Your City of the Future Sounds Amazing

Green spaces, affordable housing, no flying cars, when can we move in?

La ville spatiale, Yona Friedman. Yona Friedman Papers, Getty Research Institute, 2008.M.51; Box 72, folder 8. © J. Paul Getty Trust

By Meg Butler

Jul 29, 2021

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Cities can be great places to live, especially when their inhabitants get a say in their design.

Last week, to wrap up our monthlong modern architecture series, we asked you to design your ideal city of the future. You responded with dozens of great ideas—and most of you have similar changes in mind.

Paint the Town Green

When even frequent trips to the grocery store were discouraged during quarantine, but getting outside remains important to your mental health, public parks come to the rescue. Perhaps in honor of the rejuvenating power of those spaces, most of you put them in your cities of the future.

This future city has large parks with plenty of space for social distancing, hiking trails, community garden plots, and even a wildlife habitat or two. The rest of your city gets a green makeover, too. _f_r_e_j_ adds “green rooftops” with “trees on every street,” and so many of you called for public gardens, they’re everywhere.

And Make It Walkable

Cars have been around for nearly 200 years, but many of you didn’t have a place for them in your city of the future. Thebeeskneesphoto suggests excluding private transportation, especially gas vehicles, from the city center altogether. Electric cars may get a pass, but they’re the only welcome form of future car. We are not yet ready for the next step in personal travel, adds thebeaumarchais. “I live in Los Angeles, I’ve seen how people drive. Flying cars! Non!

How will people get around? Put everything closer together. Your future city should be “walkable with open-air markets or public art exhibits,” added Jules.delsante. And many of you agreed that all of the essentials—grocery stores, banks, great museums—should be within walking distance.

For anything further away, there will be efficient, accessible, and free public transportation to make it easy to get to and from home, which not only has a green roof, but is part of a planned community that, says pamas111, includes “affordable housing with dignity.”

With Opportunity for Relief

This green, walkable, affordable city sounds wonderful, but it needs a few more additions. “OK but definitely CLEAN public restrooms on every corner,” added kaileyf424 and a surprising number of other respondents.

Others would like to add kiosks on most corners, including those that offer medical diagnostics which will, of course, be free, thanks to dnhamby who put universal healthcare on the list. C13dragonsfly would also like to “exclude haters,” which we’re not sure how to implement but sounds like a great idea.

Your city of the future is green, easy to walk, affordable for everyone, and a space we’d like to spend a lot of time in. Want to include other amenities in this city of the future? Let us know on social media and we’ll put it on the wish list.

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