Without maintenance, skyscrapers' windows would soon fall out and let the elements in. Weeds, insects, and vermin would move in in quick succession creating vertical ecosystems. The descendants of household cats would soon follow.
"I can picture New York City with all the buildings covered with vines, you know, hawks sailing around, it would be lovely, it would be absolutely lovely. I suppose, if you wanted to be really imaginative about it, you could say that eventually they [cats] could be like flying squirrels and so on. They could glide from places. The possibility is always there for some imaginative responses to this unusual environment."
—Ray Coppinger, Hampshire College
Park Avenue South:
Minetta Street:
The Empire State Building collapses:
El Train:
City Hall Park:
The Brooklyn Bridge bites it:
"Zoo animals are really the great unknown, depending on whether or not they could escape from their confinement, then things change dramatically because you might have lions, you might have tigers, both of which would be capable of surviving in a post-human period."
—
John Hadidian, urban ecologist with the Humane Society Of The United States
One sad thing I learned about the post-human future is that the expanding shell of radio and TV signals that I thought would forever preserve our memory will in fact dissipate into noise within two light years, long before it reaches the nearest star.
