The Future of Cities

     Our world has come to a reckoning. We are all scrambling to find new ways to avoid the disaster that is heading our way. The disaster being the consequences of the way we choose to live our lives. What can save us from ourselves? The common answer is technology.  When most people think of technology they think of it as being new, advanced, and complicated. This is a common misconception. In fact, the most effective technologies that exist have existed for hundreds, even thousands of years. Take the wheel for example. There isn’t a more widely used, efficient piece of technology and it’s not new, advanced, nor complicated. You might be wondering, “what implications does this have for solving our man-made disaster?” Let’s look at it this way:

     Right now, humanity can be represented by students in a classroom, attempting to solve a math problem on a final exam. The students have the equation they need and all the variables required to solve for x, but instead of plugging everything in and solving the problem, the students work tirelessly to create an equation of their own. It’s not that they don’t know that they already have the equation, most of them are well aware. But they want to impress the teacher. “My equation will be better” they say. “With this new equation, we will be able to solve all math problems forever.” They don’t think about the fact that it took the creator of the current equation decades to figure it out. Everytime the students think they are nearing success they realize that their new equation creates the need for 10 other equations in order to function properly. Who knows, maybe they could eventually create a better equation, one that works more efficiently and is easier to use. The problem is, the test is timed. Before they are able to make their new equation, the teacher announces that the test is over and not a single student passed the test. Instead of using the tools available to them, tools that they knew would solve the problem if used correctly, they decided it would be a better idea to spend the entirety of their timed test looking for new tools. More advanced, and complicated tools. They failed. 

     My point? We already know what is causing the negative effects we are facing. We already know how to lessen the effects. We know everything we need to know in order to solve our problem. In the interest of retaining money, power, comfort, and convenience, we choose to ignore our solutions and look for new, “better” solutions with a time limit hanging over us. At this point, the test is long over and the stubborn students continue in their impossible endeavor. It would be remiss of me to complain without offering some sort of alternative. So here is what I propose:

     Redesigning cities. We are all taught that one of our grand challenges is to rebuild urban infrastructure. This is a flawed goal, most of our infrastructure is inefficient and does not support a sustainable lifestyle, like our highways that tear through forests and create avenues for more inefficient transport. That being said, because we are at a point where infrastructure is nearing the end of its shelf life, we have a great opportunity. Instead of rebuilding the infrastructure that has gotten us to such a bad place, we could redesign how our infrastructure works and implement something new instead. Perhaps build roads that make cars inconvenient to drive and replace parking lots with bike lots or gardens for food. Yes, it will cost a lot and yes, it will be more difficult than sticking to what we know. But when the alternative is chaos and the reward is a better future, will we really choose an easy decline over a hard improvement? Let’s contemplate that as we analyze what some of these improvements would look like. 

     Smaller, more densely populated cities have great benefits. I know the idea of having a big house and some land is appealing, but we have to think about what is best for everyone, not just ourselves. Centralized living spaces like apartment complexes decreases the amount of land we use for housing development and makes access to resources like water and sanitary piping much easier. With more people in a smaller space, free access to effective public transportation becomes feasible. In a perfect world, there would be no roads in the way they exist today. The only modes of transportation would be by foot, bike, or public transportation like buses, subways, and trains. Another benefit to dense cities is the convenience of being able to get everything locally. If people are in one general area, they will all have access to tailors, carpenters, repairmen, and other vocational experts. When we have access to people who can make and fix things, we eliminate the need for mass production. Instead of buying things that can’t be fixed, just to throw them away and buy a new one, you buy one well made thing once, and have it repaired as many times as you can. This limits the amount of waste we produce as well as the amount of energy wasted on industrial production. 

     The cities would have no suburban area or rural homes. The only use of the bordering land would be farming and agriculture, all executed by the principles of permaculture. This allows for locally sourced food and materials that make the most efficient use of space and nutrients without draining the land of its fertility. The rest of the land outside of the cities and farms would be off limits to human development. This sounds dramatic and impossible but we have messed with natural cycles and systems that can only be fixed by being left alone for a long time. This is not to say people couldn’t stray from the cities, there would be no true barriers, but the land would be protected from development. Within the cities, buildings should be made with plants covering the majority of the surface area, providing protection from heat islands and making temperature control within the buildings more energy efficient. The landscape of the cities themselves should be built in a manner that works with the land it’s on, instead of attempting to flatten it all and create something completely new.  

     Instead of trying to replace every man-operated system with a machine, we should take the opposite approach in our new cities. Let’s take agriculture for example. Man/animal power should be the goal. As Wendell Berry suggests, instead of tractors and other gas guzzling machines, we should create better systems of animal power that avoid abuse of the worker. We should have animals pulling carts and people hand cultivating. With true permaculture, it’s really the only way, permaculture doesn’t allow for huge plowing machines or mass planting. Not only do big heavy machines compact dirt and ruin the plantations they work on, they require lots of energy and lots of space. The alternative, labor, is much more sustainable and doesn’t have to be strenuous or unfair. With the amount of people that exist in the world today and the levels of unemployment, if we paid people well we could have hundreds of people working in a comparatively small area. To avoid strain and dangerous conditions they would have frequent shift changes and work only a few hours at a time. This gives people jobs, and greatly decreases our need for artificial energy. 

In order to keep a society like this functioning, restrictions would be inevitable.  People would no longer be able to buy what they want, when they want, wherever they want. Plant based foods would only be acquirable during the season in which they grow, in order to avoid mass transportation from around the world. Certain products that we see on the shelves of every grocery store like bottled water would slowly disappear and many conveniences like amazon delivery would be made illegal. Long distance travel would be possible, but much less convenient, probably only by means of train or boat (most likely wind powered).

     I know (as usual) I sound like a crazy extremist. I know that this basic outline does not address all of the problems we would have to solve. These ideas seem like a bedtime story of some utopian society instead of a true possibility. But that’s what we (engineering students) are here for. Carrying around your metal straw and driving your electric car is comforting, but effectively does nothing to change the outcome. I urge you to think about how we impact the world with the way we choose to live. How would you redesign society? How can we use the tools we already have, to solve the problems in front of us?