...Cities far, far away

Planetizen waxes philospohical on the architecture and urbanism of Star Wars.

"As a mythmaker [George Lucas] has drenched these movies in archetypes. So the more diabolical cityscapes, for example, refer to deeply symbolic images in visionary poetry: William Blake's "dark Satanic mills," or the layered self-tortures of Dante's Inferno. Lucas is saying that human creativity -- including the power to create cities -- is far too easily twisted towards instruments of war (just as popular democracy is easily manipulated into weapons of mass deception).

It reminds us that the pursuits of architecture and design are just as susceptible to subversion as any other part of our culture.

Lucas paints some hellish urban worlds, but is he some kind of comic-book Rousseau, yearning for the days of the Wookie "noble savage," or advocating a return to a natural state apart from the city?"

..Or is he an insane man-child, refusing reality and living in a world of his own creation, (which he is constantly re-visiting and perfecting) made with giant digital building blocks?