The city of the future - The reality is comming

Masdar - United Arab Emirates

Songdo - South Korea

 The "current" cities of the future:

                                                   

                                                             Migaa - Kenya

Let's immagine a city without any kind of polution, wgere no one can be late due to trafic or strikes, where the children can play freely on the streets and everyone feels safe to go out at any hour. Basically, a city whitout problems: a perfect city.
This is how the city in the future will look like. Or at least how it should look like. In this article I will not talk about how the possible city will look like in the future if the current situation will continue, but how the city of the future shoul look like. But unfortunatelt, as everything else, the city of the future could have a negative side with bad consequences for  the world.

The intelligent city: a way to emend the nistakes of present cities

Currently we associate many problems to our cities. These problems affect the quality of live of their inhabitants. So, the main purpose of the intelligente city (called this way because of the way the city will work) is to provide a good way of living for its inhabitants, since the main purpose of any inhaboitant is his own welfare.
One of the worst characteristics of a city is the traffic. In the intelligent city this should not happen, because the public transports will be a very attractive way of traveling. For that, the current problems related to the public transports will disappear: the quality of the infrastructres, the schedule and the net of the service. If the public transports can offer infrasctructures with good quality (buses, trains, subways among others) with schedules that satisfy the costumers' needs and can cover all the city, most of the citizens don't have the need to use their own cars, reducing the traffic and the air polution.
About the polution, it's an important goal of an intelligent city the use of clean sources of energy - the renewable sources, like solar energy, water, wind - that do not pollute and after the expensive initial investment are very cheap in the future. Related to the polution is the production of waste - domestic or industrial - . A way to avoid that is to build the buildings

So, we can see so far that the intelligent city can produce its own energy and the basic goods like food and drinking water, by treating the unsafe water.
As for the outside space, the intelligent city needs to have a perfect equilibrium between buildings and the green spaces, because it's essential the preservation of the biodiversity.
As for the self-sustainability, the intelligent city needs to be able to using its resources effective and efficiently, producing, being able to produce the goods and services and the energy essential to satisfy the citizens' needs.

The challenges of creating the city of the future in our world already "constructed"

However, the ideal city of the future brings many problems and challenges. The current cities, have builds and zones that are not prepared for the requirements of these intelligente cities. And of course this historical heritage can be destroyed. Also the culture associated to any territory can be
annihilated by the futuristic cities. And of course, it will be impossible to satisfy all the citizens' needs and/or wills: an action of one citizen can easily have bad consequences on another(s).
These new cities will also create many job vacancies, which will attract many people, especially from the country, that can overcrowd the cities, increasing the unemployment (the demand for work can easily overcome the job vacancies available) and the prices (which would be already higher comparing to the current cities, in order to cover the extra costs related to the management of such "perfect" city).
And, since we can't simply destroy the big part of the current cities, the trend could be to construct the cities isolated from the rest of the world.

In a simple sentence, the ideal city of the future need to be constructed and work toward two main goals: the welfare and the sustainable development. However, the challenges and the dangers are very, and it's a possible scenario to create ghetos with more problems and the current cities.