Have you all watched a film called "Her" recently? I did. I watched it at HBO Channel and the storyline is interesting. It revolves around a man that intimately befriended an Operating System that can actually exhibit humanoid feelings. Just think about an advanced Siri or Google Now or Cortana that can actually understands your emotional desire more than assisting you your everyday tasks. However, I am not going to delve into that or review the film's storyline itself.
Being a graduate of urban and regional planning myself, I am more interested into the way the film's producer gives us some glimpse into how we might live in the future. The future of Los Angeles, according to the film, is a megalopolis of high rise buildings spread across the Los Angeles Basin. Those of us who truly understands how cities became what it is today do realise that Los Angeles we see and understand today is a grand example of a city of some 4 million people (plus, another 10 million living in the greater Los Angeles area) where urban density is dominated by low-rise buildings. It is impossible to travel anywhere without having a car. The urban model of Los Angeles, and generally American cities are being copied everywhere, including Malaysia. You don't have to look far. Kuala Lumpur and the rest of Klang Valley is an urban sprawl with mostly a car-centric society, a home to some 7.5 million people.
So, what film producers of Her trying to show us? It is a future of urban living that is the opposite the very way we live in our cities today.
Figure 1
Today's Los Angeles contains high rise buildings at fairly small concentrated area. The rest of the city is just a sprawl of low rise buildings, where public transport services run thin, and it is more efficient to travel using one's own car. Smog is a major environmental problem in the city, caused mainly by vehicles' emission.
Photo Source: http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/most-polluted-cities-us/
Figure 2
A future of Los Angeles, according to Her is a city of high-rises where workplaces and residential towers sit side-by-side.
Figure 3
Theodore (cast by Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a spacious high-rise apartment unit overlooking tall buildings in Los Angeles.
Figure 4
Instead of sleeping under the star lights, in the future we may actually see lights of nearby tall buildings - very unnatural if you ask me.
Figure 5
There is one very element missing in the film - cars (Though the only scene where a car is actually shown is Theodore's friend showing a video game that depicted an electric car, not an actual car itself). Theodore is seen from going from places to places by just walk and more walk - very good for our health considering offices and homes are just a walking distance away. If you ask me, Her is shot at two locations, Los Angeles and Shanghai. The above photo is actually Shanghai, dubbed in as 'future' Los Angeles.
Figure 6
A future of cities exhibited in the film contain infrastructures of wide, vast and unimpeded networks of pedestrian walkways. Today what we have in Malaysia is just a 'kaki lima', or a narrow sidewalk on a road side.
Figure 7
Want to travel further afield? Train travel is a prominent feature in Her. There was one scene where Theodore went to the snowy mountains (probably the Rockies). He travelled there by boarding a long distance train where he sat a very spacious couch seat, akin to some of the Business Class seats in airlines today, overlooking some very nice landscapes.
You don’t have to watch the film itself to get a glimpse of how we might live in the future. Vancouver, Singapore and even New York are just some very fine examples of how high-density living, working and leisure can be bound together. The way we might live in the future might not be so far, we can actually see the future itself…now.
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