Will living in the city of the future be like The Jetsons, or maybe a bit more lo-fi? Recently, two cities have presented very different visions.
Paris may be the city of love, but it’s also the city of 64,000 cars travelling the Champs-Élysées each day. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has a vision for a “15-minute city(external link)” – one in which everything you could need is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride, and as part of that, and ahead of Paris hosting the 2024 Olympics, the Champs-Élysées will be redesigned as a public park(external link), which would cut the carbon footprint of the street by half.
Architect Philippe Chiambretta said “We have upset the balance of the very nature that we intended to control and it is now within the urban fabric, which concentrates 80% of carbon emissions on 2% of the Earth’s surface, that the environmental revolution must take place.”
From old cities to new, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman launched “The Line” (external link)– a 170km stretch of hubs, powered by renewable energy, linked by high speed rail and operated by artificial intelligence. The Prince says “The Line” will be home to 1,000,000 people, and have “zero streets, zero cars, and zero carbon emissions.”