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The New + the Next

PARADISE FOUND?

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The New + the Next

PARADISE FOUND?

By Pallabi Munsi and Nick Fouriezos

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WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because the way we live is changing faster than you can imagine.

By Pallabi Munsi and Nick Fouriezos

It’s an epic sort of poetry, one of longing, temptation, needs met and dreams
deferred. No, we’re not talking about Milton. This is the modern race to find,
and define, the paradises of tomorrow. If that seems melodramatic, perhaps you
haven’t been awake this past year, when the way the world is designed became
more crucial than ever. Join this trip into the near future, of giant jellyfish
and oxygenating parking garages, of mass surveillance but also improved safety,
of cities on stilts — or maybe even in the clouds.

VISIONS (OR DELUSIONS) OF GRANDEUR

Way of the Jellyfish. Sometimes, nature provides. Jellyfish and mangrove roots
are desalinating machines, converting saltwater into the usable fresh stuff as
easily as taking a breath. Water wars are already beginning, with a lack of
access to potable water a looming city-killer as climate change and population
growth strain the world supply — despite the fact that 71 percent of the globe
is made of water. Picture the solution: a city-wide jellyfish or a mile-wide
mangrove, effortlessly pumping fresh water for millions, a living freshwater
factory. Crazy? Futurists in the United Arab Emirates, the desert-strewn Gulf
nation, think it’s a real possibility for coastal cities. Read more on OZY.

Dreams of Dubai. The UAE is just half a century old, yet its most populous city,
Dubai, is at the forefront of exploring humanity’s potential (even as it reckons
with its own massive gap between haves and have-nots). Its Museum of the Future
is scheduled to open this year by flipping the museum concept — focusing on
incubating new ideas rather than calcifying ancient ones. One vision: 3D-printed
cities, using a “city kit” that would combine biotech and robotics to construct
100 percent self-sufficient cities in weeks rather than years. Another?
“AutoFarms,” urban agriculture that would grow in parking garages made obsolete
by self-driving cars, automatically delivering fresh foods locally with an
Amazon-like knowledge of your personal preferences.

Breaking New Ground. The concept of utopias has always been nebulous, as one
person’s hell can be another’s paradise. But it is safe to say that during the
pandemic, people are more actively rethinking their ideas about what a perfect
community should look like. That ranges from small, individual shifts — like
this YouTuber who left California to build a 50-acre tiny house village — to
seismic societal ones, with Burning Man-esque soul searchers taking over Tulum,
Mexico. In September, 19 Black families bought land in Georgia to build a
Black-only city called Freedom amid a national racial reckoning. And a
cryptocurrency CEO wants to build a new blockchain-reliant city in the Nevada
desert — with his company acting as the local government.

Stormy Skies Ahead. If you’re going to start building upward, why not reach for
the stars? Humanity has long held idyllic images of a sky-bound future. But we
predict such ambitions will prove less Jetsons and more Altered Carbon, the
Netflix sci-fi show about a not-so-distant world where the rich live forever in
the clouds and the poor are grimly earthbound. The distance between the haves
and have-nots is already huge monetarily. Soon there could also be a geographic
gulf, with the wealthiest not just living above us but beyond us, as
billionaires like Elon Musk plan private spaceship missions to the moon, Mars
and other places far from the problems of mere earthlings.

“Smart” Cities. Will future historians say that the new world order began with
the Alexa Echo or Google Nest in your bedroom? Smart devices make smart homes,
and cities are a collection of homes. Some smart shifts are small and benign,
such as Barcelona, Spain, creating traffic lights that adjust to public buses
and ambulances. Others may not be so innocuous: mass surveillance enhanced by
mass public Wi-Fi, road sensors for self-driving cars and ubiquitous
facial-recognition cameras. The latter are already being tested in Chinese
classrooms, where they scan students’ faces to measure their active engagement.
And with Delta Air Lines recently showcasing a “parallel reality” board that can
deliver tailored information to different travelers at the same time in the same
place, the ads that follow you online after Google searches will soon follow you
in real life too.

HOW COVID-19 CHANGES EVERYTHING

Pastoralia. Driving through Vermont, an ostensibly rural U.S. state, evokes a
different definition of “rural” than, say, Georgia. The latter is miles and
miles of uninhabited Southern farmland, while the former is New England pastoral
— a landscape that never quite escapes humanity, with white farmhouses and
pastel cottages perfectly spaced in acre-wide increments to allow for long,
verdant expanses. The Vermontification of the world could be inevitable as city
dwellers consider moving away from downtowns after finding remote work during
the pandemic. Such trends would create less clogged urban cores and more soft,
rolling, suburban communities that stretch and connect cities across wider
distances. In short: People flee the major cities, creating a world of more,
smaller cities.

The “15-Minute City.” Paradoxically, the spreading out of cities could cause
their downtown hearts to condense. As we’ve mentioned, self-driving cars may
make parking lots — which take up a huge chunk of most modern cities — less
necessary. Why? You don’t need a parking spot if your car is constantly dropping
you off and picking you up. Some cities closed streets to car traffic during
COVID, allowing people to walk and enjoy outdoor dinner, retail and
entertainment. Locals soon found the world at their feet, a vision that may be
preferable going forward. Creativity could win out over efficiency, with quirky
downtown tiny homes, for example, replacing soulless skyscraper apartments.
Saudi Arabia is going a step further with “The Line,” a new city planned within
its NEOM business zone along the Red Sea that will have no cars, no streets and
zero carbon emissions. Travel times within the city aren’t supposed to exceed 20
minutes, thanks to high-speed public transportation.

The Globalizers. Meet the gentrifiers bringing their affluence across borders.
While those who preach multiculturalism and diversity should welcome an influx
of immigrants, people resettling en masse during the pandemic are causing huge
infrastructure problems for the most popular destinations. Mexico City, a
historic hub for transplants with a crumbling public transit system, has been
overwhelmed by “influencers.” Digital nomad visas have surged as a way to
encourage COVID-19 tourism, yet Bali was forced to finally reform its system
after a decade of quietly allowing nomads to run amok. Many globalizers boost
the economy but flout health standards and cultural mores while exacerbating
inequality, creating just as many problems as they solve.

Share My Location. The pandemic all but forced people to get comfortable with
being tailed, particularly in nations that implemented contact tracing, with
apps tracking their every move. But even if you trust your government, are you
sure you trust Google and Apple to protect that profitable information, without
trying to monetize or weaponize it? Last year, both tech companies announced a
COVID-19 tracking system designed for public health researchers to follow the
virus’ path.

CLIMATE OF TRANSFORMATION

The Heat Is On. There are a number of practical ways cities can adapt to climate
change, from enhancing battery storage to building smarter and
alternative-energy grids. And action is necessary, given that 40 percent of the
world lives within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the coasts, which are most
affected by global warming. After Hurricane Sandy, New York City committed $615
million to build more than five miles of levees to control water flow across
Staten Island. Copenhagen is building dikes, while the Xiong’an New Area near
Beijing is experimenting with wetland and forest development to reduce the urban
heat island effect. Learn More on OZY.

World on Stilts. If it feels like the ground has shifted beneath you lately,
imagine living in Bangladesh. In the last three decades, the South Asian nation
has survived at least 200 natural disasters — last year alone, 1.5 million were
left homeless when the nation was ravaged by floods. Globally, there are two
novel ways to respond to emerging climate threats. One, return to a more nomadic
lifestyle, where change is the only norm. Two, build stilts. “Unused bales of
fodder or straw become steppingstones,” as one Bangladeshi told the BBC. Bamboo
can create a raised refuge, as indoor bricks lift bed frames up, with children
already getting accustomed to floating classrooms. Once safely dry, historic
sites are being raised and renovated to address changing environments, prompting
preservation concerns. The next step could be lifting us all up.

Steer Into the Waves. Colombia’s sprawling port city Barranquilla is taking the
opposite tack in the face of rising sea levels: It’s actually inching closer to
the coast. After a half-century of decay, its economy is finally awakening with
a number of tourism projects where the Magdalena River meets the Caribbean Sea.
Never mind that climate change could pour over that riverside development: The
city once prone to massive flash floods has enhanced infrastructure to stave off
the rising waves. Already touting 220 public parks, Barranquilla committed to
quadrupling its green cover while planting a quarter-million trees in seven
years — necessary shade given the sticky Colombian heat that often sits in the
80s. Read more on OZY.

Rising Sun. If you want to see whether the world’s ambitious sustainability
goals can be achieved, look to the East. After all, if the billions of people
crammed into sprawling South Asian and Pacific Rim cities can keep growing
without cooking the planet, mankind will have dodged a major bullet, as Parag
Khanna writes for OZY. This is also where some of the grandest smart city plans
live, from the UAE’s Masdar to India’s Amaravati and China’s Tianjin Eco-City,
districts with dreams of going fully green with self-driving electric cars and
zero-emission buildings. Their impact is decidedly small-time thus far, as their
populations combined could fit in one neighborhood of the Chinese city of
Chongqing. Read more on OZY.

THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE: POLITICS, NOT TECH

Slamming on the Brakes. The tech for self-driving cars is already here, and it
is poised to dramatically disrupt the ways our communities are structured — but
only if politicians can get their heads around it first. It’s a thorny issue
even for the smartest minds: Everything in modern cities is built around cars,
from parking spots to zoning laws. Less sprawling cities, such as New Orleans,
Albuquerque and Tucson, were deemed to be among the U.S. cities most practically
ready to adopt autonomous vehicles, while Baltimore and Fort Worth, Texas, were
by far the worst. One Dutch design company plotted plans for a bikes-only city
in Colorado, and a state senator from Los Angeles is trying to press the pedal
early on a comprehensive strategy, but federal lawmakers remain stuck in neutral
when it comes to mapping a new direction.

Brewing Dystopias. The combined budget shortfall for American cities and towns
is likely to reach $360 billion by 2022. But if the pandemic continues to bring
mass unemployment, that gap could surge even higher, both because of dwindling
tax revenues and rising crime. As Carnegie South Asia director Milan Vaishnav
tells OZY, recessions are often correlated with rising crime. Murders, for
example, spiked during the Great Depression. In that case, we might see more
aggressive policing against Black and brown communities already facing
disproportionately punitive outcomes in the U.S. criminal justice system. That
could give elected leaders fits as they try to adopt new tech and adapt to fresh
ideas while also having less money to work with and more crimes to contend with.

Reimagining Spaces for Women. Smart policy can lead the way if it gets some
help. Award-winning architect Lori Brown designs safe spaces that keep the
politics of the moment in mind as well. That means taking extra care while
designing abortion clinics, as many conservative states enact strict regulations
that could shutter them if they don’t meet the same standards as surgery
centers. “Our discipline has turned a blind eye to that aspect of serving the
greater good,” she says. While working along the U.S. border with Mexico, Brown
has built spaces for migrants in transition. She is editing an encyclopedia on
women in architecture and co-founded the nonprofit ArchiteXX, which advocates
for greater gender equity in the field.

Smarter Planning. While it’s a myth that no building can be built in Washington,
D.C., taller than the White House because of security concerns, there is a
maximum height limit in the district. Urban planners may now want to start
considering weight limits too. A new study shows big buildings, especially ones
in San Francisco, are causing cities to sink at the same time that water levels
are rising from climate change. Is it time to break out a scale?

HISTORY’S STRANGE VISIONS OF PARADISE

Ancient Athens. For a brief 24-year period, Athens hit a cultural peak that is
almost unparalleled throughout history: You can thank the Greeks if you’ve ever
voted, watched a movie, read a novel or “had a rational thought,” as Eric Weiner
of The Atlantic argues (perhaps with a hint of melodrama — another Greek
invention). Regardless, ancient Athens was a paradise of philosophical influence
… and a mess in tangible reality. The roads were narrow and filthy. The houses,
whether belonging to rich or poor, were shoddy. Some historians believe that
their “private squalor” led to “public opulence,” in the sense that nonlinear
buildings can be the perfect inspiration for some pretty creative thoughts.

‘Metropolis.’ Fritz Lang’s 1927 German expressionist movie Metropolis was
tremendously influential on the next century’s worth of dystopian novels and
films. It basically created a now familiar genre: a world where the uber-rich
live above poor working people, with no middle class in sight. Sound familiar?
Dubai, as well as a host of other Gulf nations thrust into wealth through their
discovery of oil, are creating modern gleaming cities that bear more than a
passing resemblance to Lang’s pre-World War II visions. As the late Syd Mead, a
designer who visited Dubai and was behind the dystopian futuristic film Blade
Runner, put it, the sheer size and ambition of urban projects in the Middle East
were “catching up to the future” — even if we’re not yet sure that’s a positive.

Arcosanti. Call it living history. This experimental town in the high desert of
Arizona was created by Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri in 1970 to
realize his principle of “arcology” — a field combining architecture and
ecology. Constrained by using only resources that minimize harm to the
environment, close to 8,000 volunteers have helped build Arcosanti over the
years. It’s never fully reached its paradise potential, in that it is more of an
educational community than a long-term one. But the precepts Soleri passed on to
dozens of architects and urban designers before his death in 2013 have
reverberated in cities across the world.

* Pallabi Munsi, OZY Author Contact Pallabi Munsi|
* Nick Fouriezos, OZY Author Contact Nick Fouriezos

February 27, 2021

TOPICS

* ASIA
* Bangladesh
* Cities
* SOCIETY
* Transportation
* United Arab Emirates
* United States

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