The Tcity serie are all about that too, Mark Adlard wrote about the potential path things were on with everyone living in a fully automated society within dense housing blocks. It was inspired by the emerging post industrialisation in the north of England which was at its peak in the late seventies (before thatcher and the Tories gutted it) there are some fantastic descriptions of the cultural implications exploring things like boredom and their attempts to alleviate it.

The failed utopianism of the north, and various other projects like the London tower block communities, just before the wave broke inspired a lot of English sci-fi, it was an era when the future must have seemed so open and undecided. The early signs of collapse starting to show but it sill being so uncertain if and how the chips will fall.

Harry Harrison though American lived in the UK and was closely involved in that same sci-fi scene, his series the stainless steel rat draws from.a lot of that same energy but from just after the wave broke and the capitalistic realism washed away all the beautiful castles built on the sand. ‘We must live as stainless steel rats in the wainscott of their society’

I can’t even remember what the thread is about, so I doubt this is related, but they’re great series worth finding if anyone loves old sci-fi.