There were many benefits to these development patterns, but one unintended benefit is that we designed cities that are much easier for zombies to infest than they are for humans to inhabit.Ĭongestion and resource dependency have created a captive audience for a zombie transition-people held captive to the apocalypse in cars. Over the last 50 years, we have focused primarily on cars and fuel-driven transportation improvements as well as circuitous and resource dependent suburban developments. We have designed the ideal city for our future zombie selves. Put simply, we will all be real zombies soon, because the current urban form is conducive to the rapid spread of zombification. Conversely, in a scene that shows a military unit silently traveling on bikes to refuel their cargo plane, we see an illustration of bicycle transportation as more effective because of its relative silence. Some of the most accurate scenes in the 2013 Brad Pitt film World War Z illustrate these concepts with streets clogged by cars, with no route for escape. Most cities around the world have not been designed to accomodate zombie-resilient travel modes, therefore making zombie infection rates in urban locales relatively unstoppable and a transition to a zombie society immanent. This reality presents a critical challenge. Places focused on bike and pedestrian accessibility, however, are more resistant to the impending zombie infestation. Specifically, this work shows that the disease can spread more rapidly in urban spaces with more traditional urban form and transportation planning practices-places with a business-as-usual focus on travel in cars. ![]() ![]() However, more recent work evaluates how city design and transportation infrastructure are linked to the spread of the disease ( Nuñez, Ravello, Urbina & Perez-Acle 2012). Most recent studies have focused on scientific advances to prevent corpse reanimation ( Davis 1988) Thomas 2010). Research organizations have begun to assemble panels of experts to address the impending biological outbreak that is infecting people and turning them into real zombies (Munz, Hudea, Imad & Smith 2009). Scientists refer to this phenomenon as CDHD or consciousness deficit hypoactivity disorder.) (For the novice, reanimation is the term for zombification, as in reanimated corpses. The fictional depictions in the media, combined with the societal zombie-like behavior our cities create, mask the darker truth that the dead are quickly becoming reannimated. Yes, fellow citizens, activists, city planners, and urban designers, you read that right. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, we have become culturally numb to the real phenomenon that people are becoming actual zombies. Despite public awareness campaigns on television with shows like The Walking Dead, in books like the Zombie Survival Guide, on college campuses with programs in Zombie Studies, in newspapers like the New York Times, and on the U.S. This disembodied, figurative zombie state that our society has facilitated is a sad reality, but it also masks the real zombie epidemic that is already sweeping the globe. ![]() Their jobs (perhaps in the local city planning office) are defined by activities where action is warranted but thought is not required.Īs quasi-figurative zombies, they rubber stamp like drones, scanning over papers and reports, and then addressing over-the-counter applicants like automatons, slipping in to planner-speak (e.g., "You will need a variance to increase your FAR and your proposed multi-modal strategy is encroaching in the ROW.") They end their days by returning home in the isolation of their cars, shutting garage doors, turning on TVs and i-devices, and taking collective Huxlian doses of soma so that they can recharge their batteries and repeat the entire cycle again the next day. They pass by pitched roofs, colored stucco, and appropriately manicured hedgerows, until they arrive at their places of employment. ![]() They jump into cars to go to jobs for their requisite eight hours. Each day these human-folk wake up in "little boxes" in a row "made of ticky tacky" and go through a litany of mundane routines. Real people are turning in to zombies around the globe, based on the lull of our current auto-centric and technology-enhanced society.
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