What Urban Future: Do High-Tech Metropolises Dream of Electric Sheep?

Abstract

What urban trends are on the horizon and what are the possible futures of our cities? These questions were often raised during the peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic, generating a series of institutional aftershocks that seem to have left few lasting traces. Some have proposed, like the Colombian Carlos Moreno to the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, re-organising around the idea of 15-min cities—the possibility for every inhabitant to have access in 15 min to every possible urban service, from hospitals to schools, from gardens to sport activities, from marketplaces to leisure spaces, etc. Many architects have spoken of a “return to the rural”, fearing a mass exodus from congested urban centres. In the United States, the slogan of the “one-hour city”, a concept of infrastructure redevelopment aimed at making any place accessible within an hour, has had some success. Many Asian metropolises have seen a significant acceleration in urban digitalisation processes. Numerous other popular ideas also emerged between 2020 and 2021, which we will not go into here, particularly as most of them seem to have remained stuck at the level of announcements and desires rather than becoming concrete projects and policies. There are many reasons for this, but one stands out: increasingly fewer institutions (including municipalities, regions, states, and others) have the power, tools, and knowledge to really intervene in the urban future.