Visions for the City of the Future
Dr. Jürgen Peters, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schmalenbach
Visions for the City of the Future
What kind of future do we want to live in? What should our future life ideally look like?
These questions formed the starting point of this empirical survey, which is more in the nature of a pretest. The primary goal was not to ask about technologically oriented visions of the future based mainly on what is technically feasible—although this was not to be excluded. Rather, the main research interest focused on the images of an ideal everyday life in the future that the respondents carry within them. The “city,” as a central place for living, working, shopping, and meeting others, provided a suitable “medium” for conveying values and visions of a desirable way of living together, provided the questions were open enough. For this reason, the method chosen was a “scenic description” of movement through the fictional ideal city in order to identify qualities that are important to respondents for the future.
Project summary and conclusion
The description of the city of the future leads to the characterization of a desirable society. The discussion is therefore not limited to questions of mobility, architecture, and sustainability. Rather, the urban scenes become an expression of an idea of society. The design of urban space provides information about the structures and guiding principles of social coexistence. Accordingly, topics such as political participation, the organization of work and social life, and the relationship to technology, among others, are addressed. Since the question evokes a movement through the city, the topic of mobility becomes the anchor theme of the imagery. Almost all respondents envision themselves in a city close to nature and designed according to ecological principles. What is remarkable here is that spending time and moving around take place in an environment that is oriented in many respects toward community-building, whether in cafés, workplaces, or residential complexes. The “urban society” is transformed into a community whose positive qualities create an atmosphere of manageability, familiarity, and social connectedness. This community is in no way selective or limited to specific social milieus. The places appear “filled” and embedded in a meaningful context; the “non-places” in Marc Augé’s sense belong to the past, as do spaces and structures whose sole purpose is to overcome distances. In contrast, mobility itself also brings health-promoting, social, and not least aesthetic experiences. These scenarios are also made possible by profound political changes, which initiate changes in the organization of the economy, work, and society. Keywords here include, for example, a basic income in connection with a change in the understanding and practice of gainful employment, extending to addressing excessively large social (and economic) divides.
Would you like to learn more? Then please follow this link to the full report.
