The Shape of Things to Come

How would you design the city of the future?

Back in the early 90’s I played a game called SimCity. The black and white simulation game allowed me to design towns that could develop into cities of the future. Of course, they would be hampered by having leftover technologies, like telephone poles that littered the streets. Also, Godzilla might stop by randomly and cause more economic ruin than bad city administration.

When planning a new city, the best approach was to consider what I had learned from previous gameplay. Don’t crowd everything together, make the streets parallel (unlike the nightmare that is Pittsburgh, PA), and think about how it would develop rather than set things down and hope for the best.

That’s one of the best tools for the city of the future: look at what has worked in the past, and prepare for that to succeed again. Forget the ugly utility poles and bury the lines underground—or better yet, switch the thinking from Edison to Tesla (Nikola, not the electric car manufacturer) and beam electricity everywhere. Or have solar and wind devices locally so that there is no need for central power generation.

There are many other things, I’d do, but I’ll wait until I get summoned to actually save as an adviser before giving away more details (in order not to bore you here). But one thing I think is important is to create neighborhoods—small areas where people can get to know each other, work together, and find common ground. The problem with much of centralized government or a New World Order is that it discounts the local element. Let people truly live together, and they’ll create a more positive living environment from the beginning.