Cities smartening up

Cities are looking to digital technology to revolutionize the way we live. In order to make the most of limited space in rapidly urbanizing areas, cities are experimenting with smart city approaches like digital twins, modular design, and robotics. These approaches embrace a sustainable and citizen-centric philosophy, promising a higher quality-of-life for all residents. Maximizing the built environment through technological innovation could also further cities’ position as vibrant economic hubs, making cities increasingly influential economic and political entities.

It's Alive: A vision for Tall Buildings in 2050 by ARUP proposes a conceptual vision for living in tall buildings in 2050, intended to start conversations about the future of cities. The conceptual building accounts for global challenges like climate change, aging populations, and automation. In this scenario, the future of tall buildings is adaptive, resilient, robotic, human-centered, circular, inclusive, integrated, intelligent, regenerative, and innovative.

Future of Stations by ARUP explores trends surrounding urban mobility and infrastructure. This report invites city planners and owners, designers, and developers of stations to question what stations can look like in the future. The image of urban transportation in 2050 emphasizes human-centered infrastructure, digital experiences, diversification of spatial uses, seamless service integration, sustainability, and urban regeneration.

In Perth 2050, four Western Australian engineers and designers at ARUP establish visions for the city of Perth in 2050. The visions respond to UN sustainable development goals and are themed Building Sustainable and Resilient Cities. The four visions are: digital services and districts, seamless and integrated mobility, sustainable urban water management, and resilient urban systems.

Make or Break by the Global Governance Futures (GGF) 2030 Fellows uses scenarios to explore 3 key questions about the future of cities in 2030:

1. Will we see cities instead of national governments carry out sustainable development initiatives?
2. What role will cities play in the future of global governance?
3. What will cities, mayors and civil society groups need in order to jointly advocate for and lead policy changes?

The biggest factors contributing to cities' role in global governance are: relationship between cities and their nation states, degree of privitatization within cities, provision of security in cities, degree of city-to-city cooperation, degree of virtual citizenship, and degree of backlash against globalization.

Ethiopia - Regional Cities by ARUP and Cities Alliance explores the combined power of rapid urbanization and a youthful population to help African cities achieve inclusive economic growth. Ethiopia in particular is rapidly urbanizing. There, regional cities have a relatively high degree of political autonomy.

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