Does Not Illustrate: City Planet

Yeah uh, that's not an example. Cybertron is not a single city. I'm not really familiar with the game that image is from, but during the war, there are Autobot-controlled locations and Decepticon-controlled ones. And anyway, the planet is formally divided into polities of some sort.

The description says that it's about planets that are a single continuous city, but from what I can tell, Cybertron isn't an example. Even in the picture there are what appears to be emptier areas between the "stuffed full-of-buildings" areas, which would imply that there are less populated places between the actual cities. Anyway, my point is, it's not an example, and isn't treated as one continuous city, story-wise. Especially during the war when there isn't even an actual planet-wider government.

Maybe something like Coruscant? Everything's lighted up◊, so you get a sense that the entire planet is a metropolitan area, and it is treated as a single continuous city in-universe.

edited 6th Nov '12 4:42:52 PM by ThatHuman

I don't see the problem. What's the difference between a world covered in a single continuous city, or a world entirely covered by many cities, so long as it is fully urbanized? Yeah, the description mentions "one city" but Tropes Are Flexible. It's a small enough difference it shouldn't really matter. And Cybertron's buildings are far more visible than corruscant which looks.... Brown. And the lights mean nothing. The Earth has lights visible from space at night too◊ (Pictured is India/Pakistan at night from the ISS), and it's not a single city. Corruscant could just as well be a rocky planet with lots of volcanic activity, it'd look not too different.

edited 6th Nov '12 4:45:35 PM by Ghilz

If you look at the Coruscant picture, there are no areas without lighting. (that stuff without light looks to be clouds over the planet) With Cybertron, there are what appears to be "empty" spaces between cities. Which means the planet is not completely urbanized Those "clumps" of buildings are the actual cities. (as an example, Iacon as it shows up on a toy of the planet.◊ It's only that pocket of buildings, surrounded by a blue area that's not urbanized.) There are areas separating them Said areas are metal probably because the planet itself is metal anyway. Therefore, all the cities are not continuous as to have the entire planet covered in them.

And also, the definition emphasizes how it's one city, not just "completely urbanized planet". Even if "completely urbanized" counts, Cybertron might not be one. Even if it is, it's not a "standard" example like Coruscant.

And another thing: The shapes in which all those lights are arranged on Coruscant looks like a purposeful artificial arrangement, with all those circles and straight lines.

edited 6th Nov '12 4:56:03 PM by ThatHuman

Cybertron has no areas covered in grass or trees or water, but that doesn't mean those flat grey expanses are densely inhabited cities. The planet's just as artificial-(looking) as its robot inhabitants, so entire continents of parking lot could be its equivalent of "wilderness." In any case they look more like mostly empty space between multiple cities.

Coruscant is a better example. The vast geometric arrangements certainly point to continent-wide or planet-wide planning of settlements, implying a single government

edited 6th Nov '12 4:58:46 PM by ArcadesSabboth

I agree that Coruscant would make for a better pic. Here's◊ another version of it.

That one looks like there's clouds covering a bit too much of the lights, that some areas look a bit empty. I guess not a major issue, but it might be an issue still.

On the second one they look less like city lights.

Fair enough. Here's the original pic at 350, potholed and captioned (both).

edited 6th Nov '12 6:11:50 PM by Willbyr

I don't think that's an improvement. There are so-called "empty spots" in both of them.

The big geometric patterns and the fact that the lights cover the entirety of the dark zone, dark areas or not, makes it work fine for me.

The empty spots are less noticeable for Coruscant.

1. 8 looks fine to me. I can't really see the "dark spots" everyone's talking about.

If the lights covered the entire dark side, it wouldn't be dark. That image falls straight into Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale, all that black between the lights is empty space. It looks like a planet with very regular patterns of cities, but not one entirely covered in a single city.

Well, at least they weren't intentionally putting space between buildings like with Cybertron.

I'm not sure I understand the "between buildings" part, considering the entire planet is a construct. There are lots of stuff beneath the surface as well.

If you're talking about Cybertron, it's not really a construct. It's a planet made of/covered in metal.

But what I meant about the "between buildings" thing is that those "pockets" with buildings jammed together are the cities proper, and the areas around said pockets are not cities themselves.

Also, considering this is "the entire planet is a city", Cybertron can't count due to not even having a planetary government a lot of the time.

As for Coruscant, the planet itself isn't a construct either, but an actual planet covered with buildings. More importantly, all those buildings are treated as one city.

edited 7th Nov '12 4:26:38 PM by ThatHuman

The current image of Cybertron illustrates the trope perfectly and succinctly IMO. Yes, technically it isn't one big city, because the inhabitants are silicon based and whatnot and therefore the large swathes of metal are the local equivalent of farmland (or something like that) but nobody who isn't a Transformers fan will know that. And in any event, the trope isn't actually about one huge city, it's about a planet that doesn't have any biomes other than "city". Bear in mind, the New York metropolitan area includes an island and parts of at least one other state (New Jersey) so it's entirely possible for the planet to be subdivided into warring factions and still count as a City Planet.

Coruscant, while it technically is a better example, doesn't look like a better example. Not only is it possible for all of that to result from a combination of volcanism and large meteor impacts; there's a ton of empty space in there. To me, it looks like a planet with multiple large cities and a global mass-transit system, that also has plenty of farmlands. (Seriously, guys, it doesn't look that much different than any given shot of Earth at night, aside from the lack of large bodies of water.) To better illustrate my point, I've composed this image◊ from these two◊ Wikipedia images.

tl;dr Keep Until Better Image Suggested, Coruscant isn't better

edited 7th Nov '12 5:21:57 PM by banjo2E

I don't think we should keep the Cybertron image, since it isn't an example. And "people wouldn't be able to tell" isn't a good reason since the page will be misleading them. Cybertron doesn;t just have farmland. Wildlife is vaguely alluded to in various fiction as well. Coruscant actually is a planet entirely covered by artificial structure, continuously metropolitan (as in, all the areas are a city landscape) and under a single government to boot.

Maybe something like Trantor [1] [2]? There's also Apokolips, which is a planet that's entirely an industrialized hell landscape. [3]◊ [4]◊

Also, the huge swaths of water and polar ice cap means there's a very, very big difference between Coruscant and earth.

edited 7th Nov '12 5:38:30 PM by ThatHuman

I don't think the second one's fine details would survive resizing, plus we'd need to get permission. It's great for Image Links, though. The first one...it's alright, but I still lean toward Coruscant.

edited 7th Nov '12 5:43:24 PM by Willbyr

Trantor (1) seems like the best of those options. It's certainly better than Coruscant, which, again, could be either a planet covered in cities or a version of Earth without any large bodies of water (nice job ignoring my caveat btw). With Trantor (1) you can clearly see the planet's covered in shaped metal, which (with the exception of Transformers) generally means it's a City Planet. With Coruscant, it's not immediately apparent that it's a City Planet as opposed to a regular industrialized planet, unless you already know what it is. And "it makes sense iffo you already know where the image came from" is the very essence of JAFAAC.

edited 7th Nov '12 6:38:43 PM by banjo2E

"Makes sense only to people who don't know where it's from" is even worse than "only makes sense to people who have watched the source". And I vaguely remember something from the staff about how Star Wars movies are iconic enough that we need not worry whether the reader has seen it? Or maybe that was just the characters.

Anyway, Cybertron would be a really bad example, since the empty-ish space surrounding each city might not even be part of the cities' "greater metropolitan area", seeing as I've never heard of the concept of "greater metropolitan area" even existing on Cybertron.

edited 7th Nov '12 7:23:18 PM by ThatHuman

That is narrower than even "just the characters"... maybe "main characters" but that is iffy, "Vader = bad guy" sure, "Vader = grew up on Tattooine" no. Some aspects are widely known; details about Coruscant are not.

edited 7th Nov '12 10:12:40 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I'd like to add that Cybertron is mentioned thrice in the examples, as an example. To say it "Makes sense only to people who don't know where it's from" is wrong. I know where it's from, and it makes sense to me.

It's an example. It looks like an example. It illustrates the trope better than all other suggestions.

edited 7th Nov '12 9:07:43 PM by AnotherDuck

But it's not a planet continuosly covered in city. Those "expanses of parking lot" indicate non-metropolitan area. Possibly non-populated as well. Urban areas and wilderness do likely exist, considering that various media has somewhat alluded to wildlife existing there.

Anyway, it's a planet that's covered by metal because it is naturally metal. It wasn't artificially enveloped in metal, the metal was always there. And not all the examples you pointed out are about Cybertron. The comic-book one is about "the Hub", which, if I recall correctly, actually were artifically terraformed/landscaped. Unlike Cybertron itself. The Multimedia example is also incorrect. Beast Machines wasn't the only series where Cybertron had a non-metal component. The '80s cartoon had that too. But this picture isn't the '80s cartoon, and neither Beast Machines or said cartoon actually described the planet as completely urbanized. And anyway, the '80s cartoon itself is under Canon Discontinuity with some elements. The Anime & Manga example for Transformers Cybertron might be partially accurate with Gigantion, if you count "lots of empty buildings" as "city".

edited 7th Nov '12 9:22:16 PM by ThatHuman

Short answer: I disagree.

Longer answer:

It shows that there's city-like stuff beneath the surface. If if you really don't want to count it because of wildlife existing and parking-lot-like areas, I'd disqualify New York from being a complete city, since it has a big park in it with lots of rats and other critters.

And as mentioned, the Coruscant image has a lot more dark areas than light areas. If you squint, the planet is not a whole lot brighter than the space behind.

Trantor might work, if there's a different image than the ones suggested. One has the same problem as Coruscant, and the other is focused on the space ship.