Abstract
Tractebel developed a Cities Vision for the horizon 2030 for ENGIE Research that aims to sketch a qualitative understanding of the current and future worldwide urban landscape. Understanding the evolution of cities is at the heart of this vision. The first research track examined by the Cities 2030 Vision is ‘global trends’: 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’. 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. Simultaneously, 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 sharing some common attributes and characteristics can be seen as belonging to the same group or category. And although each real city follows a single and specific model of development - according to its social and cultural preferences, level of maturity, geographical conditions, financial resources, political and institutional capacities - it is possible to find similar development patterns for cities that belong to the same typology. Defining the common attributes of each typology of cities is a first step in the process of understanding how cities are and how they possibly will evolve in the next future. 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. Additionally, eight development operations have been identified: informal urbanization – territorial interventions - synthetic operations – tactical actions – reclaiming operations – competitive model – technology driven – top down developments. They qualify the urban interventions and define the process through which cities generally evolve. Different development operations coexist in time and in space and together they help transform the city. City typologies and development operations can be used as tools to understand a city and its evolution between the past, present and future, or in other word its ‘story’. It becomes interesting to think about possible future developments and solutions that will allow a city (or typology if you want) to evolve into a better version of itself, or to adopt a different strategy by building a roadmap to shift into a different typology.
