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Understanding Postmetropolis in the Latest Virtual City: Urban Analysis of Night City in

image of Understanding Postmetropolis in the Latest Virtual City: Urban Analysis of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077

The interactive and spatial trends in digital media enable the possibility to create urban environment and experience virtually. This provides new perspectives to define “urban” and “urban studies” beyond the material context. In the past, urban theories analysed the form and experience of cities modified by the globalization of economy, industry, culture, and media. Nowadays, with the creation of virtual cities and urban experiences, we could proceed to analyse to what extent can digital creation be counted into people's experience of life and society via the experience of virtual spaces. This chapter takes the game Cyberpunk 2077 as an example, and use Edward Soja's “Six Discourses on Postmetropolis” as the major reference to analyse the urban characters of the digital Night City. While the physical cities are proceeding beyond Soja's model to a more complicated and fragmented form with informality and spontaneity, this chapter points out that the digital city still follows the trajectory of the Los Angeles School to express the disorder of city and society with several graspable logics and structures. By trying to interpret game environment as a city, this chapter provides thoughts on future research on the convergence and divergence between virtual and material environments, and how they together provide an emerging new form of urban and social experience.

Keywords: Cyberpunk 2077 ; Digital urban experience ; Los Angeles School of Urbanism ; media study ; postmodern city ; urban theory

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Understanding Postmetropolis in the Latest Virtual City: Urban Analysis of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077
Intellect , 188 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950326_12
/content/books/9781835950326.c10
/content/books/9781835950326.c10
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References

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References

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     [Google Scholar]
  2. Caves, Roger W. Encyclopedia of the City. Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Davis, Mike . City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: American Council of Learned Societies, 2006.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Dear, Michael , and Steven Flusty . “Postmodern Urbanism.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, no. 1 (1998): 50–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2563976. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. “EXPLORING CHINATOWN Past and Present.” Los Angeles Conservancy (2016). https://www.laconservancy.org/sites/default/files/files/documents/LAC_Chinatown_Final_0.pdf. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
  6. Fandom. “Night City Cyberpunk Wiki.” Accessed March 18 , 2021. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
  7. Ferrando, Francesca . “Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms.” Existenz 8, no. 2 (2013): 26–32. https://existenz.us/volumes/Vol.8-2Ferrando.pdf. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
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  10. Hollinger, Veronica . “Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism.” Mosaic 23, no. 2 (1990): 29–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24780626. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Jencks, Charles . The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London : Rizzoli, 1991. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24780626. Last access: 16 November 2023
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Kelly, Andy . “Watch This Atmospheric Tour of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City.” PC Gamer. December 9, 2020. Accessed March 1 , 2021. https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-this-atmospheric-tour-of-cyberpunk-2077s-night-city/.204
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Koolhaas, Rem . Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Edited by Mau Bruce . New York: Monacelli Press, 1994.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Lefebvre, Henri . State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Translated by G. Moore, N. Brenner, S. Elden and edited by N. Brenner and S. Elden . Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Lockwood, Vic , Edward Soja , and Kenneth Thompson . “Los Angeles: City of the Future?” Filmed 1991 at BBC2, video. https://randomarchitecturememories.com/home/los-angeles-city-of-the-future.
  16. Martin, Gareth Damian . “The Origins of Cyberpunk 2077.” PC Gamer, June 18, 2018. https://www.pcgamer.com/the-origins-of-cyberpunk-2077/.
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  18. Miyagawa, Tats . “Cyberpunk 2077: Hong Kong Edition.” YouTube, August 11, 2019. Accessed July 14, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns1AT7A1VSA.
  19. Quora. “Will Los Angeles Eventually Turn into ‘Night City’ from Cyberpunk 2077 Like Some People Suggest? How Might This Happen?” December 12, 2021, https://www.quora.com/Will-Los-Angeles-eventually-turn-into-Night-City-from-Cyberpunk-2077-like-some-people-suggest-How-might-this-happen. Last accessed November 16 , 2023.
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  22. Savage, Michael , and Alan Warde . Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity. London: Macmillan, 1993.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Sitton, Tom and William Deverell . Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, 1st ed. London, UK: University of California Press, 2001.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Soja, Edward W. “Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis.” Cartas Urbanas 5 (1996): 6–20.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Soja, Edward W. “Beyond Postmetropolis.” Urban Geography 32, no. 4 (2011): 451–69, https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.32.4.451.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Zhang, Honghai , and Mengruo Zhang . “Research on Cyberpunk Images in the Visual Digital Media.” 2020 International Conference on Computer Vision, Image and Deep Learning, 2020, 39–43, https://doi.org/10.1109/CVIDL51233.2020.00015.205

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