Future Cities

The idea of the cities of the future is a delicate one. For half a decade we have witnessed the steady erosion of the city as a centralized social entity. As sprawl continues unabated, we have to wonder what the city of the future needs to be. There is little need for the city in a traditional sense. For centuries it has been the nexus of interaction between minds. But the internet has usurped that function. Likewise it has begun to dislodge the city as the primary commercial center of our society. In the U.S., the city is disolving into a paper thin network of semi-urban nodes. One need no longer reside in the metropolis to be current or up to date with the latest theories, trends, social fads, or the cutting edge in music, art, and literature. The newest trends seem more at home on the web than in store windows... so the man sitting in Iowa can be as in touch with the cutting edge as the woman sitting in Manhattan. The romantic idea of a booming metropolis is just a myth we hold on to for the sake of nostalgia. Something to stem the vertigo induced by the disolution of place.

So what role can a city play in the future? Is there some other need that massive human interaction can satisfy? Or must we realign our expectations with regard to the metropolis and begin constructing a network of cosmopolitain, semi-urban attractors that distribute goods and culture evenly across the spectrum? There's been a lot of talk about the need to revitalize the city center, but I am becoming more convinced that this is simply nostalgia for the archaic, or quaint. The mourning of a lost era.

What the cities can provide though is critical mass. They may not be the nexus of inspiration, but they can certainly be the furnace of large-scale cultural change. There seem to be two forces at work in the world, a generative, creative force which brings novelty into the world, and a accelerating force (like a wind-tunnel) that puts such novel concepts to the test. Great leaps of complexity require a lot of energy in addition to novel concepts and the great urban centers can certainly provide that energy. But in reality they are just cultural factories... the cultural studios where the cultural prototypes are made can be anywhere.