The future city is an elusive concept, says Melissa Sterry. Cities are humanity’s most complex creation and, until recently, predicting their future was no more than guess work. However, Melissa notes the emergence of what she describes as ‘Case Study Cities’ – city-scale laboratories designed to road-test new thinking and new technologies in a real-world context…
“It’s a drag, it’s a bore, it’s really such a pity, to be looking at the board, not looking at the city” sang Murray Head in the Chess concept album hit ‘One Night in Bangkok’ in 1984. The lyrics define the city many know and love, in that they speak of a physical entity; a place defined by, amongst other things, ‘bars, temples and massage parlours’. Since time immemorial the city has been conceived as such.
Many are musing over the future of the city, as has been the case for millennia. Not so long ago several futurists speculated that the future city is extra-terrestrial, whether located on the Moon, Mars, floating about the Solar System, or in some far-flung distant galaxy. Today, others speculate that the future city is a megacity – a place to which many millions will migrate in search of new opportunities. Attend any conference about the future city and you’ll hear statistics abound, such as a prediction that by 2050 the population will have reached 9 billion, of which 70% will live in cities and developed urban areas. This statistic, along with so many others, was created on the assumption that the future will be the exponential expansion of the present.
The future city is elusive; now and then we think we catch a glimpse of it, but like a jaguar slinking its way through dense forest in the black of night, it’s difficult to define. Is the future city in space? Is it super-sized? None of us really know; we’re all best guessing.
Statistics lend themselves to simple scenarios. For example, when tossing a coin we know there are just two possible outcomes, ‘heads or tails’ at odds of 50/50. Cities aren’t so simple; indeed to date they are humanity’s most complex creation. Comprising innumerable layers of infrastructure and activity, much of which is in constant flux, the city is continuously exposed to all manner of threats from the nano-scale upwards.
In his 2005 book ‘City Economics’ Brendan O’Flaherty wrote “Cities could persist—as they have for thousands of years—only if their advantages offset the disadvantages…” The ratio of advantages to disadvantages of city living varies from generation to generation. In good times the city is a place that offers access to ample amenities and opportunities – in a word ‘choice’. At its best it’s a hub of cultural and social activity: a site of architectural, artistic, culinary, sporting and academic excellence. We fall in love in cities and we fall in love with them, as expressed in the opening scene of Manhattan, when Woody Allen in the character of Isaac Davis says “Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved.”
But what of the city at its worst? Historically, when plagues hit, they hit cities hardest, as was the case when the Black Death struck Europe in the 14th century. The plague spread from one city to the next, as galleys transported goods between them. The impact was such that it took some cities an estimated 150 years to recover, with loses of up to 70% of the population. Given the limitless number of possible pandemics ahead, no amount of medical research can provide a fail-safe against such a threat. Therein, as we consider the future city we ought do so in the context of pandemics and other worst-case scenarios, be it extreme meteorological or geological events, chronic resource shortages or otherwise, for nothing can be too big to fail, not even a megacity.
Plato’s statement that “any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich” remains as current today as it did when he penned The Republic. However, ‘the poor’ are all too often left out of conversations about our future cities, as indeed are most people that don’t fit the description of white middle-aged, middle-class male. There’s mounting evidence to suggest that solutions developed in partnership with the parties they are intended to serve generally work better. Call it crowd sourcing, co-creation, collaboration or whatever you like; what it comes down to is enabling complexity – bringing the skills, experiences, ideas and visions of the many, not the few, to the table. Ironically, Plato advocated the division of labor, believing specialisation to be more efficient than an interdisciplinary approach. But then, Plato didn’t live in an age of smart technologies that lend themselves to a more inclusive, therein more democratic approach to city planning.
“Divide et impera”: divide and conquer, has to all intense and purposes been the mantra of city planners and policymakers this past two millennia; with cities reduced to the sum of their parts. There was “a place everything and everything in its place”. All too often proposals for future cities embed this antiquated attitude and consequently allow little room for disruption, meaning that despite their futuristic veneer, they will likely be no more or no less resilient to future challenges than the cities of old. However, given such cities have not yet been road-tested, I’ll turn to science fiction to illustrate my point.
The city of 2274, as depicted by Michael Anderson in his 1976 film Logan’s Run, is reminiscent of many of today’s smart city proposals in that every facet is new; its technologies, its ideals; its culture. The cities of previous centuries have been left to decay under rambling vegetation, reminiscent of those of the past civilisations of Asia and the Americas. Everything from the city’s buildings to its citizens appears beautiful, but that beauty is skin deep. The city is subject to an autocratic regime run by Artificial Intelligence, which governs every aspect of citizens’ lives; even down to the day they die. Needless to say, disruption ensues, as a community of ‘runners’ seeks an escape. The general premise of the plot is explored in countless other science fiction films, with examples including another 1976 film, director Richard Heffron’s Future World and Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
The moral of the story is that nothing ever goes quite to plan and that when we use technology to fix one problem we often inadvertently create another. That said, technology can be a force for good and without it humanity would be hard-pressed to meet some of the monumental challenges that likely lay ahead. Which begs the question ‘how can you plan a city, if you don’t know what you’re planning for?’
Whether on Earth or in space, micro or mega in scale, the future city needs to be flexible –to be equally adapt at coping with an increase or decrease in population, extremes of heat and cold and varying levels of accessibility to resources. Historically people migrate both to and from cities, as needs dictate – following resources and opportunities nationally and globally. Thus, when we plan cities we ought embed an elasticity that enables them to expand and retract and do so at pace – for events such as pandemics and major natural hazards can and do decimate populations dramatically and suddenly, capable of changing city-scale landscapes over night.
While the terms ‘sustainable’, ‘resilient’ and ‘adaptable’ cities are now commonplace, their use is relative and usually construed within a linear context. For example, many a proposal implies that a city will have greater resilience to food scarcity as a consequence of urban agriculture schemes, such as allotments, green roofs and vertical gardens. However, few consider how urban agriculture infrastructure will interplay with natural hazards, i.e. how to prevent green roofs catching alight in a heat wave or how to prevent debris from urban allotments blocking drainage systems in a flash flood. Visuals for such proposals instead depict sunshine-drenched scenes, all blue skies and smiles. Therein, the problem isn’t so much in the idea, as in the execution thereof. While the Second Little Pig’s house took the Big Bad Wolf a bit longer to blow down, his house still wasn’t as resilient as the Third Little Pig’s abode.
Thankfully, recent progress in diverse scientific and technological disciplines means anthropomorphic Canidae-fearing Suidae homebuilders can now 3D print environmentally responsive architectures able to adapt to changing climatic, geological and social conditions faster than you could say “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down”. Technologies said Little Pig could harness when building a home resilient to Big Bad Wolf’s attacks, include smart materials able to harvest light, energy and water; interior and exterior sensors that feed into platforms such as Living PlanIT’s Urban Operating System™, that can track Big Bad Wolf’s movements and trigger defence systems both locally and remotely; Biomimetic building envelopes and passive ventilation systems that maintain interior temperatures within set parameters; shape-shifting structures, such as those engineered by Hoberman Associates and Buro Happold, that can adapt to changing environmental conditions, maximising a building’s capacity to harvest light and solar energy, and self-repairing components, such as concrete laced with a bacteria that uses water and calcium lactate to make calcite, therein heals hairline fractures. However, Third Little Pig’s home exists no-where but in a 21st century upgrade of Halliwell’s 19th Century fairy tale. Thankfully, that’s about to change.
Several decades ago Arts & Architecture magazine sponsored a series of experiments in residential architecture called ‘Case Study Houses’. Today we’re seeing the emergence of what are perhaps best described as ‘Case Study Cities’; city-scale laboratories designed to road-test new thinking and new technologies, but do so in a real-world context that not only accommodates disruption, but actively encourages it. One such city is PlanIT Valley, which in development in Northern Portugal, is being designed to simultaneously serve as a living laboratory cum innovation centre cum start-up incubator. Technologically it’s the most ambitious project on the smart-city table, its aim to ‘provide its citizens with a higher level of information about their built environment’ than has been previously possible. Planned features include intelligent buildings and infrastructure that will enable peak resource efficiency and enhanced mobility, as well as PlaceApps, which are developed and deployed to any device that will ‘enhance the experience of the user, based on their location and context’. However, if that’s all sounding a bit ‘2274’, fear-not that artificial intelligence will be calling the shots, for PlanIT Valley is conceived in the context of its citizens taking a hands-on role. Furthermore, it’s not solely about ‘STEM’. The arts and culture are integrated into the project in features including exterior and interior smart walls displaying digital artworks.
So long as PlanIT Valley and the like factor in failure – technological and human, and approach the city from a democratic, not autocratic perspective, that enables citizens’ personal freedom and creative expression, they stand a good chance of succeeding where the ilk of the domed city of Logan’s Run failed. The city of the future will not be pristine, without so much as a piece of chewing gum on the pavement, as is the case in developers’ drawings. The city will instead be a bit rough around the edges, but its imperfections will add to its character. We’ll love that city as much for what is isn’t, as for what it is, because if we don’t, in time that city will crumble, unloved and abandoned under of a pile of unrealised expectations. The foundations of a great city aren’t statistics and assumptions. From the ground up, the great cities of the past, the present and the future are made of the stuff that hit songs are written about.
Follow Melissa on Twitter: @MelissaSterry
This article was originally published in City City magazine July 1st 2013.
