With resources and services stretched to their limits, future cities must be smarter. Cambridge professors Doug Crawford-Brown, Robert Mair and Koen Steemers describe the innovations in technology and governance needed to keep the megacity functional
There is a clear line of sight on the broad features of the cities of the future. They will be large, with significantly more than half of the world’s growing population crammed into them.
They will house an increasingly older population, placing stress on services and a rising tax burden on young workers whose taxes pay for those services.
They will be environmentally-constrained, mandating a lower environmental impact of almost every feature of city living we rely on today, and they will need more resilient infrastructure, buildings and economies to accommodate climate change.
In the developing world, the megacities will be a complex and messy mix of formal and informal settlements, with no obvious governance structure covering the entire city.
These are very broad sketches of the challenges. The more interesting issues revolve around how we respond to those challenges, and how those responses affect the design, operation and governance of cities. How we respond will in turn profoundly influence the quality of life of residents and what it feels like to live in such cities.
The future depends on the innovations we create and put in place today. But what form might those innovations take?
Read more at: http://www.sciencesquared.eu/news/innovate-now-prepare-our-cities-future
6 June 2016
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 646511