A megalopolis is a super city and even so some areas are allready called as such there is none realy quite yet existing. In the Cyberpunk Pen and Paper Game Shadowrun that made me fall in love with the dark future Sci-Fi genre most action is happening in the Sprawls of the time after 2050 when Shadowrun is placed.
Today dense major towns are sometimes reffered to as a Megalopolis, but from this Cyberpunk Blog perspective they aint no more than Super Large Cities.
A Cyberpunk Megalopolis is way more than a multi million town. It is more dense, more packed. more independent from its sourroundings, more busy with itself by being its own centre.
The only town I am aware of today in 2021 that is at least close to being such a Megalopolis, but I personally never have been to, would be Hong Kong not Chongqing. Chongqing has about 30 Million inhabitants but spread out over 82.300 square kilometers while Hong Kong is populated by about 7.5 Million humans on about 1100 square kilometers equaling 6890 humans per square kilometers instead of about 350 in the actual larger Chongquin region.
Also, Hong Kong is squeezed into a tiny bay with hardly any agrocultural land sourrounding it and growth needs to go vertical. The more humans living on a square kilometer in a large area the more difficult transportation becomes. A standard street and Subway system developed in the early 20iest century wont cut it anymore.
The problem of tomorrows Megalopolis wont be data transportation. What ever comes after 5G and fibre optics will do. But how to get groceries into town, city quarter, block and building and where from? How to keep the air clean and create recreational spaces like parks, gardens and play grounds in a high density building zone?
The Cyberpunk genre novels and games are all about a "dysantrop" society, an anti-social society in which runners are hired by Con-Men to enforce contracts with violence, a world in which Mega Coorporations are acting like Nations and actually exchanged them. The oximoron is that Megalopolis wont be created without mankind advancing in collective social skills.
An ellbow society that already struggles to create a save and quite living without constant traffic and therefore transportation jams of goods and humans in towns just in the two digest millions won't manage the next step from Super City to Megalopolis.
Munich being rich with about 1 Million habitants can't get its constant traffic jam issue sorted and poor Mexico City with about 9 Million is using so much ground water that it starts sinking and dried out its close sourrounding farmland into wasteland.
Neither a major town knwon for being a most important tech hub of a leading economic power nor a troubled town in a nation struggling with todays most dangerous organaized crime organizations are in any respect ready for further growth to the next level of town and society of tomorrow.
This is a human problem. An attidude problem. Not a technical one.
We need sociologic change for the next step in human evolution. We need to be able to better and further connect and interact with each other, our skills, knowledge and abilities or at best we just got stuck ....
