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The Tory Megacrapolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film centred on a ‘New Rome’ gets STEPHEN ARNELL wondering about the similarities between lame-duck PM Sunak and one of the last Roman emperors, Honorius
The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius (1883), by John Williams Waterhouse [Public Domain]

DIRECTOR Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis premiered to mixed reviews in Cannes last week.

The plot concerns a “New Rome” on the Hudson (basically New York) blighted by an accident which throws the city into contentious debate as to its potential rebuilding. Either as a resident-friendly utopian “Megalopolis” of the future, or as just a barely functional updated version of the previous iteration.

Such debates have informed wannabe sci-fi-esque burghs such as Saudi Arabia’s proposed city The Line, a 500m tall, 200m wide, habitation extending 170km into the desert.

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