Megacities where residents commute from their homes to the workplace without ever touching the ground may sound like a futuristic fantasy. But in one sprawling urban expanse, this dystopian vision is already a day-to-day reality.
The city in question is Chongqing, located in Southwestern China, which boasts a staggering population of 32 million people and spans an area about the size of Austria.
With its multi-tiered expressways, a monorail system that pierces through apartment blocks, and a skyline peppered with neon-lit skyscrapers, Chongqing could be mistaken for a scene from Blade Runner.
Local TikTok user Jackson Lu has shared insights into life in Chongqing, remarking that “sunlight is a luxury” for those dwelling in the lower levels of the city. He narrates his daily routine: living on the 18th floor, he descends to the 12th to catch what he calls “a subway station that feels like the entrance to a fallout shelter”.
This ‘subway’ is actually a metro monorail that soars above the cityscape, occasionally slicing through residential structures.
Upon reaching his destination, Jackson emerges onto the main city square, astonishingly situated on the 22nd level of another colossal building, reports the Mirror.
Even the buses in Chongqing operate at a dizzying height, ferrying passengers along narrow “flyovers” that tower over the city streets on slender stilts. “Somehow the bus takes me 20 storeys up in the sky,” says Jackson.
While some locals do own private cars, navigating the city’s roads is a nightmare due to the complex network of vertiginous overpasses and spiralling roads connecting the various levels. The entire city is built on multiple layers – residents of Chongqing’s numerous tower blocks often find themselves living atop a massive shopping centre.
The vast, sprawling city even generates its own weather systems. In September this year, an unusually late heatwave with temperatures between 35-40C brought Chongqing to a near halt.
In response, authorities launched around 200 rockets loaded with silver iodide into the sky, hoping to induce rainfall and cool the scorching streets. However, they got more than they bargained for when a storm of bras and knickers rained down on the city.
“I just went out and it suddenly started to rain heavily and underwear fell from the sky,” a resident named Ethele posted on Chinese social networking site Weibo. The bizarre incident, dubbed the “9/2 Chongqing underwear crisis”, was attributed to the cloud-seeding initiative which triggered wind gusts of over 120mph down the city’s narrow streets, whisking laundry off washing lines.
A YouTuber known as PPPeter has also shared the city’s remarkable evolution. “The story of this Chinese megacity starts and also kind of ends in 1997,” he said. He went on to detail the governmental decision that spurred its growth: “Back then Chongqing was just a big city somewhere in South Western China.
“To boost the economy and make administration smoother Chinese government added three districts of Fuling, Wanxian, and Quanjiang to Chongqing,” he noted and revealed the impact, “This step made Chongqing the biggest city proper in the world with a population of 32,000,000 people and the area of 82,403km2, which is about the size of Austria.”