We’re all familiar with the plot of a movie that occurs in a city still standing in a post-apocalyptic era. The streets are empty, except for a few survivors who wander aimlessly, searching for signs of life. Buildings begin to crumble and rust away after years of neglect, public transportation sits idle, and overgrown weeds spring from the cracks in the unmanaged sidewalks and streets. The scene feels eerie because we can’t imagine letting our physical environment sit in decay. It seems impossible that our built environments where we live and work each day suddenly fall silent. It’s a city without a pulse.
Perhaps the closest we might feel to a post-apocalyptic city is living in a major metropolis during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown. Times Square in New York City, which typically hosts more than 300,000 people a day, had only a handful of visitors. Many people described their towns as a scene from horror films. Because of this, images of dead and dying cities are becoming more commonplace, especially in cinema and television. These sci-fi-turned-reality projects show the stark contrast between a city we know and a city we fear. Many of these powerful images derive from Edward Gibbon’s famous description of sitting in the ruins of the ancient Roman Capitol when he realized that most cities will rise and fall. This idea has been duplicated in pop culture over and over a singular man wanders the streets in silence, unable to recognize buildings and scenes that were once familiar. As architects, we are often asked how we can prevent our cities from turning into ruins. What can we do today to respond to apocalyptic fears? Maybe the answer isn't in designing for the defense, but actually for the offense, and accepting the fact that a post-apocalyptic city may be on the horizon, and we will have to find ways to adapt.
Much of our pop-culture obsession with the apocalypse began in the mid-20th century when people began to build underground bunkers in preparation for nuclear wars. In the aftermath of the atomic bomb attacks in Japan, once images of what remained of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its survivors emerged, nations around the world began to react in their own way. The United States attempted to convince Americans that should a bomb drop, everyone would survive- but as tensions grew during the Cold War, the government shifted its stance and encouraged educational campaigns and nuclear drills during school. Pamphlets depicted families hiding in their own personal fallout shelters, educating people on how to stockpile canned goods and other necessities in case of extreme emergency. These structures became just another aspect of the suburban way of life.
In the present day, with the looming threat of nuclear war not at the top of our minds, we’ve shifted our focus to another apocalypse-type event. With the increasing impact of climate change, we’re looking to build structures that will protect us from extreme natural disasters. As our perceived threats evolve, so do our responses. Our buildings will be designed not necessarily to protect us from the event itself (an acknowledgment that nature is a much more powerful force than anything we could build) but to allow us to survive with the scarcity of resources that will result in an after-effect. These buildings will be able to generate their own energy, ration water, and contribute other resources to help grow food- all for an undetermined amount of time. Resiliency will become the new sustainable measure. In an extreme event, we may not have full protection, but the opportunity to recover afterward.
In some ways, the threat of an apocalypse has been a sort of experiment that has inspired us to think about how our buildings and cities will not only survive disasters but actively help us recover as well.
