Trend: Future Cities

The concept of Future Cities is to provide their inhabitants with everything they need and desire within the cities perimeter.

Trend Description:
Future Cities are mainly based on the concept of efficiency. The idea is to provide the inhabitants with basically everything they need: living, working, shopping, education, entertainment and community spaces all within the borders of the cities space. While the goal of some concepts, especially in Asia, is to create an environment for international business, building everything to a Western high-end standard, others sense the possibilities of more “Orwell”-like scenarios. These concepts build on current social and economical developments and are based on the successful efficiency of so called “Supercenters”, which are starting to replace the downtown of US-cities.

Cases:

Songdo
Songdo is supposed to become Korea’s international business destination. The vision is, to bring the top industry leaders together, to build “the world’s most beautiful, functional and environmentally friendly city”. Connected to the Incheon International Airport via a new bridge the city to be build on 1500-Acres is supposed to host mainly multinational corporations. But Songdo is more than just an Asian business hub. So far the plans include a 100-acre Central Park, an International School, an International Hospital, an Ecotarium and a Museum and everything else which might create the perfect infrastructure for an international community to locate their business and to raise a family.

Waltropolis
Waltropolis, a project by theboxtank, is based on Wal-Marts Supercenter discount system. As a collaborative blog about big-box urbanism and retail, theboxtank considers a city based on Wal-Mart’s mega-infrastructural machine as a “logical extension” but also as a “negative utopia”. The future Waltropolis is planned as a seven mile long, one mile wide and 90 meter high strip of 10 level locating retail, civic, educational and cultural program “within the efficiency of a box”. “Repetition of the same unit occurs on separate sites. Residential tract housing is located on the roof deck.” Of course Waltropolis is located right text to an Interstate Highway System, because Waltropolis is its own distribution center, equipped with a private fleet of semi-trailer trucks and loading docks, leading directly to conveyer belts that transfer goods to the appropriate Waltropolis level and product department. By also merging civic and educational programs, museums, office space, class rooms, libraries, courthouses, and even jails Waltropolis completes the utopia of the privatization of public institutions and their space. By filling the space horizontally the Walmart concept of discount space is implemented in its extreme.

Trend Impact:
Our hope is that the concept of the efficient future city will not only degrade into the “discount”-direction. Following the Walmart-Motto “Always cheap” this would naturally lead to the absurd conclusion of: “Life is cheap”. Are people really willing to live that way? It is hard to deny, that Supercenters become more and more successful and even start to fulfill some of the functions of open public spaces. Of course it might be easier for international business-conglomerations to just move their staff into a future city, especially if the host-country is very different to the homecountry, but planners have to be aware that our world becomes more and more global, that people want and need to interact and that life is not just about being “cheap and easy”, but also about solving conflicts, learning and adapting to new things. On the other hand the concept of future cities offers a lot of possibilities. By planning a huge complex in its entirety, it is easier and more efficient to implement alternative technologies and enviromentally friendly structures. The concept of future cities will change the way of social interaction and communication and open new ways to reach future target groups.

Songdo

Waltropolis

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