CNN's Chris Cillizza says that Marvel's Wakanda could be a model for our future cities

I can’t even remember if I saw “Black Panther” in a theater or not. It doesn’t really matter. I thought it was OK; a great villain was wasted in a lame climax. But I can see why the movie resonated with black audiences: Here was a superhero movie with an all-black cast (except for Martin Freeman) set in a technologically advanced nation in Africa. I saw some tweets go by saying that Wakanda is what Africa would look like now if it hadn’t been colonized. But it also struck me that some famous black women were dazzled by Wakanda. After all, it was a kingdom that was passed to the male heir — unless he was challenged by another man, in which case it became a trial by combat. Nothing really feminist about that.

The sequel, “Wakanda Forever,” is just around the corner, and CNN is wondering if this completely fictional nation run on power supplied by a magical meteorite could be a model for future cities.

Wakanda is a marvel.

The fictional country of the Marvel Universe is the most advanced civilization in the world, years beyond the rest of the world in technological learning. https://t.co/Wcs8KIjMoV

— CNN International (@cnni) October 18, 2022

Here’s Chris Cillizza’s analysis:

Now, though, could be a moment when the way we have thought and constructed our cities could well be changing, said Joann Muller, who covers the future of cities and transportation for Axios.

“I think we’re in this really interesting time right now, with sort of a once in a century transformation and it has to do with electric, autonomous connected vehicles,” she said. “And with that moment where all the technology is changing, that should be the time where we rethink what cities should look like as well. I don’t know that that’s happening as much as it should be, but it’s an opportunity. And you think about, there’s a lot of micro mobility devices now. And I don’t know that a scooter’s brand new or a bicycle’s certainly not brand new, but we’re thinking about them in different ways as transportation around cities. And sometimes it’s actually a lot faster to go on a bike than it is in a car.”

In short: Cars are bad, suburbs are bad. Everyone should live in a city where they can get around on an electric scooter.

Marvel movies aren't childish escapism because they're based on comic books; they're childish escapism because the people making them have a fundamentally unserious and LARPist attitude about grown-up life which flattens every narrative into a pointless theme park ride

— Spencer A. Klavan (@SpencerKlavan) October 18, 2022

Marvel at this ratio

— Apex Gamma (@Apex_Gamma) October 18, 2022

I got my bike stolen in Wakanda

— Hubert Shingle (@HubertShingle) October 18, 2022

“You’ll notice there aren’t cars in Wakanda,” Cillizza writes, although there is a high-speed rail system powered by Vibranium. It kind of reminds us of California’s awesome $113 billion bullet train to nowhere.

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