[corimaith]

The problem is the many cities in the West are objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world, so many people who don't have that global perspective come to China and think "it's so futuristic" or so, when in reality it's something that has been achieved elsewhere decades ago and China is just one in the line of a common trend. Even when others in this thread say cities like Singapore or Hong Kong are "futuristic", Singapore has been like that since the late 90s, that's not futuristic, it's rather the norm since the 2000s. Certainly those from Asia, even Southeast Asia aren't finding those cities paticularly revolutionary, if not a bit shinier.

Some Chinese Cities may try to "integrate" tech more like in Shenzhen with drone delivery, flying taxis here, or qr-code scanning or whatnot, but that's just more of gimmicks for a select few rather than fundamental lifestyle changes. Far as I would say, Tokyo is still likely the most "developed" of cities in terms of quality of life.

[dinfinity]

"The West"?

Do you mean North America? Because cities in Europe and Oceania are wildly different from the cities in North America and definitely not 'objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world' (which includes cities in Africa, which honestly aren't amazing).

[Axsuul]

Tokyo feels more retro futuristic than modern futuristic. Aside from the Shinkansen, a lot of the tech and software you interact with there feels antiquated and even borderline terrible. Meanwhile in SF there are self driving cars everywhere, tech company billboards everywhere, apps with great UX, etc.

[ginko]

>The problem is the many cities in the West are objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world.

If anything that's more of an American problem rather than a Western one. There's plenty nice cities in Europe.

[graemep]

I have not been to either for 20+ years, but Singapore or Hong Kong did not feel futuristic to me. Singapore is certainly efficiently run and clean, but at the time I definitely would have preferred living in London (or multiple smaller British cities), or Paris, or Sydney (culturally, if not geographically, western)

[seanmcdirmid]

Singapore will always be Disneyland with the Death Penalty (early 90s) in my book. But seriously, china built outs its cities much later than the west, and they have a cyberpunk feel. But it feels like a lot of gimmicks, even Japan feels like that (they build things like Tokyo's Skytree, but it isn't very practical, and they just repeat this all over the country). If you live in a city, the basics matter, like...nice public transit, which china has built out very nicely in the last two decades.