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Cities have always been spaces where cooperation, specialization, and innovation occur. These elements have provided the foundation for modern economic prosperity, and they are more important than ever. 

In cities, we need space for multiple stakeholders to operate, including businesses, communities, and residents. However, the way that many modern cities have evolved, with separate central business districts and outer suburbs, will not be the future norm. Cities are more than just office parks, they provide their inhabitants with a wide range of services that can only be delivered in person: childcare, restaurants, and healthcare. Furthermore, most people cannot do their jobs remotely, especially in poorer countries. The creation of cities segregated by activity is not sustainable.

So, we need 15-minute cities, places where everyone has access to their home, work, and amenities within a quarter of an hour, not least to minimize travel requirements. Future cities will be much more mixed up, like the cities of the past. How we get there is less clear.

Cities will be hit hard by climate change. The old challenges of getting food and water to cities, stopping contagious and communicable diseases, and how to address hostile situations, remain prevalent.

A lot depends on income levels. Desert cities, like Phoenix and Las Vegas, wouldn’t exist without the wealth of the United States. The United Arab Emirates is another example of what can be done, its wealth has also allowed it to create cities in the desert.

Many major cities are situated next to rivers, oceans, or both. Cities like Miami, Los Angeles and Shanghai are at risk of being inundated by rising water levels. The biggest sustainability threat is to cities situated near coastlines. In developing countries, most of the growth in income is happening in coastal cities. Lagos for example. What happens to these places? The disconnect between the pricing and financing of real estate and the inevitability of extreme weather events is a big problem because it excludes short-term risk. Only insurance is really pricing these things and only in certain areas. For example, in some parts of California it's now impossible to get insurance for fire risk. For the fraction of society who own multiple homes, it’s fine. But moving is not an option for 99% of inhabitants.

Others face drought, water shortages, and intolerable heat. Falling agricultural yields will further accelerate rural-urban migration, pushing the already-strained infrastructure of cities like Lagos and Dhaka beyond breaking point.

The answer to that is very city dependent. Countries like the Netherlands have experience dealing with climate mitigation as one third of their land is below sea level. But I don’t see any developing country coping with this in the same way. For example, London’s response to rising sea levels would have to be different as water comes up the River Thames.

We are seeing an increase in things like the effects of urban heat islands and how fast pathogens can spread in cities. People will want to get away from things like that. There are also risks involved with remote working, like the impact on services in cities where remote work is high. This poses a massive existential threat. San Francisco is an example of how quickly this can spiral downwards.

People often blame bankers and politicians for rising prices and there is a populist backlash related to an anti big city phenomenon. There is a real pull between economic magnetism versus political dispersion.

The other critical issue is that there is less mobility than there historically has been. The collapse of public transport systems, the cost of congestion and the lack of affordable homes means that people are no longer moving the same distances they previously did for work. This in turn removes the economic incentive to be in the city center and has a knock-on impact on businesses.

Some people would argue that we need to stop moving to cities, but this is a fantasy.

It pushes against the economic tide. You can try to redirect resources away from cities to other areas, but they will have lower returns. And you need to ask yourself, is this a good public goal, sacrificing resources to try to reverse the economic tide? There are political questions too, a politician can’t simply say “the future of my constituency is to get out of here”.

The reason we get super cities and concentration effects is because of historical economic factors. Cities used to be located near natural resources, such as rivers, but these don’t matter as much anymore. Now it’s about the knowledge economy, that’s driving the growth of cities. The cities that create hybrid lifestyles are most likely to thrive. Rather than try to reverse the post-covid trend of hybrid working it makes more sense to embrace it. Productivity growth levels are double or more in high-performing cities versus low-performing ones.

AI is likely to accelerate further decentralization and lower the need for proximity.

It’s also likely to massively add to inequality. For example, it could wreck the development path of Africa where low-skilled work is likely to be replaced. Middle-rung work that Asia used to develop is now being digitized. So, what labor intensive production is left for Africa to move into? New opportunities will come in areas that are difficult to outsource, services like hairdressing are non-tradables. So, within countries and between them, it will likely make inequality worse.

Vienna is doing extraordinarily well on improving its social housing stock, with a higher share of the population qualifying for income support for housing than in other European capitals. Shanghai has implemented a sophisticated drainage system to cope with rising water levels. Ljubljana in Slovenia is a good example of a city trying to become car-free by investing in public transport and cycling routes.

The interviewee is external to ��ţ�������� and the answers provided do not necessarily reflect ��ţ��������’s view.

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