Would people from the 1970s see today's cities as dystopian?

[TheAverageJoanne]

I was talking to one of our customers this week who's late 60s I'd say. She said that if she had been able to look from the 1970s into 2026 in our town she wouldn't believe it, and would have thought it a dystopian film. That really shocked me. It's giving me the chills actually.

I do.

When I think of the civic pride generations gone used to have, I do think they would be disgusted with us. Look at the buildings they left us. Beautiful architecture now boarded up and burned down.

The three-day week, blackouts, riots, strikes - I’d say the 70s were pretty dystopian already!

Sounds a bit dramatic.
The traffic is much worse, but there's less random fighting and cleaner air?
I suppose some high streets look dreadful.

I guess it depends which town.

I‘m born in the 70s and imagined the future as being better than the present.

I don’t live in the place that I grew up but when I visit and see boarded up shops and no updating in decades, it’s very sad.

I guess it depends on where you lived and where you live now.

What did she think would seem dystopian to her? I don’t think I’d really know what she would be referring to.

I was born in 1964 and yes, things have changed, but not in a way I’d call dystopian. We read 1984 as our ‘O’ Level text (yes, I’m that old…o levels 😂) and that’s what I would have imagined it to be 40/50/60 years later…it isn’t like that (although it may sometimes feel like it!)

Times have changed…that’s all 🤷‍♀️

Good question. I'm in my late 60's and from Bristol. There were a lot of bomb sites left here from the war, some of them right up until the early 80's so there was a lot of "ugliness" and desolation around. Bristol bus station was a place you didn't want to hang around in and something of a magnet for dodgy looking people, alcoholics and drug addicts. But there weren't any homeless people to speak of, just the very occasional old fashioned tramp which was a different thing. Thatcher hadn't happened either so no "care in the community" and (rightly or wrongly) you'd be extremely unlikely (if ever) to see anyone with severe mental illness out and about. Likewise you'd probably never encounter anyone asking for money. It felt safer to walk the streets but that could just be an illusion of mine. There was always more litter than there should've been, but not quite so much because there wasn't the proliferation of takeaways. It's swings and roundabouts really. I wouldn't have thought of the present as dystopian. I think what I'd notice more would be the increase in people and cars as much as anything.

I think dystopian is a bit strong but the lack of shops would be a shock to someone from the 70s I guess.

Too much pedestrianisation now, it just creates concrete jungles.

A lot of modern architecture is quite nice.

Apart from the increased number of cars and satellite aerials, I don’t think the part of London where I live looks that different. When I see pictures of it in the 70s/80s, it looks very similar. Obviously parts of London, like Canary Wharf, have changed massively but I don’t think I would call anything particularly dystopian.

We were talking about that today with some friends. We were all born in the 50s. When we look at photos of our home towns in the 60s, it strikes us - everything was more orderly, the roads were in good condition and there wasn’t much litter, no graffiti, and no homeless people (as apart from the odd tramp). Anyone with a serious mental illness went off to mental health hospital for a year or so. Care in the Community achieved nothing!

We went to Poland 20 years ago. We were shocked at the dreadful state of the pavements and roads, except the new roads clearly funded by the EU. A Polish relative asked us recently what we think of the roads here now, and we said they are as bad as Poland 20 years ago!

Yes, I now find parts of the inner cities to be dystopian. The leafy suburbs are ok, apart from being blighted by 20 mph zones everywhere!

When DH and I go back, we barely know where we are, because so much has been demolished to make way for big ring roads, with bends apparently going nowhere (although they obviously are)!

Think people from 2026 think they’re dystopian too

Live in Wales not here in the 70s. Cardiff is ok ( but a town Centre really rather than a city). Newport and Swansea are dumps deteriorating rapidly ( though Newport council has made efforts but it’s still pretty gritty). People who lived here longer than me talk about how awful they have become. Swansea has just lost its Mand S

My city looks better than it did in the 70s although the main bits have not changed for hundreds of years!

As a child in the 1970s I am in awe of the progress of technology. I wouldn't say dystopian but vastly different to what I imagined in the sense of pace, amount of cars, everything instant.

She was being ridiculously hyperbolic.

I think the pace of change has been an eye opener. The technological revolution has been amazing - even up to the early 80’s computers were not that common and I had an early mobile phone - it was a huge thing in the mid 80’s. I wonder how much AI will have advanced in 20 years time.

I'm almost mid sixties and my seventies self would have been surprised to see so many homeless people on the streets, all the reports of knife crime, so many closed down shops and unemployed/underemployed youth for starters. Not sure dystopian is the word but it's definitely not progress.

I was in my teens in the 1970s. A lot has changed in the 45-50 years since then, some good, some bad, as you'd expect.

Good changes since then:
Smoking ban
Less drink driving and a lot less tolerance of it
Many vehicles use cleaner fuel
Seat belts and better car design mean fewer deaths on the roads
More cycling
Less stigma about mental illness and learning disability and we're less socially conservative, so people don't get sent to asylums for life for being different
Don't know what the stats say, but my impression is there's less casual sexism, racism, homophobia etc than there was back then
People are mostly cleaner now so there's less body odour to contend with

Bad changes:
Far more traffic on the roads
Buses privatised in many areas - stupid policy, has done nothing to improve public transport or make it affordable
Online shopping means fewer people buying from physical shops, so they are closing down, especially department stores
Far more homeless people on the streets because of 'Care in the Community', which is anything but for many
More graffiti, casual vandalism, litter and flytipping are worse
Drug driving is rife because drug use is rife
Far worse shoplifting problem because the police aren't prioritising dealing with it
The music is rubbish compared with back then
People using smartphones and tablets without headphones so there's more noise pollution

I was a child in the 80s and cities were pretty grim. Lots of homelessness and crime. Where I live now (albeit a different city), except one particularly run down area, it’s all pretty lovely. Is she simply referring to the influx of non-white people? Because that does seem to rile a certain YouTube watching demographic, which is probably where she learned the word, dystopian. 🙄

I was born early 1960s and I don't think society is dystopian, I would imagine that to be like 'The Handmaid's Tale.'

There have certainly been a lot of changes, the Internet, mobile phones, decline of the High Street due to on line shopping, electric vehicles, AI to name a few.

I loved the freedom we had that children now don't have.

Our town centre looks beautiful now with a group putting in lots of flowers. In the 70s these would have immediately have been trashed.
Every Friday and Saturday several shop windows would have been smashed back then too.
Don't know if it's having CCTV everywhere but certainly an improvement.

On the other hand there were no such thing as empty shops and they were all useful. Now we've got empty shops, vape shops, Turkish "barbers" and tacky minimarts. There is nowhere to buy clothes in a town of 10 000 people.

Swansea has lost it's what? It cut off. Do you live in Swansea?

Agreed. There are few towns which have escaped the rot.

But what did the lady mean in particular? All the concrete and glass?