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Old New Challenges for the Cities of the Future. Trends, Risks and Opportunities of Modern Urbanization

Peter Ivanov

DOI 10.55140/2782-5817-2022-2-S2-24-29

Digital citizens, artificial intelligence, local agendas, new-format developers investing in social and natural capital — all these are attributes of the cities of the future. Urbanist Peter Ivanov reasons why it is sometimes necessary to turn to the past in order to learn about the future and what changes await the urban environment.

Peter Ivanov

Urbanist, sociologist, partner in the Civil Engineering Laboratory (Krasnoyarsk), professor, Free University

NOT BY COVID ALONE

Until recently, everyone was talking about COVID-19 and how it would change cities. Public health was seemingly destined to become the key challenge for the cities of the future. The coronavirus pandemic revealed the critical vulnerability of our environment organization concepts. However, the response to that discovery had been prepared long ago and promoted by consultancy companies and urban activists (Chemberlain, 2022). Low-rise mixed-use development, extension of bicycle transportation infrastructure, and encouragement of pedestrian traffic. Perhaps only public transportation lost a few points in the face of the pandemic. Nevertheless, a revolution of thinking did not happen; the drama was coped with based on the already existing line of thought.

The new challenge for the cities of the future actually lies in the past. Something similar to what we are seeing in the cities of today has happened in the past. What I am talking about is community organizing.

The new challenge for the cities of the future actually lies in the past. Something similar to what we are seeing in the cities of today has happened in the past.

During the Chicago City Council elections in 1915 (Park, Burgess, 1925), citizens went to the polls and saw long lists of names that meant nothing to them. That crisis was met with a variety of mixed reactions. Chicagoans began organizing voter associations and local social movements, political parties began opening district offices and hiring district political bosses, and religious and philanthropic organizations launched the first round of community organizing. The city came to life and started building more complex social connections. In fact, the 1915 Chicago events were a logical response to the disorganization brought to the cities by rapid growth accompanying the industrialization process.

DIGITALIZATION VS RADICAL MUNICIPALISM

From the dialectical point of view, the cities of today are a battlefield of two trends. One is the trend toward digitalization and digitization (Lapina-Kratasyuk et al., 2021). Smart city systems use neural networks to solve all urban problems for the people. Digital citizens must rely on artificial intelligence, robots, and the good will of software developers. The creative energy freed from administration and routine work should be directed toward the production of even more advanced machines and even more appropriate accounting and control systems. Digital singularity, when technological development becomes ultimately unmanaged and inevitable (Parikh, 2018), is not that far off. Techno-optimists look boldly into the future and see the grandeur of new cities built with the rationality and orderliness of machines. In this reality, the urban planner appears as a programmer-technomage, confidently managing the endless data flows from various sensors, responding to any fluctuations in the urban environment. The city becomes intangible.

The other trend is radical municipalism. This direction puts the humans and human relationships at the core of the city infrastructure. A prime example is the Strong Towns movement in North America, whose members advocate for a radically new way of looking at how we build our cities. The Strong Towns movement seeks to make local government the highest point of collaboration for people working in one place. To this end, articles and podcasts, courses and short seminars are created for those who want to take action in their community. Supporters of the movement, who live in the same city, work together to make their small area more sustainable.