Our Changing Cities

Design for a changing world

Cities. For more and more of us the future has so much to do with them. By 2050, it’s estimated that an additional 2.5 billion people will be living in them – that’s two out of every three people. And, despite the coronavirus pandemic casting a shadow across normal life, the trend of urban growth is expected to continue. Just as growing cities are a mega-trend, megacities are a global trend.

As we design products for a changing world, we’re continually looking to grow awareness of the drivers of change, and part of what makes cities so endlessly fascinating is their ability to bring a new context to our design thinking.

Defining a city is one thing, but figuring out what motivates people to live in one is another. Generally speaking, we can equate the popularity of cities with the opportunities they present. Suketu Mehta, writing in the fantastic compendium of essays Shaping Cities (Phaidon, 2018) describes them as “our great mark on the planet...the purest expression of who we are as human beings – the best and worst parts of us”.

In ancient Greece, the answer to city growth was a system of grids; proportion was seen as equivalent to beauty. The Garden City movement of the early 1900s proposed self-contained communities – small “smokeless, slum less cities” – with homes, businesses and agriculture surrounded by greenbelts. It was exported around the world. In the modernist apartments of the mid-19th century, organised around radically rethought kitchens with improved hygiene and sanitation, we see a drive for post-war modernisation and renewal.

In today’s post-manifesto world, we see many ways to accommodate people, from ranks of cookie-cutter apartment blocks in Seoul, Singaporean ‘ground scrapers’, luxury apartments in ultra-tall and thin New York skyscrapers (a result of the peculiar ability to purchase “air rights” from adjacent properties). At city scale, however, the predominant trend is to become smarter and greener, with micro mobility, electrification and car-free zones common themes. California’s ambitious goal of using 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045 is driving innovation, while San Jose is the largest city in the US to ban natural gas infrastructure from many new residential buildings.

It’s a deviation from the accepted city planning approach of previous decades; that is, you can live anywhere you want, and the city will build the infrastructure to move you to where you need to be.

However, as travel distances increase in tandem with commuter numbers, life becomes more complicated, not less – which is why Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno proposed the “ville du quart d’heure”, or quarter-hour city, to Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. The benefits of the 15-minute city include more self-sufficient communities within each arrondissement of the French capital, the ecological benefits that result from a move away from the “oil-era priorities of roads and car ownership”, and a reduction in the stress and anxiety of city life.

As a concept, it’s not new – Melbourne has developed 20-minute neighbourhoods with schools, parks and other amenities within a 20-minute walk, bike ride or public transport commute. Detroit’s 20-minute city is based on its defunct streetcar grid. Copenhagen in Denmark and Utrecht in the Netherlands have both introduced “hyper proximity” to meet the needs of city dwellers.