Week Two: Reflection on Movie - "The Fifth Element" - Waterless or Wetness?

This movie was set in the 23rd century so it is imagining very far into the future (probably further than we will be in this unit) but it was still very interesting to see the visuals on what the filmmakers envisaged future cities to look like.

The story is set in New York city and features a few of the monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge in their futuristic states. Below are a few key images from the movie.

An artistic impression of the future NYC.

A scene showing the city at large. Note: much of the water has retreated.

An artistic impression of the city at the previous street level and below. They have kept some of the streets to use as walkways between buildings.

The hollow city - this image shows the non-existent water surrounding the Brooklyn Bridge in the background and the vertical building (both down and up) of infrastructure in the city.  

   

A scene from the movie showing the futuristic streetscapes - flying cars and vertical landscapes.

  

A scene from the movie showing the new mode of transport - flying cars - who knows if this is possible?

WATERLESS OR WETNESS??

The movie shows one extreme of the barren city, where water has drastically reduced and with this new space has been found for living underneath the existing ground level. Even though this is a very intriguing idea, I think it would be more likely that the opposite were to happen i.e. water levels would increase in cities. Due to current issues, such as global warming which involves rising sea levels and climate change, the possibility of this happening is much more probable in the near future. This may actually be a very realistic issue and threat for some cities, where they will have to start thinking about how to waterproof their cities. Even in Brisbane, in the 2011 floods, the city was forced to cater for the mass influx of water in our CBD and inner suburbs, where we were quite unprepared and a lot of damage was caused. 

In the scenario that the city were to be inundated with water there would be a need to build up, not down, and find alternate methods of transport and building methods. I have come up with a quick idea sketch of how high rise buildings may exist in this scenario: 

This sketch describes a sort of 'canal city' where the lower levels have been filled in with concrete in preparation for the water level rise (as they still need to support above levels) and walkways have been built (braced to the buildings), connecting buildings and transporting pedestrians. Water travel may become a more practical form of transport between longer distances. Islands may also form in some areas with higher ground levels.