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Published in:
2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
1. Insights from the Future: Trends, Risks, and Opportunities
Author : Voula Mega
Published in: Quintessential Cities, Accountable to the Future
Publisher: Springer New York
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Abstract
Humanity’s entrance into the era of homo urbanus is irreversible. As the second decade of the millennium advances, the future of the planet seems to be more and more decided in cities. Their sheer size is of the utmost importance, but also their potential to generate and capture positive synergies, their capacity for creativity and innovations, and the interconnected local political leadership that heralded the era of urban geopolitics. This chapter examines the trends, risks, and opportunities which may affect cities as major nodes of all energy fluxes of the planet, including diverging demographics in the developed and the developing world, migration movements, the rise of empowered citizens and sustainability ethics, the emergence of a new consuming class, and evolving modes of production and consumption, scientific and technological breakthroughs, citizen expectations, and governance deficits.
Cities are wonderlands of ingenuity and possibilities. Their ability to pool together so many diverse resources makes them seedbeds of invention and laboratories of innovation. Cities promise to address all interacting challenges concretely on the ground and offer a better life for all citizens, present and future, within the limits of the planet. In the post Rio + 20 era, cities have to out-innovate and enhance all aspects of their unique urban capital, natural and physical, human, intellectual and social, cultural and political, financial and constructed. In the context of protracted crisis, strong sustainability asks for all forms of urban capital to be preserved, enhanced, and transmitted to future generations.