Octavia is a thin city, both literally and figuratively. It is literally held between two steep mountains by ropes, chains, and ladders, surrounded by nothing but the abyss. Its entire fate depends on those two thin contact points between its vast network of spider-web infrastructure and the mountains. Octavia may thrive with “terraces like gondolas”, cable cars, and chandeliers, but its inhabitants know well enough that such thrive comes with great demise. The question is not if but when the city will collapse into the abyss between the two steep mountains, when the city will lose its quasi-stability, when some ropes decide to snap and set up a chain reaction that brings down the entire city.
Octavia reminds me of Dubai and other big cities in the Gulf regions, not literally (maybe in a parallel world when this ever happened) but metaphorically. If Olivia’s foundation is a net between two steep mountains, Dubai’s foundation is the discovery of oil in a hostile environment of the desert, neither of which offers a permanent sense of stability and certainty. Although Dubai has already moved on from oil and diversified its economy, its physical foundation has been laid: skyscrapers and condominiums that run on air conditioners and desalinated water pumps. An engineer once told me buildings that are over 6 storeys high is unsustainable here in the region. Good luck trying to find one, except for traditional houses from the era when the city was still a small, sustainable fishing village.
If there is one thing Octavia’s residents should do, or should have done, it would be to build using light materials, or to reinforce its ropes, or to not build such city at all. The same thing can be said for Dubai: a city of such size and infrastructure should not have been built in such an environment. Dubai’s fate will lie in the changing climate that drives the desert city increasingly more inhospitable. Once the air conditioners run out of electricity, once the pumps run out of water, Dubai’s abyss will become apparent.