Later City News: Alan Marshal believes that the famous literary work Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818), seems to forecast the potential future of urban life in the Modern Age; an Age replete with ongoing environmental crises.
"THE CITIES OF FRANKENSTEIN: GRAPHIC SCENARIOS OF LOOMING URBAN HORROR" is the topic of a paper published in "The liberal arts J Journal" in May 2020.
In this paper Alan Marshal using a theory of critique and forecasting as established by the Literary Method of Urban Design, some of the core thematic lessons of Frankenstein are used as pathways to predict the character of European cities as they have developed and evolved under the stresses of ecological disaster over the near future (up to about twenty or thirty years hence).
These core Frankenstein themes are as follows: 1) technological hubris, 2) alienation, 3) monstrosity, and 4) abandonment. In this paper, these themes are each overlaid with some of the many socio-environmental problems now challenging a set of fourteen sample cities (each drawn from the original Frankenstein novel) utilizing both scenario art and interpretive eco-ethical thought.
Within a few decades, with all this extra greenhouse gas pumped into the atmosphere, an abrupt global climate change could soon overwhelm the Earth19. The upshot might be a five degree global temperature spike which, in turn, may raise sea levels by some five meters. Cities will be decimated. Agriculture will collapse.
Many species will become extinct. Would humanity be one of them? Most climate experts opine that this worst-case scenario of ‘abrupt climate change’ will actually be stretched out over the next two hundred years rather than over the next two decades. But, like Dr. Frankenstein, perhaps their imagination and foresight are failing them.
Archangelsk in Shelley’s time was called the ‘Capital of the Arctic’. Countless polar prospectors, traders, hunters, and adventurers set off from here into the frigid Arctic Ocean -- as would Captain Watson, Frankenstein’s monster, and soon-after, Dr. Frankenstein himself. For much of the year, Arkhangelsk traditionally becomes a physical part of the Arctic ice sheet and it is hard to see where the city ends and the icy ocean begins.
This ice cover forces the port to remain closed for many months every year. However, as a result of climate change, the ever-warming Arctic Ocean laps at the ice so that the port of Arkhangelsk will likely soon stay open all year round for every succeeding year into the future. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley set the final confrontation between Dr. Frankenstein and his creature upon the ice floes north of Arkhangelsk.
Frankenstein walks and skids and skis and slips across the ice, toiling for hundreds of miles. Just as he spots a blurry figure off into the distance, Dr. Frankenstein collapses from exhaustion. The monster then turns around to recover Dr. Frankenstein before the scientist freezes to death, an act that signifies the monster’s conflicted feelings for his ‘father’. Just then, from an ice-encrusted ship, Captain Watson spots the pair of them. The monster flees as Captain Watson takes Dr. Frankenstein onboard for recuperation.
Alan Marshall is a New Zealand author, scholar, and artist working within the discipline of environmental studies. He is noted as a key scholar in environmental philosophy and for his investigations into eco-friendly cities of the future. For his research on these topics, the University of Wollongong awarded Marshall a doctorate and National Geographic assigned him as an explorer.
In 2006, Alan Marshall founded The Ecomimicry Project which tries to meld ecology with Green innovation, sustainable art, and the ethics of environmentalism.
Examples of designs that emerged from this project include:
a Hemp Sail Battle Cruiser for the Royal Australian Navy (in which a navy ship had its engines 'designed-out' and in their stead it is powered by sails made from eco-friendly hemp)
a manure-powered swimming pool heating system (in which a luxury pool is heated by the composted body waste of the swimmers)
a hairy-roofed Carpathian mountain village where the architecture is adorned with an engineered protective material that mimics the fur of local brown bears.
These designs, illustrated by and large by Marshall, were compiled into the Wild Design book and then praised by the Australian art & design media (Wikipedia, 2021).
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