History Main / HiveCity

* ''LetsPlay/EmpiresSMP'': Hermitopia is constructed as one giant skyscraper-tower with communal storage rooms and a large variety of resource farms, though some of the Hermits have residences, bases of operations, and workplaces in other empires.

A Hive City is a [[MegaCity Mega City]], but whereas most mega cities look pretty much like our modern cities although spread over a larger area or with [[SkyscraperCity way more tall buildings]], a Hive City is not built up of individual buildings but is in fact one gigantic building. In many ways, it's more akin to an anthill or [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a hive]] than to a standard modern day city.

SubTrope of MegaCity. Supertrope of {{Arcology}}, where a hive city is a completely self-contained system. May overlap with LayeredMetropolis. In extreme cases, it may be large enough to qualify as a CityPlanet. For hives of a metaphorical sort, see WretchedHive; notably, Hive Cities also tend to be Wretched Hives more often than not.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': The Citadel can be considered this, although correctly speaking it's a [[ThatsNoMoon space station]] rather than a building. Note that each of the Ward arms is in their own right a [[SkyscraperCity skyscraper city]], that's how massive this station is.

* In Çatal Höyük, a city in Anatolia built during the [=VIIth=] millenium, no streets separated the houses, which were all crammed together.

Some hive cities started out as regular mega cities or skyscraper cities but then built generation after generation of buildings on top of each other until they all interlinked into one. Another case is that the city is built in a poisonous environment or vacuum and thus must be a closed environment. Or the people who built it were not human and simply had a very different mindset than humanity when it comes to housing. If it's the last case, it may be inhabited by BeePeople.

* ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'': Robotropolis is a squat, conical mass of industrial buildings, metal frameworks and machinery towering high above the skyscrapers of the modern city whose ruins it's built among. Passage through is done through tunnel-like passages rather than through streets.

* ''VideoGame/StarRuler2'': Megacities, available as a mid-game research item, are an exaggerated version of this. They're vast metropolises that stretch from the sky to the mantle and can cover entire continents. In [[VideoGame/StarRuler the original game]], cities can become mindbogglingly dense jungles of steel as the LensmanArmsRace progresses, resulting in more and more efficient forms of urban planning, causing population density to skyrocket.

* The first part of ''Anime/KillLaKill'' takes place at Honnō City, a massive mountain of a city built on an artificial island and [[LayeredMetropolis divided into four levels that separate the poor from the rich]]. On top of the great mountain is the Honnōji Academy, where the AbsurdlyPowerfulStudentCouncil dominates the people with cruel totalitarianism.

* Kowloon Walled City was a former military outpost outside Hong Kong that became a lawless enclave due to it belonging to China but being surrounded by British territory. It became so densely populated with people escaping the law, refugees, and anarchists that it seriously approached this trope featuring high rises fused together and numerous alleyways completely covered by buildings. Before it was finally knocked down in preparation for the return of Hong Kong to China[[note]]Both Britain and China agreed that the whole situation that allowed the walled city made them look rather foolish and agreed to cooperate to remove it before the handing off ceremony[[/note]], it looked to be one monolithic shoddily built building.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': The Imperium's hive cities are the trope namer. These enormous cities are the result of millennia, occasionally tens of millennia, of urban sprawl building up over itself and cover large areas like anthills. Most of their millions of citizens live lives of obscurity within their mazelike bulks, their deeper layers are often infested with criminal gangs, and the lowest parts are so broken down and toxic that they aren't safe for human habitation any longer (mutants, outcasts and {{giant spider}}s like it just fine). Most inhabitants of a hive city never see the light of day; only the nobles in their spires have that luxury.

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* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': Wu-Jian is built on a small oceanic island where space is at a premium, forcing its residents to build up when they wish to expand. Over centuries of this practice, the city's become a teetering mass of ramshackle, poorly-planned architecture as buildings were piled on top of each other again and again. The modern city is a rambling, chaotic mess of high-rises, rope bridges and winding alleys, and alternates between broken-down derelict neighborhoods home only to ghosts and criminals and marginally less run-down areas where the citizenry lives packed like sardines in constant shade. Above this core area are the lopsided and swaying topmost stories, home to the local elites, and below it are the city's flooded roots, choked with sewage and jetsam and home to scavengers, criminal gangs, monsters and fugitives. Most of its society is riddled with crime and run by outlaw groups that the government barely attempts to keep in check. Notably, the Dragon-Blooded elites don't actually live in the city -- they mostly reside in spacious estates that make up the rest of the island, which they long ago claimed while forcing the rest of the population into the sprawl.

[[quoteright:350:[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hive_city1.jpg]]]]

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[[SubTrope Sub-Trope]] of [[MegaCity Mega City]]. Supertrope of {{Arcology}}, where a hive city is a self-contained system. May overlap with LayeredMetropolis. In extreme cases, it may be large enough to qualify as a CityPlanet.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'': The Kowloon Walled City still exists in the game's timeline (after the real one was torn down, the ''Shadowrun'' one was retconned as having been rebuilt to host refugees from a [[BalkanizeMe Chinese civil war]]). Thanks to the advent of magic, the place is even worse than its real-life version, with stagnant ''qi'' causing its residents collective despair to pool and attracting the Yama Kings to feast on all the bad vibes.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': The Imperium's hive cities are the trope namer. These enormous cities cover large areas like anthills, and the lower parts are so broken down and toxic that they aren't safe for human habitation any longer (mutants, outcasts and {{giant spider}}s like it just fine). And most inhabitants of a hive city never see the light of day. Only the nobles in their spires have that luxury.

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->''"Home, for me, was the Ocean House, a private residence I leased in the most select quarter of Hive Seventy. On many hive worlds, the rich and privileged dwell in districts high up in the top-most city spires, divorced as far as possible from the dirt and crowding of the mid and low-hab levels. But no matter how high you climbed on Thracian Primaris, there was nothing to find but smog and pollution.''
->''"Instead, the exclusive habitats were on the underside of the hive portions that extended out over and into the hidden seas. There was at least a tranquillity here."''
-->-- '''Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn''', ''Literature/{{Eisenhorn}}: Malleus''

-->''Even dimmed by the weather, the City was a tremendous thing to see. The Police Department was in the upper levels of City Hall, and City Hall reached high. From the Commissioner's window, the neighboring towers fell short and their tops were visible. They were so many fingers, groping upward. Their walls were blank, featureless. They were the outer shells of human hives.''