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    The Future of the World in 10000 Cities  

As well as the dozens of cities shown on the atlas above and in the list below, 
many more are viewable at the CASE STUDIES page.

VIENNA

Vienna: In the future, all of the buildings of Vienna are veneered with algae cladding that not only capture solar energy but also feed on carbon dioxide and fix it into the building walls, rendering the city "carbon negative" and ecofriendly.

Future Wellington - a Middle Earth Utopia

Wellington:  After a cataclysmic earthquake, and a massive sea level rise, New Zealand's capital emerges like a tranquil agrarian shire from Middle Earth.

Chepstow Castle on the River Wye near a bridge to England

Chepstow:   Chesptow becomes the guardian gateway of the River Wye, acting to clean up a long abused British river.

Tokyo in a Godzilla-like the future

Tokyo:  after nuclear catastrophe, a ‘moonbase’ architectural form becomes fashionable.

  London 2121 
Chihuahua city in the future

Chihuahua City:   An urban restoration program of desert willows slowly 'Greenifies' one of Mexico's most polluted cities; whilst an Agave craft economy grows to build sustainable rustic eco homes.

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Como:   In this ancient alpine city of the Italian Alps, a 2000 year old planning blunder by Julius Caesar is reversed whereby the city's swampland is regenerated to act as a natural filter for Como’s sewage, and the town is resurrected -- as it once was in pre-Caesar times -- on the alpine hills nearby.

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New Orleans: In this scenario of New Orleans' future, giant sea walls and dykes are foregone in favor of permeable networks of built-up bridges and the redevelopment of urban wetlands. Rather than fighting against sea-level rise, the city is restructured to tolerate it. As part of this strategy, the city's architecture grows upwards, to keep its citizens dry during growing floods and rising tides.

SPRINGFIELD

Springfield:   After decades of neglect, the highways to and from Springfield fall into a state of dysfunction. Instead of investing in highway repair, though, the citizens decide  to invest their resources into more valuable city projects, like outdoors education, public parks and music festivals. They then sing aloud their philosophy of highways: "Let the roads outta here slowly disappear. Who really needs 'em? It's so nice here!"

Future of London

London:   Pensioners, schoolkids and environmentalists band together to protest against government neglect of social and environmental welfare. Together they occupy and reconstruct the Tower of London to enclose a massive inner city ecovillage, transforming unused offices into residential buildings, sowing gardens on street-corners to grow food, and setting up small sustainable businesses to trade among each other.

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The city of Gaia becomes the city of Mother Earth
Future of Paraguay

Salto del Guairá: The cascading waterfalls of Salto del Guairá were blown away by the Paraguayan military government in the 1980s  to build a dam. By 2121 AD, though, both the falls and the town have re-emerged in splendid style as the dam has collapsed through neglect and local native people regain control of their ancient land.

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Puno: To lessen their impact on the sacred but eco-challenged lake Titicaca, the native Uros of Peru build ‘light as air' homes, made from alpaca hair, which can glide within the clouds in the realm of the revered condor.

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Zakynthos: the citizens of the capital of the Greek island of Zakynthos resurrect the 'direct democracy principles' of ancient times before voting for decentralized community run renewable energy projects and a conservation program aimed at preserving the island's much adored wildflowers.

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Wolverhampton: a center of the industrial revolution during the Victorian Age, Queen Victoria herself once characterized Wolverhampton as a 'large & dirty town'. By 2121, though,  Wolverhampton has transformed into an iconic sweet-scented 'clean and green' city through the whole-scale adoption of 'Green manufacturing'.

The future of Costa Rica

Quepos: The woodland organisms of this Costa Rican city begin a conversation with humans about how to transform the city toward 'phyto-inclusiveness'

Russian city in the Antarctic

New Orenburg: The melting polar ice caps make it possible to set up new 'energy cities' in the Antarctic.

Walsall in the Future

Walsall: In Walsall's future, the inspiration comes from the past as it is retro-styled and retro-fitted toward greater sustainability.

The Future of Budapest

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Budapest: Roadway horticulture, self-help solar energy, and the community spirit of immigrant communities transforms the city into a forested green utopia.

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San Gimignano: This historical hilltop Tuscan town preserves a unique heritage and landscape by keeping it's organic saffron fields and unpolluted ecofriendly vineyards away from all forms of pesticide and genetically modified organisms.

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Flagstaff: an Arizona city transforms into a scenic sustainable wonderland.

SHANGHAI

Shanghai: China's largest city develops the art and science of professional pedestrianism as a sustainable pathway to a crimeless compact ecofriendly city.

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Stuttgart: The city that invented the automobile decides to close down all its car factories -- transforming the landscape into a green wine making utopia.

TORONTO

Toronto: cargo trucks are swapped for 'eco drones', which, unencumbered by the weight of humans, are supposed to fly around speedily without using much energy. The ground level streets and roads can then be repurposed for pedestrianism, playgrounds and parties.

Future of Austria

Graz: a super-clean technotopia in Austria's south where messy machines and messy people are banished forever.

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Wuppertal: The original monorail city builds more and more sky-trains and flying trains of various styles -- all in aerial space. With so much commuting going on ten, twenty, fifty feet above street level, there’s less demand for ground transportation and more space opens up for citizens to walk about freely and to develop lanes and lanes of pretty urban gardens.

Future China

Yiyang: Yiyang's episodically polluted waterways are rescued from to provide habitat for a long lost dolphin species.

Taipei City in the future

Taipei:  The ecological knowledge of Taiwan's indigenous tribes, such as the Atayal and Amis, is resurrected to help construct a new sustainable capital.

Brownsville, Texas, in the future

Brownsville: residents of this coastal Texas city protest against Musk's techno-crazed ideology by banning all Space X's space garbage -- as well as X's cyberspace pollution -- from their municipal limits.

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Perth: Through a combination of massive climate change and a myriad of uranium mining mishaps, the Western Australian city of Perth becomes a disaster zone. However, using ancient aboriginal knowledge, a multi-ethnic group of survivors are able to eek out an existence and then resurrect a prosperous arid zone utopia using appropriate-level desert technologies.  

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Sinaia: The marginalized Roma community refurbish a decaying set of abandoned hydropower stations to create a recycled Utopian city in the Transylvanian Alps of Romania.

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Birmingham
Maldives' future

Malé: Throughout the capital of the Maldives in 2121, there are extensive ecology zones where wastewater can be processed through plant-based recycling systems.

Future Paris
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Timbuktu: The ancient university city of Timbuktu is re-devoted to combatting desertification in the African Sahel.

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San Diego: A submerged suburb of San Diego is resurrected within the sea by recycling the US Navy submarine fleet.

Future of Rome

Rome: the Italian capital is inspired by an ecofriendly Pope Francis II to lead the Catholic world into a new Green century.

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Varna: the citizens of the Bulgarian "sea capital" stage an occupation of the old grounds of the privatized sea garden, demanding that it be returned to the public and the hotels transformed into public 'environmental grant' schools.

Florence 2121

Florence: utilizing the power of germs, an ingenious young techno-preneur transforms Florence back into a magical artistic city.

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Nador: A city beset by algal blooms becomes a capital of an 'oilgea' biofuel industry.

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Thimphu: The capital of Bhutan introduces "The Tree Laws" to promote urban and peri-urban forests.

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Santiago: The outer edges of the Chilean capital were once the site a great polluting copper mine. By 2121, the mine has been closed and it's environs rehabilitated. 

The city of Xanadu

Xanadu: By 2121, the Gobi Desert has fully invaded the historic capital of the Mongol empire; offering a prescient warning for China as it seeks to mend its environmental legacy.

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Bethlehem: Bethlehem in the future banishes industrial parks as unsuitable for the city’s character. Instead, only small-scale ecofriendly craft and cottage industries such as olive oil and date products are approved.

The future of Los Angeles

Los Angeles: The highways of Los Angeles transform into vegetated greenways for pedestrians and cyclists. The highways would also act as a network of ecological corridors; connecting populations of wild plants and animals around Los Angeles that would otherwise be isolated.

El Dorado, Colombia

El Dorado: El Dorado is thought to be a legendary city of Gold. But in real El Dorado, Gold was sacred. Gold came from nature - a gift from the sun god - and back to nature it should be given.

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Beijing: Beijing becomes a city of eco gold architecture, each gram of the precious metal being mined and processed in the most sustainable ways possible.

Bristol

Bristol: A massive tidal bridge between Bristol and the Welsh city of Cardiff is built across the Bristol Channel. The channel has one of the strongest daily tidal movements in the world, and as the water flows in and out every day, the energy is harvested to power much of southern England and southern Wales.

SAO PAULO 2121

Sao Paulo: Great runs of tarmac will be dug-up by guerrilla gardeners in this football capital, when eventually its citizens claim that food and air is more important than sport. Soon after, the highways and by-ways will be strewn with verdant rows of diverse food plants stretching as far as the eye can follow.

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Ordos City: Tribes of pastoral farmers reclaim an abandoned Chinese 'Ghost Town', recycling surplus infrastructure to build a great wall around it.

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Oxford: The crazy traffic jams of the English university city are no more for Oxford has banned cars. The entirety of the city’s scholars and townsfolk amble all the from the outskirts to the city center on the tree lined pedestrian highways of a retro future.

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Athens: Factory workers in Athens strike against hazardous pollution in their workplace whilst port workers refuse to load and offload goods that are not ecofriendly or which travel on ships which pollute the sea. In this way, Athens' environment, and the Aegean Sea as well,  are radically cleaned-up. Even the infamous smoggy air of the Greek capital slowly disappears.

Moynaq in 2121

Moynaq: As the Aral Sea dried up in the 1960s, the port town of Moynaq lost it's reason for being. In the future though, an iconic form of architecture starts to mark the city out as a great destination for ecotourists and tea lovers.

Future Flagstaff

Yerevan: A band of hippies and science students restore an abandoned military camp in a forested area of Mt. Aragats.

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Minsk: Furry roof architecture becomes a nationalistic stride toward energy independence and climate friendliness.

For a detailed investigation into hundreds more urban futures,
see the CASE STUDIES page.

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