HIVE CITIES Reality or Fiction

So a lot of you requested that we look into this absolutely mind-boggling fictional place called Hive Cities. It's a massive multi-level structure that contains anywhere from billions to tens of billions of people in these dense layered communities. At the top you have the elite and below and even further down into this underhive people are reduced to their most primal The more I look at it, it reminds me of a living organism. A sick, parasitic, cancerous organism that feed off the planet while the people feed off the city and off each other. The architecture and humanity are intertwined in this disturbing endless cycle of growth. It's almost a caricature of a dystopian city but it makes you wonder is this architectural construct completely fictional or does it show a glimpse of what humanity is capable of when it's forced to think about nothing but survival. A portion of this video is sponsored by Opera. Hive Cities is from the universe of Warhammer 40k and they're set on these planets 40,000 years into the future and it paints a picture of a society that's pushed to the extremes. First of There's this constant war between factions that just never ends. It's also sprawling with factories that's spewing out toxins and it's extremely dense and there's just not enough resources but the population just keeps growing and as it grows they have no choice but to keep building taller because they're constrained by the wastelands around the perimeters. A lot of the resources we looked at compare Hive City to this idea of an arcology which is a blend of architecture and ecology. The movement started in the 60s by an architect called Paolo Soleri. In essence it's the concept of this self-sustaining high-density city that's contained in this single megastructure. They would have everything you need in a city like homes, shopping malls, entertainment, schools or food production and by compacting everything into a single structure it could be very efficient and also have a very low environmental footprint. This is one of the few attempts at building it in real life and although Arcasanti was a really cool place, in the end it's a very small community of a hundred people and it doesn't come nearly as close to the original vision of a city that evolves and functions as a living system. You might have seen this building it's the New Orleans Arcology Habitat aka NOAA and it's kind of the poster child for this movement. In addition to being an arcology it's a response to the rising sea level so it's a floating arcology designed to host 40,000 people. This is the Shimizu Megacity Pyramid and here we have Crystal Island by the architect Norman Foster who also designed this building but most of these projects never became a reality because it's too complicated and expensive but when you look at the grand vision of arcology Hive City does have some parallels. It's high density, it's self-sustaining all inside this single megastructure but it's the dystopian version and the ironic part is in Hive City it's the structure that actually leads to a lot of the problems. For example all the rich people they live at the top and the rest they live at the base and these poor humans they live or they survive in this underhive. Apparently they're also forced to consume water and food that trickles down from the top that's been recycled like thousand times. It does make recycling sound kind of sinister doesn't it? So in Hive Cities the structure itself is what leads to this massive divide between the classes and it turns things that should be a basic human right like light and fresh air into luxuries but I think it actually addresses an inherent issue with some of these new vertical megacity projects. For example in the Lime Project that's currently under construction in Saudi Arabia we see a similar situation. It's an entire city contained in a single megastructure that's supposed to be 500 meters tall but that means the people at the lower levels could have little to no access to daylight naturally creating the social divide. Also Hive Cities lead to a complete ecological collapse from the massive toxic output from factories so it's kind of the opposite of Arcologies in that regard. But I think the biggest difference is the growth which Arcology doesn't really address. It kind of assumes that the population size is going to stay the same contained in the single structure for hundreds of thousands of years or maybe it's designed more for the short term like 50 years but in that case is it really sustainable? There's a concept in architecture that's a direct response to rapid and unregulated growth. Metabolism. It started in Japan in the 1950s when Tokyo was dealing with a huge influx of people migrating to the city after the war. To try to solve this problem a group of Japanese architects proposed a pretty radical solution. It looks at the city as a living evolving organic system that could expand and react to changes. They referenced biological organisms like trees and a lot of the designs were systems with a permanent core structure and modular adaptable units that could grow and even retract like branches and leaves. These proposals were pretty wild. This one had these mega spines that spanned across Tokyo Bay with residential modules that could be added or sunk depending on the size of the population. This one took a more vertical approach but again with spines that would allow for these residential capsules to plug into the core. And maybe if hive cities were planned from the start with a structure that would guide this crazy growth we would have ended up with something that's not pure chaos. But at the same time most of these metabolist projects never actually got built because it was really complex and it required way too much planning. Plug in and plug out seems like a simple enough idea but it means you need to fabricate them and transport them and deploy a machine to attach them every time they experience some kind of population growth. Meaning you would need the construction companies, the infrastructure, the regulating bodies, and the transportation systems all working together seamlessly. And even for the Japanese it was too much. And I think we can all agree the Japanese are the best people in the world at creating order out of chaos. So imagine how hard it was for these hive people who basically drink recycled pee water every day to try to build something complex like this. In fact this chaotic and sporadic nature of hive city might lend itself better to a slightly different concept. Hold on a sec let me double check that. I want to take a quick break to show you a free browser that I genuinely love. It's called Opera and it comes with a free built-in VPN and ad blocker and it has this thing called elusive mode where you can regulate the levels of sharpness in the settings. See? Before and after. I love how it organizes everything. In this vertical bar you can store different workspaces and here you can store apps that you use on a regular basis. You can also collapse your tabs into these islands in just one click. Islands are kind of like folders so it makes it really easy for you to be organized. It's a great example of how good well thought out design can actually improve your productivity. It also has an integrated AI in the browser called ARIA which comes with parameters like tone, style, and length so you can tweak it for specific tasks or you can train it to write like you for things like emails. I really appreciate the amount of thought they put into the user experience to make everything so seamless and pleasant. It's totally free so try it out because even small changes can make a huge difference when it's a tool that you use every single day. Apparently hive cities start their lives around this geothermal core and very quickly settlements get built around this core stacking layer upon layer upon layer and as these cities grow they drain these cores and they eventually deplete the planet at an urban level because people are just building to survive. You also get a condition where buildings are built quickly and sporadically. Structures attach to each other or they hang under bridges or factories which can lead to the collapse of buildings and sometimes entire neighborhoods. At the societal level we have a similar cycle. The poor feed off the scraps that come from above and the elite they rely on the labor from below. So hive cities is parasitic in nature of its host and in of itself. And one of the inherent characteristics of parasites is that because they depend on the host for survival they leech off the host to the point of harm but not immediate death. And this relentless cycle of exploitation leads to a slow and painful decline. Kind of eerie right? But the parasitic architecture movement yes that's a real thing and it forced our researcher to look at a lot of really gross images on the internet. It doesn't necessitate the harming of the host. In fact it has very humanitarian roots. This is one of the first built instances from the movement which became popular in the 60s and 70s. It's a nursery that hung off the facade of an apartment block because the family couldn't afford a bigger apartment. You know when you look at a problem in a city let's say the housing crisis and you're like oh just build it with this. Why do we have to go through approvals and approvals and through these people and these people and just waste so much time. This was an architectural manifestation of that frustration. Because these structures could be erected quickly and they typically resisted zoning regulations and bylaws it was kind of an architectural middle finger to the establishment. There were definitely stylistic elements to the movement where architects just tried to design structures that were in complete contrast to the host building. But a lot of the projects were also just a hands-on attempt to solve real social problems. Like inflatable structures that's made possible by attaching to a building's mechanical exhaust or using a billboard to act as a partial enclosure for temporary shelters. But can you imagine what cities would have looked like if this trend kind of took off? Actually I think it'd be kind of cool. Well in Hive Cities these parasitic structures overtake the host. There's actually parts of the Warhammer lore that's a reference to this blackout period where this shift could have happened. And with this uncontrolled survival building the host structure will eventually fail. Apparently hive quakes are common instances where complete neighborhoods are just smashed under the sheer weight of these parasitic modules killing hundreds of thousands of people at once. So Hive Cities embody a paradox. The more they grow the more they implode under their own weight. In biology there's this phenomenon called autophagy. It's a process where cells break down and consume its own tissue often in response to stress, starvation, or disease. But this cell feeding mechanism is a survival tactic and it's essential for it to clear out the damaged parts and continue sustaining itself. Hive Cities echo lots of positive urban concepts but in the context of survival it's morphed into something dark and twisted. It reminds me of this economic theory called the tragedy of the commons. Imagine a small lush pasture with three happy sheep. As soon as you introduce a couple more though they start to eat more grass, there's more poop on the land, and the pasture or the common land it gradually degrades. This affects all the sheep even the ones that were thriving before. And if this continues the entire system will collapse. The tragedy is that in most cases when people are just trying to survive they have no choice but to consume more than their neighbors. And I think it's made even more tragic because it speaks to a primal human instinct. And Hive City is the architectural manifestation of this theory. But according to Sam Altman we're entering this age of abundance where all of our basic needs are going to be covered and AI is going to provide everything we need. Maybe we're not even going to have to fight for resources. Separating us even further from our instincts for survival. But as we become more and more reliant on this technology what happens if AI decides to stop helping us? Will our instincts come back? Maybe. Even stronger than before. Even stronger than before. Even stronger than before. Even stronger than before. Even stronger than before. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments. And thanks for suggesting Hive Cities. It was pretty dark but interesting. Also we have a discord server and a newsletter. We'll leave the links in the description. And with that we'll see you in the next video. Bye!