8 Cities That Show You What the Future Will Look Like
Cities used to grow by accident. Sure, the location usually made sense—someplace defensible, on a hill or an island, or somewhere near an extractable resource or the confluence of two transport routes. But what happened next was ad hoc. The people who worked in the fort or the mines or the port or the warehouses needed places to eat, to sleep, to worship. Infrastructure threaded through the hustle and bustle—water, sewage, roads, trolleys, gas, electricity—in vast networks of improvisation. You can find planned exceptions: Alexandria, Roman colonial towns, certain districts in major Chinese cities, Haussmann’s Paris. But for the most part it was happenstance, luck, and layering the new on top of the old.
At least, that’s the way things worked for most of human history. But around the second decade of the 20th century, things changed. Cities started to happen on purpose. Beginning with New York City’s zoning laws in 1916, development began to occur by commission, not omission. Laws and regulations dictated the shape of the envelope. Functional decisions determined aesthetic outcomes—not always for the best.
So let’s jump to now: A century, plus or minus, after human beings started putting their minds toward designing cities as a whole, things are getting good. High tech materials, sensor networks, new science, and better data are all letting architects, designers, and planners work smarter and more precisely. Cities are getting more environmentally sound, more fun, and more beautiful. And just in time, because today more human beings live in cities than not.
In this year’s design issue, we’re telling the stories of some of those projects, from the detail of a new streetlight to a sacred city in flux, from masterful museums to infrastructure made for bikes (and the algorithms that run it all). The cities of tomorrow might still self-assemble haltingly, but done right, the process won’t be accidental. A city shouldn’t just happen anymore. Every block, every building, every brick represents innumerable decisions. Decide well, and cities are magic. —Adam Rogers
LA Goes LED—and Gets Connected
Los Angeles is retrofitting 4,500 miles of orange-yellow sodium-vapor streetlights with a moonlight-hued matrix of light-emitting diodes. Roads will look brighter, but they’ll also be more connected. Every energy-efficient lamp will link wirelessly to the Bureau of Street Lighting, letting headquarters know if it is on, off, broken, etc. And in the future? Lights that change in response to what’s going on around them. They might blink if a police car or ambulance is on its way or brighten for pedestrians after a ball game. While other cities around the world use LEDs to save money and add splashes of color and emphasis, LA plans to build a network that does more than show what’s happening right in front of you. It tells you something about the entire city. —Adam Rogers
An Airport in the Airport for Celebs and Other Elite Fliers
More than 70 million people passed through Los Angeles International Airport in 2014—a jet-lagged gauntlet of wheely bags and neck pillows. Now LAX is getting an upgrade, a more than $8 billion overhaul of everything from concession areas to moving walkways. Delta kicked in $229 million to rework its Terminal 5. The revamp includes Delta One, a sort of airport within the airport that caters to celebrities and the wealthy. It presages a future where airports are less ad hoc, better organized, and not so dehumanizing.
On arrival, a curbside attendant checks your name, velvet-rope-style. Once you’re checked in, it’s off to a swanky lounge, one of the most private spaces in the terminal. When it’s time to board, Delta escorts take you up a private elevator and down a private corridor to the front of the line at a priority security checkpoint.
On the way home you can opt for an express exit with Delta’s VIP Select service. You’re chaperoned to the tarmac, then a hybrid Porsche zooms you across the airfield and onto Century Boulevard where, presumably, your driver will be waiting. —Nate Berg
To Beat the Drought, LA Turns to Less-Thirsty Landscapes
The palm trees along Hollywood Boulevard may be iconic, but native to LA they are not. And as California staggers through drought, landscape architects are replacing imported plants and thirsty turf with native and drought-resistant flora. This new look—call it California Dry—is all about getting creative with textures and shapes. —Liz Stinson
Ditch the Grass
Green stuff is out in favor of decomposed granite or mulch. And rocky pathways, planters, and bridges add visual variety to a less verdant scene.
Build Structure With Succulents
Architectural plants like bold, pointy foxtail agave or the spiraling, stumpy echeveria will march along in organized rows.
Add Texture
Poofy native plants add softness and color to all that rock and regimentation. It’s a new kind of lushness—one LA probably should have had all along.
A Mobile Opera Cruises Downtown LA
To experience Hopscotch, an opera set in 24 limousines and SUVs driving around downtown LA, the audience will sit knee-to-knee with singers and musicians. Over the course of the show’s run in October and November, the cars will drive three routes, tracking a story of the search for a lost love. Actors and dancers with wireless mics will perform on the sidewalk and in cars passing by, mixing with the ballet of everyday city life.
“LA feels like the central character,” says Yuval Sharon, artistic director of the Industry, the opera company behind the production. Audience members—just 96 per performance—will also leave the cars and enter buildings and public spaces, with each walk or ride telling one of 36 chapters. You might want to attend more than once—any given audience member will see only eight chapters. —Nate Berg
An Evolving Museum Spirals Between Past and Present
A view of the entrance side of the museum. Photo by: Joe Mckendry
Shanghai has exploded skyward in recent years, throwing up rank upon rank of bristling skyscrapers. Then there’s the new Shanghai Natural History Museum. Set in a park near the Pudong financial district, the building spirals down, into the earth, like an excavation of the city’s pre-urban roots. A central courtyard (shown above) inspired by the water gardens of Suzhou is a reminder of the value that ancient Chinese culture placed on natural beauty. Around it, a honeycombed glass wall, evoking the cell structure of plants, fills the interior with sunlight.
Architect Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will says the shape of the building was inspired by the nautilus shell, but it’s also for traffic control: Chinese museums are often thronged, and the descending ramps steer crowds through a chronological tour of life on Earth. On the way, they encounter some 11,000 specimens—including a towering Mamenchisaurus skeleton and later fauna that once thrived in Shanghai’s vanishing wetlands. There’s plenty of forward-looking tech too—like green climate and water systems. (That courtyard pool helps cool the building.) It’s a thoroughly modern museum that embraces Shanghai’s exuberant futurism while reminding its inhabitants of where we all came from. —Victoria Tang
Medellín’s New Cable Cars Unify a Fractured City
Medellín is nestled in a valley high in the Andes, and many of the city’s poorest residents live in comunas they built on the steep slopes. During the ’90s, drug gangs and guerrilla fighters controlled the narrow streets. As the violence waned and people started venturing out, they came up against another challenge: It was really hard to get anywhere.
To knit together the fractured city, then-mayor Luis Pérez proposed a novel solution: cable cars. Rather than having to pick their way down perilous hillsides, people could hop in a gondola and soar to a metro station. The first Metrocable line opened in 2004 and was quickly followed by others.
“The genius of the Metrocable is that it actually serves the poor and integrates them into the city, gives them access to jobs and other opportunities,” says Julio Dávila, a Colombian urban planner at University College London. “Nobody had ever done that before.” As people of all classes started using the cars to visit “bad” neighborhoods, they became invested in their city’s fate, heralding a decade of some of the world’s most innovative urban planning. —Lizzie Wade
Combining Libraries and Parks into Safe Spaces for All
The Metrocable succeeded in connecting Medellín’s poorest neighborhoods to the rest of the city, but that wasn’t enough for Alejandro Echeverri. As the city’s director of urban projects from 2004 to 2008, the architect threw himself into tackling some of Medellín’s most challenging urban problems. His secret weapon? Beautiful design. But his efforts weren’t aimed at the rich—Echeverri insisted on working in the same low-income areas the cable cars had opened up. “A good building, a well-designed space, a dignified public transit system, a quality cultural event—these all work on a psychological level to generate a feeling that you are included in the city,” he says. That philosophy guided the design of five libraries sprinkled throughout Medellín, all surrounded by beautiful greenery. These “library-parks” were among the first safe public spaces many neighborhoods had ever seen. (After Echeverri’s tenure as director ended, the city built five more.)
But Echeverri knew he couldn’t just throw up nice buildings and expect life to improve. His department went street by street, planting trees and replacing crumbling schools. “One of the keys to Medellín’s success is that these aren’t isolated projects,” Echeverri says. They’re all woven together—cocreations, as he calls them—with the communities that use them every day. —Lizzie Wade
Community Activists Fight Back With Graffiti
Spray paint in hand, Daniel Felipe Quiceno, aka Perrograff, aims at the wall. “The lines of your signature need to be well defined,” he tells the group gathered around him for a lesson in graffiti. With a practiced flourish, he creates a sharp swoop of blue. Then he hands out aerosol cans so his students can try making their own mark on Medellín.
Since Perrograff started the Graffitour three years ago, it has brought hundreds of visitors to the once-neglected streets of Comuna 13. That’s where he grew up, amid terrible violence. To fight back, his cohort began transforming run-down corners of their town by covering them in murals that illustrate Comuna 13’s history and that memorialize murdered friends; they also started planting community gardens.
Grassroots efforts like the Graffitour have been a vital part of Medellín’s transformation, says Jota Samper, an urban planner who grew up there and now teaches at MIT. The Metrocable and library-parks are great, but “what makes these projects amazing are the neighborhoods where they are located,” he says. For his part, Perrograff hopes his community work will soon go beyond two dimensions. After years of painting flat surfaces, he’s studying to be an architect. —Lizzie Wade
The Hovenring Lets Cyclists Pedal Over the Traffic Jam
An overhead view of Eindhoven’s Hovenring. Photo by: Joe Mckendry
Eindhoven was a sleepy provincial town when a family named Philips began making lightbulbs there in 1891. Today it’s a vibrant technology and research hub, where many workers commute in from sprawling suburbs. That makes for some busy intersections that aren’t exactly bicycle-friendly. So as part of a planned network of dedicated bike roads, Eindhoven asked design firm ipv Delft to come up with a way for cyclists to fly over the stop-and-go. Completed in 2012, the $8 million Hovenring is the rare piece of cycling infrastructure that isn’t an afterthought—a green strip alongside parked cars or a bike symbol painted on a bus lane. The 1,000-ton steel deck is suspended by 24 cables from a towering space needle. Dressed up in LEDs, it looks ready to spin up and away into the northern sky. The city even lowered the roadbed below to keep the approach ramps at a nice, easy slope. The Hovenring is a joy for thousands of commuters who now pedal into and out of Eindhoven every day—and an emphatic statement by a city that knows where it’s going. —Alex Davies
