City Cycles of Evolution – What are the City Types of our Resilient Future Cities?

Let’s consider: Cities – the age of urbanisation and the rise of the megacity

Ahead of the World Built Environment Forum #WBEF in Shanghai in March 2017 now is a good time to consider the evolution of our Future Cities through the lens of City Cycles of evolution.

This is the age of urbanisation as for the first time over 54% of the worlds citizens live in our cities. We have a burgeoning population: to put this in context in 1960 the world population was 3 billion, today in 2016 we have over 7 billion today and are adding people to our planet at the rate of 82 million more each year. This means that by 2050 the world’s population is predicted by the United Nations to reach 9 billion, of which the global urban population will be 66%, or effectively that’s 6.3 billion people living in cities like this one. 

In 1970, there were only 2 Megacities (10 million people or more): Tokyo and New York. Today there are 23. By 2025 there will be 14 more by 2025, 13 of them in China. Shanghai's population (23.4 m) or the population of the greater Mexico City region are both now greater than that of Australia (22.6 m), and China’s urban Chongqing region is an area the size of Austria. The megacities of the future will be larger than many of the nations we know today. 

However, as the competition for foreign capital investment into cities grows, success is no longer purely about size. Aspects such as innovation, liveability, and an ability to transform and adapt to a changing socio-economic landscape, are becoming increasingly important. We need cities for citizens. 

So how are our Future Cities evolving in this, the urban millennium?

India alone needs to build new cities at a rate equivalent to one Chicago a year for the next 26 years. To achieve this India plans to invest $1.3tn US to make that happen by 2020. 

But cities like Shenzhen, London, Singapore, Dubai, New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Accra or Delhi all have different opportunities, constraints and culture so how can we consider their unique characteristics of evolution in developing to the Future Cities of tomorrow? Here we categorise our cities into four distinct lenses that look at city evolution that helps us consider our Future City today:

• Experimental

These are the world city incubators combining the concept of Future City through the use of innovative smart technologies that help evolve the latest thinking. Experimental cities set the trend that others to follow, they are rich and adaptive environments of existing conurbations that push the boundaries of, and for, city living. They have a clear strategy that is driven through to set the pace of the built environment creating adaptive and new cities from the old city, whilst also embracing it.

They develop new concepts, bringing in new infrastructures such as underground or under sea storage facilities, high level cycle super highways, dedicated public transport routes, etc. whilst also creating a more vertically integrated city with communities coming together in new vibrant ways not only at street level, but also at higher levels.

These are the Smart City that push sustainability to a new level of being eco-friendly and push and change the boundaries of the old city hubs to new city quarters. Their governance is secure and the economies stable thereby attracting the investment of financing within and outside country through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The wrap around the existing geographical, societal, cultural, and heritage past with new iconic developments that set the trends for the city of the future.

These adaptive experimental cities can suffer as a result of their experimental nature with rapidly increasing congestion as their infrastructure quakes under the pressure of the pace of development as well as high cost of living outpricing those from more rural communities to be able to afford the price of being at the heart of today’s experimental living. Plus old problems re-emerge as densities increase putting pressure on core infrastructures such as power supply, waste removal, water provision, ageing demographics and density living.

Watching the pace of change in these cities in a lifetime means they are almost unrecognisable from their former past. But creating the experimental city certainly secures the future of these innovative drivers of the future city – Lusail City, Qatar; Singapore City, Singapore; Hong Kong, China; and Dubai City, United Arab Emirates.

• New

It is surprising that in our developed world of today there is the opportunity still to build totally new cities, yet that is the reality. These fabulous new cities take the best of what is on offer from around the world, especially from Experimental Cities, and are adaptive in taking on board the smart city technologies of digital and data and combining these with the innovative technologies of the built environment that shape and create new or existing spaces for people. 

Opportunities are in taking the greenprint for success from around the word and being adaptive to the geographical, societal, cultural, heritage, political and economic environment of the county to provide a unique environment created for the citizens of today with tomorrow in mind. Cities created for citizens. They build in the requirement of future resilience, high densities and cope with aspects such as sustainability and smart, but are adaptive to affordability and creating liveability attracting people to the city as places to work and have a better standard of living than their rural communities. Infrastructures such as transport, services provision or superfast communications networks can be installed from scratch in dedicated unencumbered environments that facilitate future proofing. Sustainability gets built in, whilst innovative build technologies and design can be used uninhibited by existing constraints. 

But the question is do they really create the environment for people centric cultures with an aspiration for green space and improved communities? The risk is over development, increased density, technologically driven, opaque environments that lack character and cities where people exist as opposed to live. 

There are some unique, exciting and rapidly evolving examples – Shenzhen, China; Songdo, South Korea; Tianjin (Eco City), China; or Brasilia, Brazil. Ten years ago these cities just simply did not exist yet today are already housing new city citizens.

• Evolving

Evolving cities are creating the future city that is capable of competing on the world stage, but are doing so by developing around complex existing constraints and established city patterns and identities. 

Existing river routes, underground rail networks, complex road systems, heritage buildings or established city hubs for business, shopping or living make encompassing the Future City concept a creative challenge. Yet these cities are embracing both their heritage and the new drivers of city living to truly take on the concept of city resilience in a way that in some ways make these one of the most fascinating challenges of today. Adapting an historic icon for tomorrows city citizen, whilst maintaining all the makes the city what it is today, is a challenge but is essential in adapting it for tomorrow’s future. 

The heritage gives these cities a competitive legacy hub from which to adapt and build out the city of tomorrow. But the ageing and constraining infrastructures can stifle growth, alongside an inflexibility to change from the current city citizen requiring a need for a clear strategy and strong leadership to set the vision. Often less attractive than Experimental or New cities for pulling in private finance the need for government intervention is key in pump priming funding of the key components of infrastructure to unlock the true potential of these archetypal cities that have to embrace all that is on offer in order to survive the emergence of innovative cities elsewhere nationally and globally. The key risk is adapt to survive or become obsolete and less attractive. 

It is exciting to see our major cities embrace the future today as they pick up the mantle of adaptive change. There are some great examples: – New York, USA; London, UK; Tokyo, Japan; and Sydney, Australia.

•  Developing

Developing cities are on a different scale of the Future City evolution. There is a strong governmental drive to develop these core cities to the next iteration to facilitate wider economic development. Driven by government investment that recognises that funding for cities provides direct economic benefit through both the urban environment and infrastructure making these cities attractive to business and delivering social infrastructure, housing and commercial attractiveness to private financiers through FDI ultimately brings exponential economic growth. 

As these cities in turn become more attractive they equally become more competitive on the global stage and increase the potential to attract investment. A core component in a city’s, or indeed a country’s, ability to survive as a Future City player globally. 

Developing cities are not yet the finished article perhaps, but have a unique mix as the city attracts those from the surround areas to it for work and the opportunities ultimately for a better standard of living. The juxtaposition is that of a mix of extreme poverty mixed with Future City pockets all intertwined making these cities in themselves a unique ecosystem of societal and economic hierarchies. 

Infrastructure invariably struggles to keep pace with growth and fails to keep up with the growing pace of demand, which further constraints the city’s ability to achieve its potential. Congestion, pollution and slums are recognisable characteristics and much needs to be done to drive the strategy for growth that facilitates a level of investment from both the governments and private sector to achieve a standard of living that is beneficial for all city dwellers as these cities struggle to compete, other than by volume of urban citizen, on the world stage and to provide a city environment that is aspirational for Future City living for tomorrow. 

The mix of living evident as these cities struggle to meet the growth and pace of change as citizens flock to their midst in a bid for a piece of the attractiveness of these Developing Cities rapidly obtain the title mega city without the key infrastructures to enable them to truly be a place of potential work and improved living, examples include: – Rio de Janerio, Brazil; Mumbai, India; Lagos, Nigeria; and Jakarta, Indonesia, all of whom struggle and evidence the extremes of city living.

It is clear to me that in order to be truly resilient our Future Cities of today have to go through distinct cycles of evolution. In this the age of rapidly increasing urbanisation it is fascinating to look at our cities through the four distinct lenses of Experimental, New, Evolving and Developing in considering how they will evolve to become the Future Cities in this, the urban millennium.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.