Judge — October 18, 1924 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a futuristic satire imagining New York City in the year 2000 after gravity has been eliminated by science. The humor derives from showing how urban congestion problems might be "solved" through vertical expansion rather than realistic city planning. The cartoon depicts: - **Children playing ball** on building facades at extreme heights - **Traffic** (cars, taxis, motorcycles) floating at multiple vertical levels between skyscrapers - **Public notices** addressing construction and traffic regulations in three dimensions - **Residential and commercial activity** distributed throughout the vertical space The satire mocks early 20th-century optimism about technological solutions to urban problems. Rather than addressing overcrowding through sensible planning, the cartoon suggests society would simply stack all activities vertically, creating equally chaotic conditions but in three dimensions instead of two. It's a gentle critique of techno-utopianism—the naive belief that science alone can solve fundamental social problems without addressing root causes. The comic assumes Judge's readers would find this extrapolation both amusing and slightly absurd.