Future Perfect. Simple.

I will be brief. For once. Last Month here I described various more or less (mostly less) attractive visions for a livable, durable and workable city of the future. Most of what I could find as I searched for places that looked like somewhere some of us might enjoy, might call lovely, might call home, …

Shaping a Usable Future

Frtiz Lang's "Metropolis" We have tried here in the last months to describe how our cities, where more than half the world's population now lives, (80% of all Americans live in cities) are obsolete, and are failing and will more acutely fail to operate as usable human communities in the years ahead. This obsolescence and failure is …

Challenges for the Next City

A regular reader here asked me a question the other day. He said: "You talk about the challenges facing the next cities, but I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean." So to be as clear as I can, I invite you to read the text below. It is an edited version of an article from The …

The Next City – An Inquiry Begins

Lisbon, Portugal In recent months we have had the extraordinary opportunity to visit many cities around the world, from Istanbul to Cairo, Lisbon to Rochester, New York to Portland. Some we have visited many times, some for only a fleeting moment. But we have tried to think about each place, tried to get to know …