The future of cities

Abstract

For the fi rst time in history the call to envisioning the future is more than a mere matter of fantasy. Up until now the look ahead had little going for it than science fi ction. But the sustainability movement changed all that and made it part of our concerns today the agenda to ensure for a healthy and viable future tomorrow. It is not sure if the concern was and remains to be one about future generations as much as it is about the realization that even within one's own lifetime things might deteriorate signifi cantly if we donot care for the wellbeing of our places, especially when life expectancy is now 10 years lengthier than it was just 50 years ago. Cities play a strong role in envisioning and developing this future, not the least because they help conserve resources while also serving as engines for economic and social growth. How will they fulfi l that role is the topic of this paper, examining, among other things, the way recent data-harvesting technologies may lead us in the right direction. Speculation about the future of the city has been going on for some time now and especially since the rise of the industrial revolution. Having attracted, or more likely coerced, the rural worker to the centre to work in the ever more effi cient and more economically rewarding factory, the city declined just as soon as it fl ourished. Industrial progress moved so quickly it outpaced the city's capacity to fi nd an appropriate match for it in housing and infrastructure. The fi rst to react were the communitarians, led by Robert Owen in Scotland and Charles Fourier in France. So appalled by the poverty of the rising metropolis, aesthetic as well as social, they wanted nothing to do with it. They sought their own self-organized and self-suffi cient t enclaves, gated communities of sorts that can restore to the human condition at least a modicum of equality and a fair access to happiness. Their version of society was less based on a structure of hierarchy, boss and labourer, and more on an open ended involvement in everyday life, including raising children and building a world (1). The visionaries of the Columbian World Exposition of 1893 had similar concerns, namely that the city, in this case particularly the American city, had so deteriorated something drastic had to happen to save it. But rather than abandon it, they wanted to reconstitute it from within, scarp the architec- ture that was there and replace it with something new, something more coherent than what was there before. Lacking another model by which to work they defaulted to the European Beaux Arts one with its axial planning and formal hierarchies, borrowing equally from Rome as from Paris. The grand boulevard, the ornate facade and even the lagoon were seen as the mark of a great civilizing city and the agents by which a place can and should be unifi ed (2). The struggle for the good city hasnot ebbed since, perennially fi nding expression in various forms, some biasing the centre others the edge and some in between. Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier both wrote books within 20 or 30 years of each other around the turn of the 19/20th century, urging us to not give up on the city but to rethink it in a different guise, as the city of 'tomorrow' with fea- tures that would solve the mess that it had seen by their current day time. Howard (3) focused on integrating country and town in the manner of concentric circles, alternating between one and the next, while Le Corbusier sought to create in his city a match for the modern day schedule, indeed