City limits: what do we want from our future cities?
45% of us would prefer to live in a big city if given the choice but many more of us will. By 2040, an estimated 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, taking us further past what David Gann has called “peak load”. This is when our infrastructure won’t be able to cope with the pressure placed on it.
The flip side to this is an opportunity to redesign urban centres and the infrastructure that they need such as transport, water, energy, health, food and waste. New technologies and thinking ought to allow us to integrate and re-purpose city infrastructure and build its resilience. Innovations in physical and data infrastructure – central to the ‘Smart London’ initiative – offer potential for our cities to thrive. There are pitfalls too.
As with the application of any new technology or science, we need a framework, a set of guiding principles to plan for the future. What should the future look like; how can, and should, we achieve that vision? In a democracy this should surely not be left simply to planners and pioneers, but involve the consumers and citizens of the future
These are not straightforward topics to research. Working with Innovate UK and Forum for the Future, Ipsos carried out three face to face day-long public dialogue workshops which focused on possible future outcomes of six urban systems. All participants were then invited to a central reconvened summit where we brought together all six systems into integrated future scenarios. Experts in futures, urban integration or the specific systems actively participated in these events. We also ran an online community including all workshop participants, and 350 members of the public to cover these topics in greater breadth.
What people want is cities to be places where technology makes life easier, but where these benefits are shared equally, where naturalness is not too lost and social interaction is maintained. Encouragingly, people see the opportunities new technologies offer including improved resource use and efficiency, more tailored services, and faster diagnoses of personal or systemic issues. But they also see a risk to inequality of access and data misuse or loss.
Discussions about future scenarios reveal a desire for locally-focused governance to help cities and regions maximize their local resources and make locally relevant decisions. At the same time, people also want the needs of resource-poor communities to be considered. Therefore, they want to see a continuation of central oversight.
There is scope for UK businesses to innovate to enable smart resource use (water, waste), personal information (health, food) and tailored services (transport, energy). However, these should be balanced against individual flexibility and choice.
The overall message is one of checks and balances. ‘Smart’ for smart’s sake is not smart. Instead, it is the application of the best new technology offers, plus adequate governance and foresight to ameliorate the worst of its impacts. Peoples’ red lines include a future which does not see citizens left behind by lack of access to technology or resources, and one where automation deskills and dehumanises us.
While some would say technology offers limitless opportunities for the cities of the future, the view from city-dwellers is that there should be limits. Their voices should be heard.
