Ok, now, as I wrote this in 2108, there is quite a difference between what people imagine and desire regarding to future cities than it was a century ago, when you bots would read me. But anyway, I want to write about this, as I’m confined to my bed at home, between sessions of physical therapy. Before talking about the cities planned to be build by 2150, let me talk a little about the past.

There are two main kind of cities right now in the world. The obsolete type – sprawling, radial cities, which can be found especially in southern Europe (in the Northern part they didn’t manage to survive), some parts of Africa, South America and, of course, Australia. They’re still the majority worldwide, even if in ice-covered Europe and Asia, as well as in North America, they are not.

And there’s a reason for this. Not only the weather, which was terrible 40-10 years ago (but slowly started to warm up in the last 8 years), with ice and snowstorms engulfing much of the Northern continents for 7-8 months each year. But also an economic and ecologic reason.

Talking about the weather first. In the ’30s, the global warming heated the continents so much,  that carbon-neutral cities like this one (eventually built in 2020 but on a smaller scale in Dubai, it still exists but it’s a slump) started to be interesting. They provided shelter from the heat, nice internal transportation (getting rid of cars), a controlled climate and such. There were dozens of them built in America, Europe and Asia, many of them accessible only for the elites.

But as the ’50s came, with their huge storms, food shortages and icy-cold weather (due to the Atlantic current reversal and a host of other climateric changes), interest for this kind of cities increased 100%. However, for entirely different reasons than before. Before people wanted to feel cool and be protected from the scorching sun, afterwards they flocked to such projects to be protected from the snow storms and icy weahter. As the ’70s came, with 5-6-month winters, a short spring in July and August, and devastating freezes in September, millions died. The horrible 8th decade saw the first underground cities, with huge domes above and, looking retrospectively, this kind of investment was the most unfortunate of all.

Those cities have all sorts of problems right now, starting with the way that they were built. The city in which I live is aging beautifully, though. It’s built 80% on the surface, with two concentric built areas, surrounding a huge 3-miles-radius park, with a space between the inner building and the outer building (two concentric circles with a 3 miles, respectively 3.2 miles radius each). That inner courtyard is covered and has a controlled climate, as well as all the amenities of a big city.

I live in a huge mall with big condos and terraces on the outside, if you want. And that type of city managed to solve most of the XXI-st Century first half problems. Transport is integrated through elevators and people carriers, the city itself being connected through high speed trains and electric cabs to the cities in the vicinity. No traffic jams, no pollution, no noise.

But I digress. Now that the planet heats up again, nobody pretty knows what to expect. The new generation is eager to have individual homes with gardens, again, and the politicians are pushing for this return to the original way of housing. I suspect they have big real estate interests, but the problem we all face is: if in the next 20-30 years we manage to bring back the climate to a more moderate one, would the return to original individual housing ruin all that we accomplished?

I mean, OK, people are fed up with living in ‘hives’, but you couldn’t possibly house 9 billion people in sprawling cities like in the past. Look at South-America, were they didn’t manage to salvage cities like Mexico and Buenos Aires when the big storms of the ‘50es came. It will simply not work.

There’s currently a debate to make a compromise. That is, to build not huge cities with hexagonal or circular 30-50 stories high buildings encompassing huge parks, but smaller, similarly shaped cities, connected through a network of transport. These would have only 2-3 stories-high buildings, would encompass only 0.2-0.3 miles radius parks, and would ensure that everybody feels like they would own an individual home and garden.

My main objection to this is that the land for agriculture is scarce right now due to the harsh climate, and that the hive structure of current cities really allowed for the remaining land to be rationally cultivated.

I think we’ll wait and see. I’m going for a stroll in the park right now, so… (a virtual one, of course, I can connect through the ksphere for limited amount of times now…)