is Terminus looking exactly like a modern westernised earth city, at all plausible?

[slimjim]

it has cafés, supper markets, electronic shops, film posters and even a bloody dry cleaner, not to mention the architecture
honestly if it wasn't for phonetically spelt shop Signs I could almost believe it was some south London back street in the mid 90s

[Krisz]

it has cafés, supper markets, electronic shops, film posters and even a bloody dry cleaner, not to mention the architecture
honestly if it wasn't for phonetically spelt shop Signs I could almost believe it was some south London back street in the mid 90s

Why the mid 90's? LOL, I knew the South London of the time, I sort of know what you mean, although I don't know how much has changed since I emigrated from the UK in 2005. I still think it does look more like a North American street though, in the words of Eli, "Holy crap, we dialed Pittsburgh."

In reality it was filmed on the set that was built for the 'Watchmen' movie in Burnaby BC. That movie was set in an alternate mid 1980's as I recall. I suppose that's why this older style of street was chosen to give the idea of the people of 'Terminus' maybe choosing to build a more 'retro' city, or not being able to build more modern cities as they spread out into the galaxy further from Novus with the resources they had to hand.

[Quizziard]

There is an archaeological theory about parallel societal development: that two completely independent societies can develop in parallel. It's been seen on Earth. In this case it's not even truly independent, given they have Destiny crew survivors as the starting point. Seems inevitable, up to a point.

[Akai]

I think people are forgetting, that the Destiny crew that founded that civilization are from Earth. They all know what modern Earth cities look like. It's not unreasonable to assume they passed everything they knew about Earth (maybe even pictures, etc) to their descendents.

[slimjim]

even if they had pictures or earth cities ("take just the clothes on your backs" remember) why would their descendents try to recreate it exactly?