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: 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.
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: Chesptow becomes the guardian gateway of the River Wye, acting to clean up a long abused British river.
Tokyo: after nuclear catastrophe, a ‘moonbase’ architectural form becomes fashionable.
London 2121
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.
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.
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: 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!"
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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Vila Gaia de Nova: A city known for its 'Port Wine' transforms into the 'Greeno Vino' eco spiritual capital of Europe, exuding sustainable godliness and a fervid quirky celebration of Mother Earth.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
Quepos: The woodland organisms of this Costa Rican city begin a conversation with humans about how to transform the city toward 'phyto-inclusiveness'
New Orenburg: The melting polar ice caps make it possible to set up new 'energy cities' in the Antarctic.
Walsall: In Walsall's future, the inspiration comes from the past as it is retro-styled and retro-fitted toward greater sustainability.
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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.
Flagstaff: an Arizona city transforms into a scenic sustainable wonderland.
Shanghai: China's largest city develops the art and science of professional pedestrianism as a sustainable pathway to a crimeless compact ecofriendly city.
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: 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.
Graz: a super-clean technotopia in Austria's south where messy machines and messy people are banished forever.
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.
Yiyang: Yiyang's episodically polluted waterways are rescued from to provide habitat for a long lost dolphin species.
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: 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.
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.
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.
Malé: Throughout the capital of the Maldives in 2121, there are extensive ecology zones where wastewater can be processed through plant-based recycling systems.
Timbuktu: The ancient university city of Timbuktu is re-devoted to combatting desertification in the African Sahel.
San Diego: A submerged suburb of San Diego is resurrected within the sea by recycling the US Navy submarine fleet.
Rome: the Italian capital is inspired by an ecofriendly Pope Francis II to lead the Catholic world into a new Green century.
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: utilizing the power of germs, an ingenious young techno-preneur transforms Florence back into a magical artistic city.
Nador: A city beset by algal blooms becomes a capital of an 'oilgea' biofuel industry.
Thimphu: The capital of Bhutan introduces "The Tree Laws" to promote urban and peri-urban forests.
