From mega-regions to micro-households. Cities of the future

A few days ago, a friend invited me to a dinner where we met another couple who had been living in New York for more than fifteen years: Miquel and Anaïs. Of course, much of the conversation revolved around their experience in this great city before drifting into common reflections on the development and transformation that cities faced once we left the pandemic behind. In fact, Miquel pointed out that this transformation had already begun, in some places consciously and, in others, simply reactively. As I returned home from dinner, I was reflecting on the interesting discussion we had during dinner, and I kept wondering: What will the cities of the future look like?

When I got home, I started to investigate a little through the network trying to draw more enlightening conclusions. After browsing several publications, I ended up discovering that, according to National Geographic Spain,by2050, the world's population is expected to reach 9.8 billion people! But, the most important fact is that 70% percent of this booming population — some 6.7 billion people — are expected to live in urban areas.

Reading that article reminded me of an interview the same magazine conducted with experts at the architecture and urban planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)  months ago, in which they were asked how they would design their city of the future. I remember it was an interesting interview so I decided to visit their website looking for more answers to that same question.

I think it's been a long time since I spent as many hours browsing a website as that night! From the first moment I landed in it and discovered that lunar landscape with space constructions I understood that I had gone to a place where I could get some of the answers I was looking for. My first impressions were that, educated by the lessons of the past and anticipating the challenges of the future, these architects had interpreted very well what those cities of tomorrow should look like. A vision that I will try to articulate on a five-point scale,from the surrounding ecosystems to the interiors of the buildings:

1. Scale design: Urban hubs.

The principles of its city design are based on creating a densely developed center. Sustainable land use, inside and outside each city, would help people thrive by being able to have water and food available at all times. Likewise, the use of high-capacity transport would reduce emissions and accelerate travel times.

2. Smart buildings.

Each building should have a wind turbine or wind turbine with which to feed sustainable energy to each building. Only in Spain, for example, wind energy supplied electricity in 2020 to the equivalent of 12 million homes or, what is the same, to 18% of the country's needs (adata that I extracted from the EEE website that same night). If we add to this that, according to SOM, all buildings should incorporate natural elements and be largely modular, we would achieve faster production with much less disposable material. Because we would achieve spaces with an important capacity to transform quickly and satisfy, in this way, the changing needs of any home, industry or company.

3. Social interiors.

Another aspect that caught my attention about SOM's proposal on its website was its commitment to common spaces, where shared amenities would increase social interaction allowing smaller and micro-sized homes. Many of the things we do now in the solitude of our home could be extrapolated to common places, turning homes almost into hotel rooms, to put a simile of easy assimilation. According to SOM, community activities aim to foster a sense of belonging to a group or community as well as social equality. That is, we are not only talking about a new way of understanding cities, but also about the cultural development of more united and tolerant societies!

4. Autonomous neighborhoods.

We cannot consider talking about what future cities will be like without considering what the communities of neighbors will be like. According to SOM's vision, in these cities of tomorrow, neighborhoods are designed to meet most daily needs with a maximum distance of 10 minutes between home-need. When currently worldwide we are talking about the "cities of 15 minutes", this group of architects goes further and bets on 33% shorter temporal distances. To do this, we must also think about the law of supply and demand of real estate, as well as one of its maxims: "Different types of housing attract mixed-income communities; that is, people from diverse economies." With this approach, SOM invites us to reflect on the need to create neighborhoods where any social stratum can reside near their workplace.

5. Resilient regions.

The fifth and last level that I wanted to highlight in this scale is the one that refers to the fact that the cities of the future are composed of a series of urban centers, in which each of them is connected by high-speed railways. It is true that the ecosystem of each region will dictate where and how these axes should grow, but we have to assume that city centers move inland, away from sea level rise. If we talk about cities of the future, we must face the challenge of developing the same with ideas for the future.

In the end I think I spent more hours sitting in front of my laptop trying to find the answer to what the cities of the future should look like than the dinner and conversation lasted; but it is that a search for conclusions is always much deeper than making hypotheses based on an individual point of view and, why not admit it, much less critical and realistic. Two days after that fruitful night, I received a whatsapp from Anaïs recommending me to read the "Report on the cities of the world 2020", which orbited on the need to understand that sustainable urbanization is still fundamental for the general development of societies, since only in this way can we generate the necessary economic, social and environmental value capable of supporting the fight against poverty,  inequality, climate change and other global challenges. A simple message but nothing simplistic. The challenge, sometimes, is not to carry it out, it is to understand it.

David Granell Moreno

CEO