Liam Young is a director and speculative architect who is designing regenerative futures via provocative thought experiments. Planet City VR is the provocation of centralizing all 10 billion humans on the planet to a city the size of Texas so that the rest of the world could go back to seed, and serve to counter climate change. It’s not a literal proposal, but more of a futurist, worldbuilding design prompt that pushes the cutting edge of regenerative science, architecture, culture, and anthropology up to or beyond the edge of what’s possible. Planet City is a multi-media project where there is a Planet City film, Planet City book, Planet City TED Talk, and now a Planet City VR experience that premiered at Tribeca Immersive 2022.
I had a chance to unpack the Planet City VR provocation with Young at Tribeca to hear more about his intention with the project, collaboration with science fiction authors, scientists, anthropologists, and artists, his trip around the world to paradigmatic examples of renewable energy at scale, and how this project allows us to reflect on who we want to be in the future and how technology changes us.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Liam Young: Planet City — a sci-fi vision of an astonishing regenerative future | TED
Trailer for Planet City
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Music: Fatality
