Eden history - London

Although I haven't felt much motivation to do so recently (I recently stopped playing a long-term RPG character who was very word-intensive, and took a lot of my creative energy), I write occasionally. Back a couple years ago, I got a spark of an idea for a "probable future" idea in which many of the world's major urban centers had become, or were becoming Soleri-esque arcologies. I wrote a few short pieces, then got super-busy with coursework and set it down for a while. The idea's never left my head, though. Every once in a while, I go back to it, try to take a fresh perspective, write something new. In my head it's become less of a story than a hypothetical documentary. This is one of the first pieces I wrote, and it takes place in the city of London. Please observe all applicable copyright rulings.



It started in London. When the Labour “dynasty” of the end of the 20^th and beginning of the 21^st century finally fell to the increasingly popular Conservative party, things changed. There was no telling whether it was for the better or the worse the way things came together. The middle classes’ xenophobia blossomed, and entwined itself about the heavily promoted Future London conservation movement. Heavy emphasis was put on making Greater London a more sustainable city, and much work was done to make London’s infrastructure more sustainable for its residents. However, immigrants were less than welcome in the city, and many moved north and east, if they chose to come to England at all.

In spite of slowed immigration into the city London’s population was at its highest point in history, but Londoners stoically resisted plans to expand of the city. Ecological consciousness had been so ingrained into the minds of the people they consistently voted down proposals to “sprawl” into productive arable land. Petitions were created to limit urban growth and protect the surrounding environs. By June of 2012, London’s preparations for the Olympic games were complete. The city had never before been so clean, efficient, or state-of-the-art. The city’s infrastructure was sufficient for its burgeoning population, there were factors city planners had failed to consider. The 2009 capture and execution of Osama bin Ladin and the United States’ subsequent relaxation of their vigilante War on Terror sparked overwhelming expressions of international goodwill and a tremendous increase in international travel. The addition of several million more Olympic spectators than expected taxed London’s systems to their limit and beyond, quickly causing tensions to mount.

The riots started on 2^nd August, 2012. The summer heat ignited tensions that were already smoldering from severe overcrowding and delays on the Tube (in spite of the London Underground’s decision to operate their trains 24 hours a day), the Central London congestion charge, rolling blackouts, and food shortages in supermarkets and restaurants. Several local organizations banded together to protest the unexpected large Olympic crowds, but angry demonstrations flared into violence between protestors and police as one protestor was shot dead by an unknown killer, and a car bomb exploded mid-afternoon outside the BBC. The bomb hurt no one directly, but it smashed open the floodgates for citywide chaos. The riots lasted for most of two days and resulted in over £8.6 million in property damage – much of it in upscale Central London – but were getting less severe, and almost died out entirely. Then on 4^th August, a water main in Greenwich burst, depriving a large section of eastern London of running water. Fueled by this tragedy, the riots redoubled their intensity and raged on for another three days.

For the first time since their inception in 1896, the Olympic games had to be ended early because of the violent civil unrest. England was outraged, and accused several known terrorist groups of inciting the riots and blowing up the water main. Security measures were tightened, and severe restrictions were placed on immigration. Many of England’s critics, including some former sympathizers from the European Union, countered that London’s infrastructure had simply not been sufficient. Whether the critics were correct or not, London had been crippled by the Olympic riots. With billions of pounds of aid from the sympathetic nations, largely the United States and Israel, England began a massive campaign to restore its capitol’s infrastructure. During the reconstruction project the pendulum of political opinion began to swing back in favor of the Labour party, and soon the cry for “restoration” became one of “improvement.”

London had limited her options for improvement, however. Past conservation petitions had become current law, and the city could not expand its boundaries without great turmoil. Expanding the Underground was feasible, but was terribly expensive, and could only be developed so far before threatening the integrity of the aboveground city. In a controversial decision, the boroughs of Inner London decided to build upward rather than out. Foundations and lower stories of the undamaged and restored buildings were reinforced, while many damaged buildings and roadways were simply removed, and converted to service and transport lines to augment those underground. “Conspiracy theory” headlines ran almost weekly in The Sun, and declared that London was moving the Underground onto the surface. The true purpose was revealed when the first of the Great Braces were erected in Hammersmith. Soon huge metal pylons and struts were being erected throughout all the boroughs, and the spaces between were filled in and paved over. The headlines were right: the Underground had been raised to ground level. However, a new ground level had been raised above it. The boroughs had come together and agreed to cooperatively rebuild their boroughs as arcologies, massive structures containing the entire necessary infrastructure for urban life, but didn’t infringe too much on the natural world. Some people, largely fans of science fiction, began to call the new arcologies the London Hive – referencing the multi-storied mega cities in some novels – and the name caught on.

Although weakened by the Olympic riots, it wasn’t long before the London Hive regained its status as a major financial and commercial center. Because of the new construction that was going on, London Hive saw a revival in heavy industries as well. The new infrastructure required constant maintenance, and the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled laborers skyrocketed. Paradoxically to England’s new xenophobic culture, many immigrants were assimilated by London into low-level maintenance jobs…and low-level lifestyles. The wealthier sectors of London’s population moved “up top” to the new construction on top of the Braces, leaving lots of space below the Surface for the service workers to fill up. In less than 15 years London’s population density more than doubled, and crime rates skyrocketed – especially drug and arms trading, and racketeering. The Metropolitan Police Service first partnered with then absorbed the Terrestrial Army, and police presence doubled on the Surface and quintupled below it.

For the first decade or so, London Hive was unique, but as the Hive’s construction neared completion, the model was adapted to New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Atlanta at the encouragement of the FDA, big agricultural lobbies, and a hodgepodge of conservation groups. Shortly following the announcement of Atlanta’s conversion, Paris and Prague announced their own plans, and a BBC documentary revealed that several large cities in the People’s Republic of China had already started their own Hive conversion projects.

Encouraged by the success of the Hive model into existing cities, plans were made for the creation of the first purpose-built hive city on Akilia Island, an island off the coast of Greenland with some of the oldest geological formations in the world. When the UN announced that it planned to move it’s headquarters to Akilia, international support for the city went through the roof. In the midst of the international celebration, Dr. Rhodes of Oxford University and Dr. Shope of Princeton University released a joint report, the Hive Under-Surface Report, detailing some of the gang activity and human atrocities taking place beneath the Surface in London Hive and the newly completed Queens Hive.

By then, however, it was too late; construction of Eden had already begun.

((PLUR!))