Future Cities

By 2050, the human population will have surpassed 9 billion people with 70 per cent of the world’s inhabitants living in cities. With the collective impact of industrial processes, this growth will strain our existing urban infrastructures and natural resources to unprecedented degree. Within the next few decades we will face life-threatening issues within our cities, such as climate change, resource shortages, waste disposal issues, pollution, traffic congestion, crime and homelessness. Our cities will need to rapidly transform to address these new urban challenges.

Creating sustainable urban landscapes for a growing population while simultaneously cutting carbon emissions will be the primary challenge of the 21st century. It will require all members of society, from governments and industry to individual citizens to make sustainable change. How we govern, design and inhabit our cities will have a fundamental impact on our collective future.

Incremental thinking is not going to help us achieve this. We need to adopt strategies that are visionary so that we can raise the game beyond what we presume possible – and explore new ideas and approaches that may lead to radical shifts in thinking, practice and the way we live. In response to this astudio have formed a think-tank and consultancy which looks to propose innovative solutions to the issues of future sustainability for the built environment and society at large.