I was looking at the Twisted City promo video that Unreal Engine came out with which presented a big city twisting its entire self around, similar to the effects within the movie Inception.

I thought the slow-reveal of finding out the city you've lived in your entire life (a big one like New York City or Tokyo) is but a single eyeball in a giant tapestry was an interesting idea. I figured using vertical height to handle shadows and relief to add "detail" to the landscape-painting might work in a pure storytelling scenario.

Revolutions and crime from different eras would leaving lasting marks on the land, and I imagine some form of authoritarian government would be necessary to bring such an ambitious project to completion, considering the massive amount of displacement that would occur.

I suppose the imperfections in the grand image brought about by societal instability and humanity just being humanity is representative in such an image. The ideal is massive, but too perfect. A person has scars and imperfections that tell a story.

Having that as a sci-fi reveal in a dystopian (or, perhaps, in a Star Trek-like advanced civilization where the technological ability to easily terraform and create massive cities and infracture at will is available.

Or, we could just do the magic / dream thing, I guess.