CJReport

by Caoimhin O'Flute ©

   It is estimated that 80% of the world's population will live in urban areas by the year 2020, another prediction has the population of the planet approaching 10 billion, a 150% increase over today's numbers, by the year 2050.  Today, we can all see that the unsustainable use of critical resources, ie. water, food, and energy, can no longer be taken for granted and that we will need changes in our behaviour, thinking, and practices to enable future generations some chance of survival. 

   Change will also be needed in the way we build and inhabit the cities of the future.  Food, clothing and shelter (the big three), employment, services and entertainment must be readily available and within easy reach of the future city citizen.  The success of these futuristic cities will be measured by the voluntary abandonment of the automobile, the efficient use of resources, waste management, and co-operation between the crowded individual and the needs of the masses.

   William McDonough designed the first solar powered house in Ireland in 1977 and was named Time magazines "Hero of the Planet" in 1999 for his ecological design concepts.  With three decades of imaginative thinking, creative architecture, and re-inventing the box (never mind thinking outside of it) behind him, McDonough's team has recently come up with a "living" structure that will, according to them, do everything but replicate itself.  A mixed use building, the "Tower of Tomorrow" uses bio-mimicry, in that it will create oxygen, distill water, produce energy, change with the seasons and provide shelter for housing, work and entertainment! 

   Norman Foster, another architect, and his company Foster & Partners, are the creative geniuses behind the 6 million square metre walled city of Masdar, to be built in Abu Dhabi, that is a carbon neutral, zero waste, and an automobile free community.   Foster and McDonough both unveiled their projects at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.  This monumental event was shunned by the Irish government.  Why is that?

   Dickson Despommier a microbiologist from Columbia University is ploughing ahead with his ideas of vertical farming.  In these cities of the future there will need to exist an easily accessible supply of food.  The Vertical Farm Project plans to do just that by building high rise gardens of Eden for the city dwellers to "grow locally" all their dietary needs.  A firm in the Netherlands, MVRDV, has envisioned a Pig City in the sky; but, if raising chickens for food in confined factories is causing a lot of drama at the moment I can't imagine that pigs using elevators is going to catch on.  Maybe there is less meat in our future?  Things are looking up!