A city is a delicate ecosystem, often constrained by natural boundaries. San Francisco, for example, has the Pacific on one side and mountains on the other. There’s little room for practical physical growth, with very little space within the boundaries to play around with. So what do you do? You look beyond. Literally.
Urban planners around the globe are directing their attention to deserts, derelict brownfield sites, and drainable swampland with the view to build new cities, from the ground up. With a blank canvas to play around with, these cities have the luxury of being conceptualised in new, more sustainable and technologically rich ways.
Consider Songdo in South Korea, a ‘new’ city on the outside of Seoul. A quality of life is the number one priority for its developers meaning it’s being “designed around the people who live there”.