Cyborg City: reflection on a concept of a sustainable urban formation on Mars

Abstract

The thesis presents an author reflection on a cyborg city, an urban formation on Mars, and explores its nature. This is achieved by using such a creative tool as the system of the requirements that aims to define fundamental criteria and the key elements. Through research and analysis, the thesis describes the case of an adaptive, autonomous, self-sustaining and sustainable Earth-independent urban formation of high redundancy, which requires involvement of robotic system that, in turn, brings total dependence on machinery control and artificial intelligence. Nature of a cyborg city as well as a lifestyle pattern of a human society beyond Earth could be described through imagine oneself of being detached from the surroundings and, thus, isolated, relying entirely on total control, aiming to reduce human and AI error to zero, otherwise it would lead to an epic fail and breakdown of the whole life support system that would mean death of Martian inhabitants. Living in a dangerous and extreme Martian environment requires a new matter of an urban formation – a cyborg city - a (portable) life support system, a human-robot hybrid, an autonomous self-sustaining biosphere, which could provide a livable environment and sustain its inhabitants. Exploration of the harsh Martian environment, defining not only urban planning but also life support requirements, understanding of human-robot interdependence – all these aspects are found as crucial to be considered when it comes to an urban formation on Mars.