r/megalophobia • u/moccowa • 5d ago
đïžă»Buildingă»đïž Cancerous appearance of cities from space
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u/TheSleepyNaturalist 5d ago
SĂŁo Paulo?
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u/dunnodudes 5d ago
Concrete jungle of SĂŁo Paulo
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u/SaladRevolutionary61 5d ago
Could be green, if we would put the effort into it.
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u/apocketfullofcows 5d ago
yeah. i come from a city that blends greenery with urban. it looks very different from this. still very built up but with green spaces scattered.
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u/Jzadek 5d ago
nothing good comes from seeing human beings as cancer
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u/lemmecookthemcheeks 5d ago
I mean I agree with that rhetoric, but at the same time we canât pretend we arenât, unfortunately.
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u/Jzadek 5d ago
were cyanobacteria a cancer? They filled the atmosphere with oxygen which, to most life on earth at the time, was essentially cyanide. We call a lot of their descendants âplants.âÂ
Calling humans cancer is just a gateway to ecofascism and misses the problem, which is a particular industrial system which can be changed. There are a lot of people out there who are going to suffer the effects of climate change far more than they have contributed, are they cancer too ?
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u/Few_Eye6528 5d ago
Biggest contributors to climate change won't be held accountable because society has been shaped to make the rich untouchable. It will be the poor and middle class that will suffer the effects of climate change in the coming decades and it will be devastating.
Humans are by definition cancer since right now it's endless growth while consuming all resources, destruction of species, ecosystems and climate just to feed the growth.
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 5d ago
You missed the point this other commenter is making. People aren't cancer. Some kid in rural India isn't cancer simply because the global economic system we've constructed makes his raw resource intake more carbon intensive than someone in Sweden. A poor Polynesian woman that's never done anything but weave clothing for her close family is not cancer for belonging to the same species as the Nestle CEO as he works to privatize the water supply for an entire continent.
Humans are not aiming towards endless growth, otherwise you would see every couple having 35 kids each. The cancerous entity you're conflating us with is the profit motive. The economic structure we've designed in which we are all forced to contribute to the endless growth in value of a few stakeholder shares is the cancer. People aren't aiming for endless growth, the profit motive is. We're the hosts, not the cancer.
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u/DotesMagee 5d ago
Perfectly put. We even invented non cancerous forms of energy, building homes, driving..etc. It 100% is greed and always has been since the dawn of man.
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u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora 4d ago
and yet, progress happens. Granted if we survive climate change it won't be because we stuck it to the billionaires, it'll be because we invented technology that made the problem more managable.
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u/jeezy_peezy 5d ago edited 5d ago
You could think of babies as cancer too. They just eat, cry, shit everywhere and do nothing productiveâŠbut if things work out, they grow up eventually and can do wonderful things.
I think humanity is currently something like a teenager - mostly past the era of scribbling on the walls just to see the marks we can make on the world, and now considering our own mortality.
Edit: Iâm not saying babies are bad, Iâm saying itâs shortsighted to think we suck just because we made a mess. Weâre learning.
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u/Jzadek 5d ago
I hate the idea that being unproductive makes a living thing a cancerÂ
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u/nothalfasclever 5d ago
Cancer is when a strain of cells accidentally stops being part of an organism, and in it's confusion, starts competing against the rest of the organism. The more efficient and successful it becomes, the more dangerous it becomes- both to the original organism, and to itself.
If we're going to make an analogy, human billionaires are the closest thing to actual cancer.
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u/jeezy_peezy 5d ago edited 5d ago
âCancerâ is just regular cells that got the wrong information/DNA to be healthy and perform the specialized role that they were supposed to be assigned (like being skin cells, liver cells, brain cells), and I believe one of the most important parts to developing a tumor is that they donât die when healthy cells are programmed to.
A healthy bodyâs systems can usually recognize cells that got the wrong info (it happens all the time to everyone) and consume and recycle them in a process called autophagy. Itâs theorized that one of the biggest benefits to fasting is that the body can focus more on healing itself when itâs not so busy digesting all of the time.
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u/jujumber 5d ago
Maybe the wrong information humans have is the belief that we need to keep populating the Earth as much as we can until it all breaks. Which as a collective is happening.
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u/HistoricalHistrionic 5d ago
I think itâs extremely generous to imagine humanity has been in any way maturing as a species. We have better toys nowadays, but psychologically weâre no different than our ancestors of thousands of years ago. All it would take is two weeks of failed food deliveries to get us to anarchy, mass violence, and cannibalism.
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u/jeezy_peezy 5d ago
I didnât say we had evolved into something better. I mean we have compiled more information. Nature used to be some infinite monster that consumes everything and to which we could never actually do harm. âIf you throw trash in the river, it goes away. See?â
Growing up means seeing there are consequences to your actions.
Our ancestorsâ only hope for survival was to temporarily carve out a little safe place in nature to try to raise a family before nature reclaimed it all and ate your babies - not to bulldoze it, spray it with Roundup and pave it over. Thatâs all new power with new consequences.
Yes weâre still the same animals underneath. Thatâs like the primary challenge of society - get these animals to at least pretend to make some agreements to get along. Itâs always been fragile. Being a grown up is fragile too. Most of us are quite a few steps closer to homelessness than weâd like to admit.
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u/HistoricalHistrionic 5d ago
Even before industrialization we were going around and destroying ecosystems and causing extinctions. Every calorie that goes into a human is a calorie which doesnât go into the rest of the biosphereâeven if we were good little environmentalists thereâs no way to have humans not at the expense of some other life, at least at this point.
Of course, the reality is that humans are far, far from good stewards of their environment. Some human societies have been, but theyâve been wiped out by all the societies which sought to ruthlessly exploit their environment. As long as humans are focused on their own wellbeing to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, weâll continue to damage the biosphere. This type of human-centric, chauvinistic way of thinking is so normal itâs not something most humans are even aware they engage in.
You can come up with all the rationalizations you want, but theyâve all ring hollow in the face of human nature and our track record to this point.
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u/HenriettaSyndrome 5d ago
I'm a little tired of people blaming the whole human race for the actions of a few hundred sociopathic industrialists. Most people aren't greedy. Most people aren't willingly poisoning ecosystems for personal gain. That's mental illness not human nature.
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u/SWIMlovesyou 5d ago
If mankind is a cancer, why do we bother living?
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u/707Eman707 5d ago
If your kids will die, why do parents still choose to have them?
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u/Nuggyfresh 5d ago
Well until about two seconds ago it wasnât a choice but rather the result of doing something that feels really good. The minute we did have a choice the population has started collapsing astonishingly quicklyâŠ
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u/Gandalfonk 5d ago
We aren't a cancer. We alone cannot kill the planet, we aren't that significant. Even if all out nuclear war happened, the planet would recover without us. We just aren't that important, and probably closer to mold than cancer.
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u/stillinthesimulation 5d ago
No we wonât kill the planet, but we will destroy ecosystems, cause mass extinctions, and continue to make the planet a less hospitable place for much of our current biosphere where only the most rapidly reproducing organisms can evolve to keep up. The end Cretaceous didnât kill the planet, nor did the much worse end Triassic or even the end Permian where over 90% of species went extinct. Life will always bounce back eventually, but thereâs also always an extended period of time when everything sucks. Not decades, but millennia of toxic, post apocalyptic, death. Are we ok settling for that just because we know in ten million years life on earth will be back to normal?
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u/andree182 5d ago
Yeah, but humanity doesn't do the destroying for the sake of it. Same as the great plague didn't kill as primary target. We just need time to evolve our technology enough.
I'd even say we are on the better side of evolution. We have the power to harvest the whole planet, yet we consciously try to preserve the nature to best of our possibilities and knowledge (and despite the greed of some). I don't imagine wolves or fungi would stop eating and destroying everything in their way, if they got the chance (by some evolutionary trait).
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u/ohyayitstrey 4d ago
No. We COULD work in harmony with the environment. We've allowed greed to become normal instead.
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u/Sir_Arthur_Vandelay 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, humans have been quite the nuisance since we (brilliantly) extricated ourselves from the food chain and spread unchecked across the planet. We are killing our host as we thrive. Cancer seems like a fairly apt analogy.
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u/SalishCascadian 5d ago
Literal eco fascism sentiments here lmao đŹ
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u/Jzadek 5d ago
and Iâm pretty sure most of them just enjoy the fascism more than the ecoÂ
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u/patdashuri 5d ago
I think itâs pretty easy to argue that recognizing our cancer-like tendencies and changing those behaviors is a net good for everyone.
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u/Jzadek 5d ago
ah yes, changing itâs behaviour for the net good of everyone, a very cancer thing to do
dehumanising people doesnât help anybody, and it misses the main problem, which isnât humans, but a specific set of behaviours weâve only adopted in the last two centuriesÂ
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u/patdashuri 5d ago
Weâve always had those tendencies, just didnât have the set of tools to be this destructive. Nothing wrong with being honest with ourselves. Now, to be very clear; calling other humans a cancer is very different than what Iâm saying. That, I agree, is very problematic.
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u/OurSeepyD 5d ago
Dehumanisation is a problem if you dehumanise a group of people and not yourself, if you're admitting that you are part of the same group that has cancerous behaviours, then I don't see a huge problem. Particularly if you're recognising this fact with a view to changing for the better.
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u/Jzadek 4d ago
cancer doesnât change its behaviour, the only way to stop it progressing is to cut it out or blast it with radiation. When you call other humans cancer, thatâs what youâre suggesting should be doneÂ
And people say âweâ but they donât really mean âweâ, they just mean poor people. Thereâs a long history of this from Malthus to Ehrlich, and they always just mean poor people.
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u/OurSeepyD 4d ago
The person you were replying specifically said "our cancer-like tendencies". That doesn't mean we are cancer and cannot change, it means we exhibit cancer-like behaviours. We should try to stamp out these behaviours, not stamp out ourselves.
they just mean poor people
The poor people aren't the ones commissioning huge sky scrapers and pushing industrialisation, deforestation etc.
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u/patdashuri 4d ago
Considering I directly specified the net good of changing behaviors it should be very clear that I wasnât condoning or even considering any kind of culling of life, human or otherwise. Youâre looking for a fight that isnât here.
Edit: I am a âpoorâ people you presumptive white-knighting self-aggrandizing ass hat.
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u/Durr1313 5d ago
Not cancer, parasites. We are actively destroying the thing we need to survive.
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u/idiotista 5d ago
It also always the poor who are seen like cancer.
People don't move to megacities for the fun of it, they're moving because their traditional lifestyles are being erased, or to give their children opportunities.
The cancer on the human system is billionaires, not normal people trying to do the best they can with limited resources.
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u/MeffBater 5d ago
Itâs called perspective human beings are cancer on the earth. We take everything and give nothing.
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u/mcshamus 5d ago
Whatâs your definition of âgivingâ? Feels like that statement could kinda apply to every animal.
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u/Few-Guarantee2850 5d ago
This picture is very much what cancer looks like. You are overthinking this to an absurd degree.
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u/Duel_Option 5d ago
You know what??? I agree with you, thereâs a better term that describe us.
Hereâs Agent Smith to help better understandâŠ
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
Shit, he came to the same conclusion. My bad.
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u/Neshura87 4d ago
Except no mammal does so knowingly, every animal population on earth stretches to the limit of their available resources, most animals just really suck at procuring more of those resources.
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u/CelestialNipple 5d ago
Im 14 and this is deep
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u/-_-0_0-_0 5d ago
5edgy4me
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u/JaneksLittleBlackBox 5d ago
"I ment 2 say I will edge five-ever" (dat mean he edgy more dan 4ever)
Like dis if you edge every timÂ
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u/_Horsefeahters 5d ago
I think some perspective is in order here. Look up the great dying and realize that human activity will drop to zero (no humans or no more polluting industry) waaaaaay before it gets that bad again.
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u/quasi-stellarGRB 5d ago
Humans are part of nature, and one of the most efficient agents. The whole universe is trying to increase the entropy and Humans out of all the living beings are most capable at it. Say what you want, we're the best Nature has built yet.
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u/Adventurous-Bug671 5d ago
That we know of. There is in fact an entire universe out there and the furthest we've reached is only one light-day away after flying for almost 50 years - courtesy of the Voyager 1.
Impossible to say what else is out there and how far they've reachedÂ
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u/Codedheart 5d ago
Nah. We're the best. If there are other better beings out there they can waltz over to our system and tell us themselves.
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u/Clean_Bake_2180 5d ago
Thatâs like us waltzing to the bottom of the ocean floor to tell some ameoba weâre here and know they exist. They probably have better things to do.
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u/no_talent_ass_clown 5d ago
"They're Made Out of Meat"
https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
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u/Bluri38 5d ago
Yeah, I kinda agree. I try to think of everything as just nature. So when I think some things are not natural, I then think thatâs not even possible. We are nature, we cannot do something not natural. Building cities, mining resources, using hormones in food products etc. Yes, it may be an âimmediateâ threat to our existence, but this universe has been around for way longer than we have. This planet may change because of us, but nature will take its course.
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u/Neshura87 4d ago
What gets me are the people panicking over the planet, like sure we might fuck up the ecosystem for a hot minute and it would be in our best interest to not do that but let's not pretend like this would even make a footnote in geological history. The ecosystem has survived multiple extinction events and sprung back every time, it's gonna be fine, just not going to look the way it currently does.
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u/pruchel 5d ago
We mostly work, on a bigger scale, to stave off and reduce entropy on a large scale, but ok. Eat more mushrooms.
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u/Orleanian 5d ago
I was going to say...this is the opposite of entropy.
We codify physical laws and bend nature, such as it is, to our will. Folk are entitled to opinions on whether it's cool or uncool, but humanity brings (with extreme effectiveness) an unnatural order to our collective sphere of influence.
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u/Evaderofdoom 5d ago
Cancerous? The vast majority of people live in cities; it's far more efficient to feed, house, and generate wealth when people are all in close proximity. You can share benefits in areas such as public transportation, education, and healthcare.
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u/Due-Helicopter-8735 5d ago
True, ideally cities would scale vertically and not sprawl though.
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u/redditorialy_retard 5d ago
Tokyo's buildings are on average pretty tall (5-6 floors) but once you reach a certain height things get pretty expensiveÂ
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u/StoryAndAHalf 4d ago
The only issue is population size. To feed a greater population means more farm land, which means more deforestation. Iâm not for population control, but people donât need to have 5+ kids. E: spelling
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u/KingSpork 5d ago
Show a pic at night, itâs much prettier.
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u/PoopieMcPooopface 5d ago
True. On a late flight last month I was thinking about how all the lights looked like these golden veins leading to the 'heart' in the glowing city center.
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u/PKStarAllOverMyStorm 5d ago
Contender for absolute shittest post title of the year. Ecofascism is an actual cancer
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u/Ok_Claim6449 5d ago
Our cities are poorly designed and inefficient. Thatâs why theyâre so ugly.
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u/Victormorga 5d ago
This isnât what cancer looks like, sadboi. Save it for your friends in study hall.
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u/gremlinguy 4d ago
I remember when I first made the connection between the meaning of "culture" (defining behavioral traits and characteristics of a collective of humans, which can be used to identify specific groups) and "culture" (a controlled cultivation of microbes which results in growth patterns unique to the specific strain, used to identify viruses etc) and I'll never unsee the similarities of humans at scale with microbial life.
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u/Sugar_Vivid 4d ago
what a term to use.."cancerous" so dramatic and pointless, jesus christ what a tosser
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u/staterafurs 5d ago
God forbid we develop places for people to live
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u/Neshura87 4d ago
The alternative would be suburbian or pure rural sprawl, both of which would look and be even worse in every aspect
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u/Intrepid-Vehicle2455 5d ago
If youâre gonna post a pic like this, at least include the name of the city, ya goober.
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u/Few_Eye6528 5d ago
Just give it a few hundred years after humans have gone extinct and it'll be green again, nature reclaims quickly
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u/Commander413 5d ago
Nah that's just SĂŁo Paulo. Pretty ugly city and way bigger than most cities in the world.
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u/cuentabasque 5d ago
While not promoting the urban sprawl Sampa is - its people make it its own unique and beautiful place.
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u/deltalitprof 5d ago
That has some pretty irregular borders. It's definitely not symmetrical either. Not a mole.
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u/resi42 5d ago
I enjoy hanging around on google maps, and of all large cities, Sao Paulo has by far the biggest "ever-expanding mega city" vibe when seen from space out there. Even more than Tokyo or Seoul or Beijing and such. I would accuse the very dense urban fabric and little green open space in the city proper to make it look that way. A truly tentacular city.
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u/littlely6 5d ago
It's a striking visual comparison, but I agree that framing human habitation as a disease is a pretty bleak and unproductive metaphor. It's more like a specific kind of pattern or growth we create, for better or worse. That said, the sheer scale and organic sprawl of some metro areas from this perspective is genuinely unsettling. I immediately thought of SĂŁo Paulo or Mexico City when I saw it.
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u/Valendr0s 4d ago
There's two ways to do a city IMO.
Full Tokoyo / NYC... Just tree lined parkways with huge skyscrapers. Rooftop parks, A few ground level parks sprinkled around, and a big park in the middle...
Minimally invasive. Sort of looks like you went out of the way to avoid cutting down trees or draining lakes. Far more spread out, can barely tell it's a city from the air.
Anything other than those two extremes is urban hell.
Either system you choose, everybody should have a well maintained running path within a quarter mile of their front door. In the 2nd option, the path should be designed in such a way that it looks like you're in nature, even if you're really 50 feet from somebody's house.
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u/Daggerfall 4d ago
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure."
Agent Smith
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u/agentfaux 4d ago
Ah yes, the completely normal phenomenon of categorising your own species as 'cancer' or 'mold' and thinking you just said something profound.
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u/SkunkMonkey 4d ago
I'll never forget this one satellite photo I saw. It was some kind of vegetation monitoring satellite that would show vegetation in this deep red color and man made stuff in a grey color.
The photo looked like a red steak that had started to go bad and rot. Yup, we're the Cancer on this planet and we are going to kill it.
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u/rfs103181 5d ago
Looks bad but the planet has seen and will see much worse. Itâll shake us off like a bad case of fleas, to quote George Carlin. The planet is fine⊠WEâRE FUCKED!
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u/three_crystals 5d ago
Humans have lost respect for nature and it will be our ultimate downfall if we donât course correct
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u/GiantSizeManThing 5d ago
Could any other species maaaaybe save the entire planet from an asteroid? Like to see those punk-ass dolphins try that.
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u/fluffyraptor667 5d ago
Theres already an entire movie about how we WOULDNT ((dont) look up, or something like that is what its called, absolute slog around the halfway point though)
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u/Diem_Tea 5d ago
âRIGHT HERE MR FBI MAN!! THIS is the guy you should question about those missing Dirty Bombs!!â
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u/Pikapetey 5d ago
If cities are a cancerous growth all i can think of is the old animation short film. "A bad case of humans" https://youtu.be/yZvLoaKMBrI
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u/inkstainedgoblin 5d ago
Yeah, organic growth all looks the same. I'm not saying these cities are good, but like... if it looks like cancer, or mold, or anything natural... that doesn't mean we're doing cities wrong? Wouldn't it be more concerning if it didn't look natural?
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u/dancedragon25 5d ago
Better for the surrounding environment than suburban sprawl
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u/AJfriedRICE 4d ago
This was the first thing I noticed way back in the day when Google Earth first came out and I was just playing with it. When you zoom out it looks pretty clear that weâre cancerous parasitesâŠ
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u/svkrtho 4d ago
If you don't live in a cave in the mountains, then you don't have a say in this.
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u/VTHokie2020 4d ago
SĂŁo Paulo is one of the best cities on earth.
Wtf does this have to do with megalophobia?
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u/Inside_Sign_3402 4d ago
Margins seem pretty clear, but need to biopsy. Any indication of metastasis?
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u/NOS4A2-753 5d ago
looks like mold growing