses at night. Leonard Mead impliesthe death-like stillness of his world on his walk, “Occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell” (Adams et al. 192). This darkness and general chilling unpleasantness prevents people from meeting on the street and sharing ideas, as well as hindering the enjoyment of various outdoor hobbies by the public. While the lack of diversity in “The Pedestrian” is due to isolation, a similar problem as it exists in “Billenium” is caused by the overwhelming proximity of overcrowded cities.

In the city of “Billenium”, there are no houses, or even apartments. People are forced to live in tiny cubicles or crammed into small rooms with several others. Most people only have room for a bed and a suitcase to keep their belongings in. Because of this lack of personal space, people are unable to keep many things of their own. There is no room for unique furniture or knick-knacks, and there is barely any room for clothes. As such, the citizens of “Billenium” have no way to express their individuality. There simply isn’t space for it, and this hurts the protagonists of the stories.

The use of urban design to force conformity discussed above negatively affects individuals like Leonard Mead and Ward. Leonard Mead is an individual in a society that will accept nothing short of total conformity. He is the singular person who attempts to keep up his hobby of walking in a city designed to prevent that. He walks at night, when there is no danger of getting hit by cars, and he continues to walk on the overgrown lumps of concrete that can no longer be considered sidewalks. For this individuality, he is punished. He is forcibly sent to a mysterious psychiatric research center for daring to continue enjoying walking in a city designed to obstruct the enjoyment thereof. While Leonard Mead chooses to walk his own path because he knows no other, this is a harder decision for those who spend their lives surrounded by others in their same situation.

As such, Ward has a different reaction to being forced into conformity. When his beloved wardrobe, a unique piece of furniture in an otherwise monotonous world, is taken apart for space, he quickly gives into the desire of his society, to have more room. He does so at the expense of the one thing personal to him, and so loses his last remaining expression of individuality. As the wardrobe is being taken apart, he thinks, “It was a beautiful wardrobe, without doubt, but when it was gone it would make the room seem even larger” (Adams et al. 125). The way the design of the city presses people into spaces far too small for any one person, let alone multiple people, forces individuals to prioritize having any space at all, to move, to sit, to feel like they can breath, over having possessions. While at first glance it may seem like a plus to have a less materialistic society, the things people own express in the clearest way who they are as a person. Now that Ward owns the same things as everyone else, with nothing left that is unique to him, he has become a flat, static being, rather than the multi-faceted person he was when he was able to own things that represented him.

In addition to affecting Mead and Ward as individuals, the conformity-inducing design of their cities also affects the diversity of their society as a whole. People in “The Pedestrian” travel to work in cars, work all day, then go home and watch TV until they go to bed. The monotony of this lifestyle is caused by lack of things to do outside of working and watching TV, which was carefully planned by the government, and the city was designed around this plan. This turns the citizens into mere wraiths, rather than multi-dimensional individuals. Leonard Mead describes the people he sees through their windows as “sudden gray phantoms [that] seemed to manifest themselves upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night” (Adams et al. 192). As the monotony of their daily routine crushes out any diversity in their society, the people of “The Pedestrian” become shapeless and mindless, a society run more so by the government than by the people that compose it. The government in “Billenium” takes similar advantage of the diversity crisis in their city.

In the space-starved world of “Billenium”, people are forced to wear the same baggy, dull clothes to save space in their suitcases, clothes which hide both their form and their personality. Similarly, there are no individual choices to be made about food. Rather than having a variety of restaurants with diverse cuisines, the city has food bars, where everyone goes through the same line and chooses from the same options. By forcing diversity out of the society for the sake of making space, the design of the city negates the need for people to make any decisions for themselves, leading not just to a lack of personal choices, but also to a lack of decisions being made by those in control of this society.

The idea that urban design can be used to create conformity is clearly represented in these stories, but this idea did not come from a vacuum. In the real world of Bradbury and Ballard, which is also our own, governments have been designing cities that hinder diversity rather than encouraging its growth. For Bradbury, inspiration came from the upheaval happening in cities at the time. Roads and highways for personal vehicles were being built, and public transportation and sidewalks were being torn out. These cities were being designed to move all travel into the private sphere, which has the negative effect of ending virtually all communication and sharing of ideas in public spaces. As for Ballard’s inspiration, overpopulation has long been a fear, and Ballard is clearly aware of this, hence his mention of “Neo-Malthusians”, referring to Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population. But Ballard’s urban design “solution” to the problem of overpopulation only leads to a completely one-dimensional society. Even today, cities are using “homeless deterrents” such as homeless spikes and purposefully uncomfortable benches to bring about the end of people living their lives in the public sphere. These applications of urban design are a very real danger, and in many cities they are already at work. Society is easier to control when it is one organism, rather than a collection of individuals, and governments are not afraid to use urban design to create the type of society that is easy for them to control.

Works Cited

Adams, John Joseph, et al. Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories. Night Shade Books, 2012.

Falk, Tyler. “Ray Bradbury’s Vision of the Dystopian City.” CityLab, 6 June 2012, www.citylab.com/design/2012/06/ray-bradburys-vision-dystopian-city/2199/.

Follett, Chelsea. “How Big Of A Problem Is Overpopulation?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 July 2018,

www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/07/30/how-big-of-a-problem-is-overpopulation/#20be65d6216a.

Rosenberger, Robert. “How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 15 June 2018, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/how-cities-use-design-to-drive-homeless- people-away/373067/.