A new report could offer some prescient glimpses as to what’s in store for our future world.
As humans we’re obsessed with the future, with predictions, projections, extrapolations and guestimates but more often than not these turn out to be absolute nonsense (anyone remember Tomorrow’s World?).
But today’s report by the Forum for the Future is less of a wild stab in the dark and more of a look at what’s happening, or starting to happen around the world today.
The report highlights four scenarios for the world of 2040 based on how cities of the future could develop – Communi-city, Planned-opolis, Sprawl-ville and Renew-abad.
As their names suggest they offer vary different models for future urban development.
The first scenario, Communi-city, sounds a little like something that would be dreamt up by a Tory party Big Society think tank. Under this model ‘the city has become less formalised and more diverse and dynamic, with individuals and communities taking control over planning’. Sound familiar?
The opposite of Communi-city is Planned-opolis. Under this model ‘Cities are tightly regulated and carefully planned. Many new cities have been created and slum-dwellers forcibly resettled. New suburbs have often been designed around the electric bike, not the car, with narrow streets that blend walking space with bike space. Cities are more formalised places than they used to be. Informal activity, such as unplanned building or unlicensed markets, is not tolerated’. This one appeals to my control freak nature.
Next up is Sprawl-ville, which sounds a lot like many modern cities. In Sprawl-ville ‘the car-dominant urban model persists, resulting in the growth of huge, low-density suburbs, freeways to connect them and commuter jams. In the periphery of the city there are numerous ‘failed’ developments (Dublin?), built too far from public transport and therefore unaffordable to urban commuters now that oil prices are high’.
Finally Renew-abad offers a sustainable vision of the future. Here the ‘age of urban sprawl is over. Cities are redensifying and setting growth boundaries in an effort to create more efficient, polycentric forms.
Former suburbs have emerged as new cities, smaller in size but well-connected to megacities through ultra high-speed rail links. Megacities continue to be important engines of growth and in the new city states this is matched by political power. Neighbourhood-centric planning is the norm and people tend to live, play and work in the same locality’.
One of the most interesting points the report makes is the growing struggle between Top Down and Bottom Up models of governance. It defines top down as a system where ‘global governance frameworks are strong and well coordinated. A convergence of opinion on key issues such as climate change has led to the development of stronger institutions and binding frameworks, and a more collaborative world order’.
While Bottom Up models see decentralised governance solutions are ‘preferred to global-level action. Trade relations are more regionalised, and innovation happens in local power hubs. The world is focused on self-sufficiency, resilience and localised solutions’.
This can of course already be seen here in the UK with the battle between regionalism and localism, and even in the US with the rise of the grass roots-driven Tea Party movement but also globally with the battles between those for and against globalisation and also those pushing for isolationism. Both models have strengths but also weaknesses.
