If the 20th century gave us the decline of the city and the rise of the suburb, the 21st century showcases the city as a sort of live-in theme park for the rich, in which all you have to do is turn up and pay up, and everything is provided for you.
Let's role play. Pretend you're a "young professional" (ie, yuppie). You buy your yuppie flat, which costs you enough money that you don't have to live around poor people, and are surrounded by other yuppies. You go shopping in a small supermarket built into the estate or tower block a la JG Ballard. (Well, not exactly...)
You rarely, if ever, rub shoulders with the natives. But that's OK, because just like when Great-Grandfather went to India, these latter-day Indians, the "natives" of the city don't matter - you do.
Your cultural life is curated - You spend your leisure time at huge, overhyped, corporate cultural events staged in corporate venues for corporate profit. You get your information about these from corporate media. You know nothing about the citys' rich cultural history and traditions, though of course you came here for the "culture" and the "music", you don't really want to want to know about anything that requires you to do any work - you're a consumer, after all, and that's what you do. Consume. They put on the fun, you pay them, and you "have" the fun.
I've long asked myself: How is it that yuppies can both get a massive music festival thrown for them at everyone elses expense, and also get to have all the cool clubs shut down or restricted because they make too much noise?
Because the city is a theme park, and theme parks do not support independent businesses. They are run by corporate, just like modern cities - and this means that very soon, you'll be about as likely to find a traditional pub or club in a big city as you are to find a lemonade stand at Disney World.
At least, it would get that bad if there weren't serious problems with this system.
For a start, the life cycle of the yuppie is such that all the residents of the high-priced high rises and other abominations they've replaced so many city buildings with, will move to the suburbs in around 10 years. They have to do this in order to spawn - you can't bring up a kid in an adult theme park, it's just not desirable, and yuppies always get what they want.
This means that corporates need to constantly attract new buyers for yuppie flats, there is a continual churn and turn-over. This may be difficult to maintain in a world which is rapidly running short of resources; not many people will be attracted to live in high rises when power cuts become routine, and not many will want to shop at inflexible corporate supermarkets when food rationing is taking place - not when they can, say, buy stuff at a farm shop instead. Or even grow it themselves in a big, look-at-me-I'm-so-sustainable, prepper-survivalist kind of way.
There's also problems with civil disorder - the post-Lockdown riots took place right in the middle of Yuptown, potentially depressing property prices - and at one point, even starting fires outside their buildings!
I predict that now that things are starting to go to shit, the yuppies will run like rats from a sinking ship. They will leave Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, and Liverpool in droves and flee to the countryside and the suburbs as if their lives depended on it, because they do. They'll be Farmer Palmer's problem, not ours.
