Urban future via digital life

Very soon, even more of people than today will live in the cities. Is digitisation the only way to make this choice of an extremely dense population possible at all? In Amsterdam, the European leading show for the creative economy, PICNIC , demonstrated and discussed models, visions, and problems of the future city.

Prognoses and forecasts estimate much more than 70% of the world’s population as city dwellers. This extreme urbanisation is a tremendous challenge for mankind and technology. Is the high density of population a danger for civilisation? Together with some experts, PICNIC explored social techniques and new technologies of a future peaceful coexistence in an urban agglomeration.

 

Is the city the new computer?

Adam Greenfield, founder and director of Urban Scale, is not afraid of the densely populated city of the future – but new technologies and free data access which are constantly fed to the plans of the living

community and a creative administration will be necessary. To maintain a city really worth living, communication models such as the social media we know today, are far from being enough. The well-known media artist Scott Snibbe explains how the theory of the third place works today and will work in the future. According do industrial designer Dan van Tulder, Praktijk vor Industrieel Ontwerp, the future city is not increasing laterally, but it is growing and developing vertically. This will lead to a complex integrated system in which sustainability such as social media plays an important role.

 
Text: Boris Alexander Knop