For most us wanting to know what’s happening in the future, we need look no further than Polynesia and the likes of Samoa, New Zealand and Fiji, where the timeline is more advanced. The all-knowing Wellington is sometimes a whole 12 hours ahead of ignorant backward London and a full 20 ahead of Los Angeles, a place that’s pretty much in the dark ages. If you have to be a stickler though and think real-world timelines don’t count, then there are a few places around the world that actually look like they exist in a much distant future.
The City of Arts and Sciences – Valencia, Spain
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This part of the historic city of Valencia is not so historic at all, but in fact accelerating wildly into a faraway glorious future. Features of the City of Arts and Sciences (or Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències) include an oceanographic park, an interactive museum, a landscape park and an opera house. Plus it appears to be based on the future depicted in the Bill and Ted movies.
Epcot – Orlando, Florida, USA
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Disney World’s Epcot stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”, so you know it just had to be on our list. Spaceship Earth, Epcot’s iconic big grey ball, is based on the geodesic designs of futurist Buckminster Fuller. For added futureness (that’s definitely a word), the ball contains a ride showing visitors what the future might be like as envisioned by Ray Bradbury, the famous science-fiction author. The rest of Epcot is made up of linked country zones that celebrate the cultures of the world in one convenient theme park – it gives visitors a good idea of what the world will be like when the United Nations finally create the New World Order they keep promising.
The Eden Project – Cornwall, UK
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When the world wars over oil and water nuke the Earth into a ravaged scowling rock and the majority of rich people are off terraforming Mars, we’re really going to need places like the Eden Project. The wondrous structures here known as biomes are able to recreate the environmental conditions of other, nicer places, allowing flora and fauna to happily grow within. Other than grimly realising the bleak times of mutants and scavenger gangs that lie ahead of us, visitors to the Eden Project will also get to see some whimsical art, such as a giant bumble bee and a Terminator’s endoskeleton.
