Cities of the Future

[OneWingedAngel]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

To offer a different line of thinking:

 

A city is defined as: A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com)

 

The need for public or private transportation as well as various other forms of infrastructure is based on the primary need of every city: SPACE. Be it horizontal, vertical, or other ( ). And space on the surface of a planet is, naturaly, limited.

 

So, as a population grows, population centers will need more and more space to accomodate it.

 

As technology advances, I think cities will be found in more and more places that are currently unavailable: Undergound. Underwater. Floating. Airborne Cities (Any sufficiently advanced technology, right?), Space, and, depending how far out on the Tech Tree you want to take your campaign, Extradimensional spaces. Imagine cities with entire sections of it tucked away to another space.

 

Just another 2 cents.

[CSgeekHero]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

The only other statement with which I strongly disagree is CSgeekHero's assessment of telecommuting as a stopper to the mid-range commute. I do agree that a good many jobs can be done from home, and this will make a difference in things, but a good many others cannot -- among them medical professions, hospitality, scientific research, retail, automotive services, and acting. Other can be done remotely but will probably not for various reasons, including legal professions, teaching, travel (such as ticket agents), engineering, etc.

I understand where your coming from Bob, but I have to disagree a little here. The cities that currently exist will still exist. the megalopolis of the Northeastern seaboard of the US will get denser.

However, I focusing more on the fact that I don;t see an entirely new city springing up with a New Urbanist slant on things. Also, the megalopolis isn't one city, its made up of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore and the surrounding areas. That's several different jurisdictions for trying to revamp commuting between them, although we do have the Acela. The closest to Mutant's light, rapid rail deal.

My focus is more that on the outskirts of mid-sized cities, where there are already numerous suburbs; and suburbs to those suburbs. I've already seen this around Pittsburgh PA. Small to midsize medical centers that are part of a larger network service the local people. Many new scientific research facilities want to build away from cities so they can build a more open, campuslike setting to attract the best people. As far as retail, one word...Wal-Mart. They're spreading out all over the world and in many places, they are a supermarket, automotive center, department store, fast food joint, and gas station all in one. Go to any small town and you'll find a plethora of automotive dealerships and small garages. Some small towns, distain Wal-Mart and instead retain the small boutique feel and if you need something you go online to Amazon, or waste gas to go to the mall. I'm not sure what you mean by hospitality, whether you mean hotels or restaurants or both.

Where I work, we have a team of people who go out across the country helping our clients. None of them use a travel agent. Not for business, nor personal. It's all done online. Where there are people there will be lawyers and where there are families, there will always be teachers for the local school to teach the kids.

I don't know how they're doing things out in Oregon, but my extrapolation is from the all the people I live near and or work with and their habits. Plus, what I've seen built or being built in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland. Oh yeah, a business associate was out in Idaho in October and their putting up housing developments and the accompanying services and shops like wildfire.

That why I said what I said.

[Terry Wilcox]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

I'm curious what cities will look like as oil and gas prices continue to rise and hydrocarbon supplies dwindle.

 

I work in the oil and gas industry (writing software for production accounting, which accounts for oil and gas production). Every day I hear about rising demand for hydrocarbons. Some of you may have noticed gasoline prices getting stupidly high. The cost of heating my house with natural gas keeps growing every year.

 

What happens when hydrocarbons are too expensive for consumers? If a cheap science fiction energy source were introduced in the next 50 years, what would happen?

[Outsider]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

When Hydrocarbons get too expensive, people will move away from them wherever possible.

 

1) Means of energy production that are currently not economical will become so. (Distant hydro, Fission, Solar, Wind, Tidal, etc)

 

2) Means of energy production that are currently disliked will become something people will be willing to put up with. (Fission, Coal)

 

3) People will become much more concerned with energy conservation. (better insulation, more use of high efficiency (flourescent, LED) bulbs, even though they cost more up front)

 

4) People will work a LOT harder on inventing alternatives. (Clean coal, Fusion, superconducting power grids)

 

That last one, superconducting power grids, would do a LOT to change the world's energy situation. I've heard that about half of all the electricity generated is lost in transmission from where it is generated to where it is used, due to resistance in the lines. Get rid of that resistance, and we'd have either twice the energy available, or just as much while generating half as much. Superconducting power grid would also mean that power generation systems that rely on specific geographic conditions (Hydro, Wind, Solar, Tidal, Geothermal, etc) could be built and be economically feasible, no matter how far the geographic condition is from the power market.

[McCoy]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

I'm curious what cities will look like as oil and gas prices continue to rise and hydrocarbon supplies dwindle.

 

I work in the oil and gas industry (writing software for production accounting, which accounts for oil and gas production). Every day I hear about rising demand for hydrocarbons. Some of you may have noticed gasoline prices getting stupidly high. The cost of heating my house with natural gas keeps growing every year.

 

What happens when hydrocarbons are too expensive for consumers? If a cheap science fiction energy source were introduced in the next 50 years, what would happen?

Don't think we're seeing the last of cars anytime soon. Not that difficult to modify them to run on propane. Propane can be made from water, carbon dioxide, and electricity.

 

Speaking of electricity, I expect fule cells to available soon, and think they will be popular in the frost belt. Imagine a machine about the size of a refrigerator in your basement that makes electricity for about the same cost you're paying now, but heats your home for free as a side effect.

[Outsider]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Yep. As hydrocarbons go down, everything will start to run on electricity. Now, how we generate the electricity becomes the problem. But there's a lot of ways to do that.

 

If you throw your cheap, sci-fi power source in (Mr. Fusion?) then the electricity generation becomes no problem at all. If we have basically free electricity, we can still use hydrocarbons if we want. Just use the free electricity to make them from available Hydrogen, Carbon, and Oxygen.

[McCoy]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Yep. As hydrocarbons go down, everything will start to run on electricity. Now, how we generate the electricity becomes the problem. But there's a lot of ways to do that.

 

If you throw your cheap, sci-fi power source in (Mr. Fusion?) then the electricity generation becomes no problem at all. If we have basically free electricity, we can still use hydrocarbons if we want. Just use the free electricity to make them from available Hydrogen, Carbon, and Oxygen.

We need a Nuke-Man

Gordon Shumway

A Nuke-Man? It's a portable, personal nuclear power generator. They were the latest fad on Melmac. Come to think of it, they were the last fad on Melmac.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

First off, the majority of problems with fission are more due to social acceptability than due to expense. Fission reactors have gotten a lot less expensive and a lot more reliable than in the eighties. The main issue is disposal of the waste material.

 

That said, before that, there are a number of alternate technologies that will stretch out our hydrocarbon supply. Tar sands are one. There are new technologies being developed which will make tar sands not quite as cheap as pumping oil straight out of the ground, but still economical enough for a source of fossil fuels. There's also shale oil as another source that they're developing new extraction techniques for.

 

Fusion, sadly, is about a century away. There are a huge number of technical obstacles to solve in the case of fusion.

[Outsider]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Fission isnt currently economical because of its lack of social acceptability. Anyone who wants to build a fission plant has to factor in the cost of overcoming the seemingly endless litigaton that will be brought against its construction. If every other dollar in the project is spent in the courts instead of on actual construction, it gets economically uncompetitive pretty fast.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

The actual number of energy alternatives has only been touched on here, and chances are high that they will all be implemented to one level or another depending on where you go. For household electricity I expect (based on current social and ecological trends) we'll see dwindling reliance on hydroelectric power, new technologies in coal and nuclear power (both fission and fusion), and an increase in solar, wind, and other alternative fuels. For transportation there's hydrogen, natural gas, chemical batteries, and various other possibilities. What specifically is done will depend on the needs and politics of the region, and both areas could benefit from things our people haven't even thought of yet.

[Terry Wilcox]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Don't think we're seeing the last of cars anytime soon. Not that difficult to modify them to run on propane. Propane can be made from water' date=' carbon dioxide, and electricity.[/quote']

 

In theory you could make any of the hydrocarbons. In practice, I can't find a single reference to anybody manufacturing them, including propane. I don't suppose you have a reference you could post?

 

And it would seem rather inefficient to use electricity to create hydrocarbons. The electricity has to come from somewhere. Why not just use the electricity to power your engines?

[Outsider]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

In theory you could make any of the hydrocarbons. In practice, I can't find a single reference to anybody manufacturing them, including propane. I don't suppose you have a reference you could post?

 

And it would seem rather inefficient to use electricity to create hydrocarbons. The electricity has to come from somewhere. Why not just use the electricity to power your engines?

 

 

It depends on what the vehicle is going to be used for, and how good the electricity storage technology is.

 

Right now, the main problem with electric vehicles is that they dont have a whole lot of range compared to a hydrocarbon one. This site talking about the Honda EV+ ( http://www.hondaev.org/acar.html ) claims a 100 mile range before recharging, which they invision taking 15 minutes minimum, with high end recharging units, or 6-7 hours on household current. Great for me, who only commutes and runs errands in town, but it wouldnt work so well for my sister, who drives several 100 miles a day in her job as a real estate appraiser. A hydrocarbon powered vehicle generally has twice the range (at least) and can be 'recharged' in about 2 minutes by pumping more fuel into the tank.

 

Now, instead of having most vehicles have their power stored on board, we could have them draw it from an external source, like big slot cars. This would be much more efficient, since the vehicle itself wouldnt need to haul around so many heavy batteries. Just enough to have a few miles range while disconnected, to handle travel off the main streets, and to keep it running if it temporarily loses contact with the slot system due to lane changes, or whatever. One down side would be that the electrified slots would be a tad hazardous to pedestrians, or in accidents...

[BlackSword]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Will the rise of virtual spaces diminish the need for people to congregate in actaul physical space so that large cities become less common' date=' or will improvements in building technology and transportation herald in an age of megalopolii? Will humanity strive for elegance or continue to wallow in the tacky? And most importantly, what cool new gadgets and features will the cities of the future have?[/quote']

The increasing use of tele-commuting does have interesting implications. Even now there are people who spend a certain number of days at the office, and other work days at home. Though as Mutant for Hire has pointed out, besides purely practical abilities, psychology has to be taken into account as well. The co-workers I communicate with mainly over phone or e-mail, I have much less connection than those I share an office with every day.

 

Two fictional cities that come directly to mind:

 

Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky has a high speed transportation system that allows users to commute long distances in very short times. Its be a while since I read it, but I believe in the first chapter the protaganist travels from New York City to his home in Phoenix.

 

Asmiov's Caves of Steel the city has developed into, well a cave of steel. The humans that live in the cities have become agoraphobic (I believe that's the fear I'm looking for) and will never travel outside of the city. They live in large apartment complexes and have a common eating room on each floor. Food is mainly a yeast synthetic food. Transportation is moving walkways that vary in speed, the slowest being outside, the fastest being the 'inner lane.' The walkways vary so that it is easy to move froma slow to an express lane and back again at a destination.

[BlackSword]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Yes, if I had wanted a debate on pros and cons of urban planning, I would have posted in NGD.

 

I'm running an Alien Wars campaign, and since Worlds of Empire is not yet out, I have a lot universe to feel in the details concerning.

 

That is not to say that I'm only interested in cities that fit well in the Alien Wars campaign setting. It would be good if this thread could provide ideas for people running other types of Star Hero campaigns. Most of us are not Isaac Asimov and have a hard time describing the future to our players in way that makes it more than just the present with better weapons.

I haven't read Alien Wars, so I don't know the extent of extraterristial life in the human region. If there is a great deal of integration then keep in mind that cities will have to take that into account. While there might be ghettos for particular species, central gathering areas will have to be built to accomodate large body types, but not be out of proportion to smaller races.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

A lot of folks here are assuming unlimited population growth, which is not necessarily the case here. Populations have been declining in the most developed regions and while there is no intrinsic reason to assume that in other population regions which are still expanding in population that they will undergo a similar decline, it is entirely possible that we will stabilize and even reduce in time our population.

[ThothAmon]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Original post asked for a few suggestions. I'll fire off a couple of additional literary SF cities of note that may add something to the discourse:

 

Firstly, the city of Oberon (actually Oberon II) as depicted in John Varleys fantastic work The Golden Globe. Oberon is the city on an artifical cylindrical habitat orbiting Uranus. The habitat is still in construction and so is the city. This has been the case for many, many years due to the size of the construct. Entire sections of the city are continuously, slowly being manufactured in giant factories and moved out into the partially completed arc-pieces of the habitat cylinder (think of the cross-section as a clock face with only 11, 12 and 1 and 5, 6 and 7 complete) on rails laid across the interior floor of the cylinder. The habitats moments of mass are constantly adjusted as new skyscrapers and city blocks are rolled off the production lines - the buildings are always on the move. Oberon also has an Edge which you can fall off (and be charged $100 for rescue from the skin of the hyperplastic bubble that keeps in the atmosphere).

 

Also, since nobody owns the airspace above the Oberon cylinder floor, low-grav upside down 'Christmas tree' mansions are built suspended from the central hub by the wealthy and/or anarchic. Another important aspect to Oberon is the transportation system - fast anti-spinward Rim Trains, exotic elevators along the spokes to the hub, and lateral hub transports, everything timed and balanced to preserve the spin/momentum of the habitat. To quote Varley, "If you don't like the neighbourhood just wait half an hour".

 

The second discussion point would be the cyber-city presented by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. Virtual real estate and its associated technologies could be just as important in a high-tech setting as the physical spaces. The hero lives physically in a U-Haul shipping container but spends most of his interactive life in a virtual city running across multitudinous computer systems. If telepresence technology is ingrained in society then all bets are off - the laws of physics needn't apply to virtual worlds.

 

A very unique city experience would probably be something from Dan Simmons Hyperion where each room of your house (or street in the city) may be on a different planet and doorways are actually gates between planetary systems. This could result in the ultimate distributed environment, a network of habitats spanning light years distance yet they are only a few metres / seconds walking distance apart.

 

More fantastic ultra tech cities might resemble the semi-Utopian habitat described near the close of Charles Stross' Accelerando, a cylindrical habitat constructed and maintained by nanotech / nanocomputers - walls, ceilings, floors, furniture etc would be assembled and removed as needed, all basic needs likewise provided FOC but with space / energy at a premium for non-essential tasks.

 

These cities are all relatively high on the Tech Level scale. Lower tech cities would be more orthodox e.g. a rotating ring of pressurized tin cans at a La Grange point. I guess it all comes down to the tech level of the campaign...

[dbsousa]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Here are the factors that will influence the design of the city in 300 years, assuming steady progress in technology

 

• Decentralization of manufacturing. In 2305, the means to produce anything from food and drugs to shelter and transportation should be available to each individual and cost little more than the energy, raw materials, and royalties on the manufacturing instructions. This means that the traditional purpose of cities, the production and transportation of finished goods, will no longer dictate their placement. Raw materials will ship themselves on demand from wherever they are, assembling the transportation needed to ship them on the spot, and recycling that transportation at their destination.
   
  
• Decentralization of society. The current trend to find one's social peers on the internet will continue, and when the Virtual Sensory Experience becomes indistinguishable from reality, the social experience online will become preferable to that offline, as people begin to identify more with their idealized avatar than their imperfect flesh bodies. Populations will decline as more and more people are able to completely separate their emotional and physical needs from the actual procreative act, and every birth becomes a highly planned event.
   
  
• A move from the information economy to the imagination economy. With manufacturing a matter of sending instructions to a fabricator, and social groups no longer bound by geography, the economy will reward most those who can imagine new products and new virtual realities.
  

 

Given these criteria, the automobile will become obsolete, and the city of the future will be a network of very powerful servers. The physical cities will become decentralized housing units designed more to use as low a footprint as possible than to provide social interaction or concentrations of employees...

[sinanju]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

A lot of folks here are assuming unlimited population growth' date=' which is not necessarily the case here. Populations have been declining in the most developed regions and while there is no intrinsic reason to assume that in other population regions which are still expanding in population that they will undergo a similar decline, it is entirely possible that we will stabilize and even reduce in time our population.[/quote']

 

Hey! This is something that Mutant for Hire and I can agree on!

 

A lot of nations in Europe would be experiencing negative population growth now if not for immigration. The US isn't growing all that fast either. But then, it's long been known that higher standards of living go hand in hand with lower birthrates.

 

For one thing, there is no longer the pressing need to produce as many hands as possible to do the work of keeping the family fed and sheltered (in part because a lot of them would die young). Which, along with laws about child labor, turn producing kids from an economic necessity into an economic burden (you still gotta feed and clothe them, but they can't earn their keep).

 

For another, there are a lot more options for entertainment nowadays. When you're dirt poor, especially if you're living in the wilderness or on the frontier, there's not a lot to do at night besides frolic with your spouse.

 

It used to be that Overpopulation! was the boogeyman du jour. You don't hear that one nearly as much anymore. If anything, there are now occasional public worryings about underpopulation, of the "who's gonna man the factories and pay for my Social Security" sort....

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

To be frank, advancements in biotech, nanotech, artificial intelligence and robotics means that humanity itself is probably going to be undergoing a major shift within the next century. Having the human species alter means that the habitations that they choose to live in will also alter. The implications of this are not something I try too hard to think about.

[Markdoc]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

True' date=' it may have [i']little[/i] influence of futurist uban planning, but it does have some. Unless we invent Star Trek replicators, people will always need to buy food. So we will always need people to grow/heard/slaughter and transport food. So, if you are planing on designing a future city, you better make sure the people can eat and have a source of food near by.

 

Really? We get the bulk of our food from Israel, Spain, Greece, the US, Africa and South America. Even fresh produce. Given efficient transport, fresh food can come from anywhere within two days travel. Back in the day that meant two days by wagon (about 30K). Today it means anywhere on the globe within a half day's drive of a major airport. In 300 years I assume (hope) anywhere on the planet - and perhaps nearby planets as well, depending on how up we are with terraforming.

 

As for transport/city design as noted that depends on how people live. Here in Copenhagen (and many European cities) public transport makes good economic and practical sense. Because their urban cores are both pretty densely populated and multiuse. Not cunning planning, just that they haven't changed much in the last few hundred years. I sold my car after a few years here because owning it made no sense at all - metro's faster, cheaper and far less stress. If I need a car, I hire one and save a ton of money in the process. However, when we lived in Washington, DC, a car was essential (for a while we had two, in fact). Despite the fact that DC has a metro (and I used it a lot to go downtown) there were simply too many places in that city where public transport cannot take you conveniently.

 

Plans to expand metro in DC have foundered on cost, because the population is not dense enough to make it economically viable, whereas metro in Copenhagen has been so successful that a new extension is now being planned.

 

In both cases, transportation is designed to suit the local situation. I agree that nobody is going to tear down all of New York's skyscrapers, but most of them won't last 300 years. So what replaces them is going to be anybody's guess. Mine would be mixed use, medium density buildings in the shorter term - which have been gradually replacing low rises for the last 30 years, but after that?

 

cheers, Mark

[Publius]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

....More fantastic ultra tech cities might resemble the semi-Utopian habitat described near the close of Charles Stross' Accelerando' date=' a cylindrical habitat constructed and maintained by nanotech / nanocomputers - walls, ceilings, floors, furniture etc would be assembled and removed as needed, all basic needs likewise provided FOC but with space / energy at a premium for non-essential tasks.[/quote']Similar to this is the city from Jay Caselberg's Wyrmhole and Metal Sky, which creeps over the land, consuming resources that feed it's growth and creation. The interesting thing is that the city builds new sections as it moves and the sections further from this moving front start to break down. While the wealthy and powerful live in the forward sections of the city which is utopian like the one you describe in Accelerando the sections that are in the tail of the city's path have begun to break down and are slums. Eventually, the slum sections break down completely and the forward sections slide into growing disrepair, eventually becoming the middle class and then the slums while new forward sections are the new high class areas to live.

 

The books are okay plotwise, I like the writer's style and it made for a good light read. The radical reconception of the city however is the stuff that scifi does when it does everything right.

[Ranxerox]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

 

The second discussion point would be the cyber-city presented by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. Virtual real estate and its associated technologies could be just as important in a high-tech setting as the physical spaces. The hero lives physically in a U-Haul shipping container but spends most of his interactive life in a virtual city running across multitudinous computer systems. If telepresence technology is ingrained in society then all bets are off - the laws of physics needn't apply to virtual worlds.

 

 

I've read Snow Crash and liked it a good deal, but I would like to propose a city that takes idea of virtual real estate one step farther. Perhaps being plugged into the net will become such the normal, that cities will assume that their residents are always plugged in and the distinction between the physical and virtual world will blur to the point of near meaninglessness.

 

In cities of the future, buildings may project virtual representations of themselves and host virtual visitors. So as you walk around your city you could choose to view the actual buildings or virtual conterparts (of which you may have a selection to choose from depending on what channel you are monitoring).

 

Alternately, you could visit other cities as a 'ghost' and observe and interact with people and other 'ghost' in these cities in real time. So city could have an actual population of 5 million and a virtual population that is 10 times that. How much of this virtual population you would interact with at any given time would depend on your channel settings.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Cities of the Future

 

Ok, here's a couple ideas.

 

Underground cities. Lots of reasons for these: poisonous atmosphere, better temperature control, better land use. Maybe the lifeforms just like it better that way.

 

If we postulate a cheap power source we can start to get into mobile cities (flying or floating). Star Trek's City in the Clouds is one example. A huge ship the size of a small city is almost possible with today's tech (an aircraft carrier comes close).

 

You might not even have a city, some aliens might be completely nomatic, all their tech is highly portable since your population might need to move. Instead of houses, they might have large walking vehicles that move slowly across the landscape.