Abstract
Tractebel developed a Cities Vision for the horizon 2030 for ENGIE Research: The evolution of cities is not solely ‘market’ driven, but is also the result of global ‘megatrends’, political conditions and sometimes of unexpected emerging new issues. The impact of these trends and issues (like climate change, technologization, demography, energy transition, resource scarcity, social transformation…) are different for a diverse group of cities, depending on their ‘maturity’, location, scale, population, urban qualities and weaknesses, governance model,…it is therefore key to have a good view on the worldwide cities’ response towards these trends to understand their possible development pathway, and in order to anticipate the ‘market’. The CITIES VISION 2030 project examines the current urban scenery through two main parallel research tracks: ‘global trends’ and ‘cities typologies’. The first research-track focused on global trends: more than 100 key drivers of change were detected in the manifold dimensions that characterise contemporary cities. This research includes demographical, environmental, social, technological, geo-political, economic and spatial trends. All together they allow us to draft a global picture of which external forces act in favour (or as obstacles) of a sustainable development of cities and territories around the globe. The second research-track focused on cities typologies. Understanding that the future development pathway of each city will depend (also) from its inherent characteristics, weaknesses and strengths, the ‘typological approach’ was assumed as adequate to describe the contemporary urban condition worldwide. This approach assumes that cities worldwide can be seen as belonging to a class of 'repeated objects' characterised by some general attributes. Defining those common attributes is a first step in the process of understanding how cities are and how they possibly will evolve in the next future. Each real city will develop according to its social and cultural preferences, level of maturity, geographical conditions, financial resources, political and institutional capacities. Nevertheless certain development pathways are similar within certain ‘classes’ or ‘typologies’ of cities. At the cross-over of these two research tracks, nine city typologies were determined: global city - knowledge city - cultural city - industrial city - cultural city - resort city - historical city - administrative city - mega city Each of the nine typologies was described in depth through qualitative data and a SWOT analysis in order to define key characteristics and future trends related to each typology. In regard to these characteristics, it is interesting to think about possible future developments and solutions based on which cities (or typologies if you want) can evolve into a better version of themselves, or build a roadmap into a different typology if desired.
