Greenfield cities have been able to take decades-old best practices into account as they are developed. These cities—Shenzhen, China, and Songdo, South Korea—are only 20 or 25 years young and show us where the future is headed.
This video takes a look at these cities to explore unique aspects of water supply, transportation, community connection, and sustainability. The director, Oscar Boyson, travels around the globe to talk to the various communities and deliver what seems to be the final message: that cities connect people and are made of people, and people are the future of cities.
He quotes Jane Jacobs from her famed The Death and Life of Great American Cities to point out that “Lowly, unpurposeful, and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow.”
Boyson proposes the issue and questions how we will solve this difficult formula during the fastest growth pace of cities in history. He shows that 70% of the world’s population will reside in cities in the year 2050, climbing at unprecedented rates.
Urban density, instead of sprawl, is the best solution for sustainability and will be top of mind as we race to create smart cities. Any urban planning will be driven by technology, but the right balance of that with community right now is unknown.
