A very good observation, actually. The history of China has always been that of a very strong Central State managing the mainland. With the advances in technology in the future, the State will surely consider this form of urbanism "ideal": concentrate the population in dense urban areas, while the rural hinterland is farmed/mined by automated machines supervised by a few highly trained engineers.

They could even promote the dense urban clusters as "utopia" at first, attracting most of the populace. Once they are in, the conditions of the city would slowly deteriorate; but a population that was born in the city and never moved beyond a few blocks would just not know that there is anything better.

I literally read this on a bus to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, taking dystopian cyberpunky photos out the window, and sending them to a friend in another hyper-polluted area: the air is bad at the moment (~150). A huge number people don't leave their apartments or workplaces already: they just order delivery. My startup http://8-food.com/ is making a network of wholly owned and operated vending machines that cook and sell custom food, targeted at mainland China as the initial market. One of the more interesting and pertinent criticisms of the business model I have heard to date is that people are now too lazy to go down the elevator! Just yesterday I read[0] that in Beijing they banned street vendors and closed enough markets that people are now having problems finding food and the government's urban planning department, in their infinite wisdom, are now attempting to stimulate a resurgence of food retail by - get this - subsidising the establishment of convenience stores, as if the number of Quick-e-Mart's per capita is some kind of development index! I have read multiple articles comparing the density of convenience stores in "developed" economies such as Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan with mainland China, suggesting there is more growth to be had. Who knows what the future will hold ... but at least we will give people a choice and the option to take a damn walk.

[0] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/04/WS5a4d8db6a31008cf1...

Hopefully there isn't one of the cyclical collapses that China has also historically experienced any time soon, where that central authority atrophies and splinters into warring regions. Rebellion and warlordism always results in a lot of dead people and massive destruction when the centralized government falls apart in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

That could most certainly happen again. Usually the way previous empires have broken up though is by keeping aloof of the rest of the world, resulting in the State not keeping abreast of developments in the rest of the world.

The current regime seems to be acutely aware of this and has been actively spreading Chinese influence (and finances) over the rest of the world.

Is that really the usual case, or just the narrative of the Qing dynasty?

There's a lot of mismanagement and climactic shifts in the pre-modern period. Often those are tied together, with failures of the hydrological infrastructure. But another common thread is high imbalances in male/female populations, leading to lots of disaffected young men, and millenarian religious movements.

This is similar to the world from the nov The World Inside by Silverberg. Very good book, I recommend it!

It reminded me initially of the movie City of Ember

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970411/

Also The giver.

For better or worse, all big cities are on that path.

With really good and fast transit I don't see a reason why we have to live physically near where we work though.

Metro Manila also felt very much like that when I was there (except for the crime). I wanted to leave almost as soon as I landed. He probably got some inspiration from his country's capital.

It's actually funny you pointed this out since China often points to their huge population as an excuse for not valuing human rights and individualism as much as the West.

Stability provides ample opportunity for society to grow harmoniously, especially during a period of high growth.