Inventing Future Cities

by Michael Batty

How we can invent—but not predict—the future of cities. We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities , Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future. Batty outlines certain themes—principles—that apply to all cities. He investigates not the invention of artifacts but inventive processes. Today form is becoming ever more divorced from function; information networks now shape the traditional functions of cities as places of exchange and innovation. By the end of this century, most of the world's population will live in cities, large or small, sometimes contiguous, and always connected; in an urbanized world, it will be increasingly difficult to define a city by its physical boundaries. Batty discusses the coming great transition from a world with few cities to a world of all cities; argues that future cities will be defined as clusters in a hierarchy; describes the future “high-frequency,” real-time streaming city; considers urban sprawl and urban renewal; and maps the waves of technological change, which grow ever more intense and lead to continuous innovation—an unending process of creative destruction out of which future cities will emerge.

Genres: Cities, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Urban

304 pages, Hardcover

Published December 11, 2018

Reviews

[Jarek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was mixed for me.

The most valuable parts to me were references to urbanism- and city-related concepts and history I was not yet familiar with - in particular Edward Glaeser's observation that physical proximity appears to be becoming more valued as long-distance telecommunications and transportation become cheaper and easier - putting into words the oddity that despite the internet, we're all crowding into big cities. The book also introduced (or perhaps re-introduced) me to Kondratiev waves.

The book starts off by highlighting difficulty of making predictions, complete with cliche invocations of black swans and turkeys at Christmas. This is meant to support the idea that the future needs to be, or will be, invented rather than predicted. But then the chapter immediately following then makes the prediction that vast, vast majority of world's population is going to be living in cities really soon. The book then makes the prediction that most of the population is going to be living in mid-size cities ("Zipf's law"). It then predicts that a bunch of other properties of cities so far (like von Thünen's "Standard Model") won't change. The probability of an invention - positive, like truly convincing telepresence, or negative, like a density-targeting bioweapon - changing these is not addressed.

I was also annoyed by some of the mentions of hyped new technology that's apparently going to change the world - mostly because I am quite skeptical of things like "AI" automating away jobs, and I think that big data tells us mostly what we already know (approximately everyone in London knows Bank station is busy during weekday morning and evening commutes - but this was on a pretty chart). Ultimately the invention of AI to detect potholes isn't going to change cities as much as the invention of a machine or method of cheaply filling them.

[Zack Subin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It reads as very meandering and theoretical and didn’t really tackle the questions I was most interested in as an urbanist in the YIMBY movement— it touched on those issues for a few pages only to dismiss them as irrelevant / unlikely to be impactful. I found it odd that he spent so long talking about unpredictability and trying to be robust to cultural variation, only to acknowledge the debate here so superficially, to describe the desire for compact infill rather than sprawl as “controversial”, before summarily concluding patterns of global development were unlikely to change and thus not of interest.

The most interesting content was largely a shallower rehash of concepts in Geoffrey West’s Scale, which I read last year. I also learned a bit about how researchers define city boundaries, which was interesting in itself. I only got halfway through so it is possible the second half is better.

[Martine Delannoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched book that provides many thought angles. It starts off with a mainly spatial focus but then broadens to amongst others social and technological aspects. Sadly it concludes with stating that as cities are organismes formed from bottom-up ( mostly selfish actions) we can picture and vision but these are especially just a basis for discussion and to help change to happen. I am left with the main question if city planning is useful or not in the end? I think some of the mechanismes might have been left out.

[Mad Hab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boring for me

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed the theory about urban planning but someone expecting a more tangible, methodical guide will be disappointed.

[Geert Hofman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, however it leaves you somewhat wanting for more. I completely agree with the author that predicting the future of cities is not really a realistic endeavor, however, the author constantly tries to do just that. In his final chapters he reiterates the fact that we cannot predict the future and insists that inventing it, taking the larger context into account, is what we should be doing. How to do this or even what to exactly take into account to do that, he leaves in the middle.

On the other hand, the book is well researched and some interesting trends are shown (an exercise in prediction to my feeling) about the future of cities in the world, so it is still worth the read. Be prepared however not to get an answer on how to invent future cities.

[Ilaydamemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed with the book because of its title. I though it would give insights about how cities deal with unpredictability and create future visions. I think the book should've been called "History of Inventing Future Cities," because it gives great insights about development of the cities throughout history and how complex the systems have become.
What do to about the unpredictability of the future? No clue.