The Cities of Tomorrow: Urban Areas without Character?
By IBI Insights
Date
July 7, 2016
Many cities take great energy and pride in the factors that make them unique. However, in an era of rapid urbanization, it’s difficult to ignore the sense that new developments look increasingly similar. Is city-making losing touch with context? The Guardian Cities tackles this in an illuminating article on new cities and the challenges of accommodating population growth, focusing on developing regions like sub-Saharan Africa, India and China (though the sense of placelessness is no limited to these regions). With developers, architects and designers regularly jumping from projects on one continent to another, and with local decision-makers seeking to showcase smartness or modernity of their city, is this turn inevitable? Or is their a more suitable approach?
