Since 1990 over 40 countries, mostly in Asia, Africa and Middle East, have been building hundreds of new cities – Indonesia alone is building 27 of them. These urban mega-projects which are completely separated by existing cities, are built as political (as Astana in Kazakhstan), logistics (as Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka), industrial (as Duqm in Oman), trade or financial hubs (as Forest City in Malaysia) with the hope to become engines of growth for a country.

It looks great for urban planner, but there are several issues that make these mega-projects look not very good.

The first is Ecology. Most of the new cities are marketed as “sustainable city” or “eco-city”, all words that have very little to do with reality. For example, Forest City is promoted as an “eco-city”, but it is built on 14 square kilometres of land reclaimed from the sea by shipping in 162 million cubic meters of sand, with enormous consequences for the marine environment.

The second is Planning. Many new cities that claim to be innovative actually simply apply some marketing-oriented trick like solar panels, electric cars, and sometimes of an efficient public transport system to reduce emissions. Unfortunately, this is not enough: new technologies give opportunities to create a better urban environment, but when we look at the planning and the renderings of these new cities, we see that the urban models used are those of the current cities, or even worst in the case of some Chinese new cities, the urban layouts of an idealised European historic cities. There is no attempt at understanding how technology does change the way we live, and to imagine urban life in the 21st century.

The third is Short-Termism. Governments have a great motivation to build new cities: first, they can cash-in on the differential between rural land and development land, a 100-fold price increase; secondly, new city construction jump-start the economy in one place by creating jobs and therefore tax revenues; thirdly, governments hope that by attracting new urban dwellers they will increase their tax base. All this pushes governments to start new cities as a herd of cash cows, loosing sight of the enormous opportunities that they offer, and leading to all the planning and ecological nightmares that we see.

The fourth is Politics. Often cities are built by edict and not by analysis. Still Forest City, as example, is being built more as a political slap to Singapore, than on the basis of a costs-benefits analysis.

The result of short-term vision, politics, bad planning, and fake ecology results in cities that either are empty because nobody can afford a home there, or become a sort of elitist mega-condo as the only people interested in living there are the wealthy part of the society.

What I just described would make the simple thought to build a new city as a crazy idea, but I will argue that actually what is crazy is not to build new cities that are truly sustainable, engines of human development and work, and battlefields where to test the conditions of urban life in the hyper-technological era.

So, let’s build new cities, but let’s do it right. Which means that (a) government should start thinking long-term (not easy, but not impossible); (b) urban planner should be allowed to test and implement their ideas; (c) location and main scope of a new city should be evaluated technically and not politically; (d) ownership models should be re-evaluated; (e) special legislative zones should be created to test innovative legislation on transport, resources, waste management, etcetera; and finally, (f) each new city should be designed to have a degree of adaptability and transformation around a core composed of movement and technological networks and institutional elements, to react to changing dynamics and to adjust if some assumptions turned to be wrong.

In conclusion, new cities provide an opportunity that we cannot miss, particularly because modern life and technological progress have made the expansion and upgrade of old cities unpractical and expensive. On the contrary we should embrace this opportunity and test urban ideas, supported by enlightened governments ready to establish zones of special legislation. These experimental urban hubs could reveal the patterns to be used in future cities, while at the same time by inheriting functions that an old cities cannot accommodate or support, allow old cities to regain their natural size, to increase their green areas, to re-discover their beauty and to explore new economic and social roles.

Sal Autorino, SAAND-LAB

References

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/12/why-hundreds-of-completely-new-cities-are-being-built-around-the-world/#603262f514bf
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/03/29/5-new-cities-that-are-set-to-shake-up-the-future-for-better-or-worse/#4f43028a7250
• https://newcities.org/perspectives-where-do-master-planned-cities-fit-in-the-new-urban-agenda/
• https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/28/where-world-newest-cities-look-same
• https://gefira.org/en/2018/01/23/chinas-next-empty-city-will-be-the-capital-of-egypt/