The City As Theme Park
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday May 22, 1997
High-tech theme parks such as Sega World are the consequence of a scientific and information revolution reshaping our cities, reports LEIGH DAYTON.
COME on in. The neon lights blink and beckon. Colours blast. Noise slips with studied care from one area to the next, generating excitement ... but not too much excitement. Shapes shift, images shout, all with the promise of fun, fun, fun.
From wrap-around dinosaur movies and "golden oldie" rides such as the roller-coaster to virtuality reality experiences and jumped-up computer games, it's all happening for the younger set at Sega World, the high-tech theme park hunkered down in Darling Park.
But there is more to Sega World than meets the bedazzled eye, says Professor Peter Droege , an internationally recognised urban designer and director of the University of Sydney's Urban Design Program.
"Sega World is an intensified experience in a ritualised environment designed to extract money," he says with scientific objectivity.
"Sega World is kind of the youthful end of the (Sydney Harbour) casino down the road. You can't win anything but you're getting trained, broken in, to the gambling environment," he says, adding that the whole box and, well, dice is packaged into a safe "city within a city" where the only worry is the price of admission.
Droege says Sega World-style "theme parks" are a direct consequence of a scientific and information revolution that is literally reshaping our cities. In Sega World, busy boffins have packed our homes with entertainment goodies such as giant TV screens, VCRs, sense-enhancing sound systems, and, of course, the PC loaded with games and modem-linked to the enthralling world of the Internet.
Droege notes that the brains behind theme parks such as Sega World are clear about their plan to lure people out of their homes by exploiting the immense popularity of video and computer games.
Here's the Sega World brochure: "Get Out of the House!", it yells. "Forget Who You're Supposed to Be," it advises with uncanny insight.
Where it works or not is another matter. "It's a Japanese cultural thing, and I'm not sure it will really take off," Droege says.
Regardless, Sega World is obviously in the business of business. But so what? In P. T. Barnum fashion it is giving the people what they want, says Droege, reliable non-threatening fun in the company of others. "It's the Disneyfication of cities," says Droege who edited a new book, Intelligent Environments: Spatial Aspects of the Information Revolution, which pulls together the threads that science and technology are weaving into contemporary architecture and urban design. One rather synthetic thread is this Disneyfication which bored suburbanites demand after seeing depictions of other cities and other realities on TV and in movies. We see, we want: Planet Hollywood, cyberspace, the heightened reality of action movies, sci-fi dreams and Disneyland. In fact, Droege says Main Street Disneyland is cropping up around the world as a popular blend of the new with the old ... imagine shopping malls like the Strand Arcade or the Queen Victoria Building.
These old-for-new buildings feed our history-hungry craving for "hyper reality", adds Droege who argues that the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in a heritage building or a "finger wharf" revamped as boutiques and trendy housing represent "reality in an unauthentic fashion".
"The meaning of authenticity is stripped down to just a shell. These are not the original functions, but are there to make money," he says.
In his book, launched this week at the Australian Technology Park in Redfern, 47 of the world's leading thinkers tackle the complex intermingling of science and design from a range of disciplines, including the obvious - architecture, planning, and urban design - and the unexpected - geography, computing, information technology, sociology and even business.
What emerges is a portrait of a cityscape that is, as Droege says, reorganising itself by itself, courtesy of technological shifts ... and not just as amusement or nostalgia factories.
Take the home office. Once a desk jammed against a dining room wall, the home office is now a true work space. Telecommuters surround themselves with electronic gear. Work and home blend in the same building or are pulled together in bubbles such as North Ryde where CSIRO scientists, computer aces and assorted teckkie types have set up shop ... and home.
Meanwhile, old city centre high-rises are being converted to uptown apartments. Even the offices themselves are being redesigned to be more homelike, as jobs change and business breaks into more democratic and socially complex places.
The take-home message of all these examples, says Droege, is that science has created the possibilities. But how we shape our cities and live our lives are up to us.
"In themselves changes don't spell societal progress. They need to be harnessed and used creatively. We have to act to make the future".
* P. Droege, Ed 1997 Intelligent Environments - Spatial Aspects of the Information Revolution, North Holland, 742 pages; ISBN 0-444-82332-8.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald
