Cities provoke endless speculation. They result from the cumulative, collective processes of daily life, complex, unpredictable, impossible to micro-manage. Conventional cities possess long time lines: enduring, accumulating, growing or depopulating over lengthy intervals. Then there is the short temporality of the wholly temporary city–any sort of seasonal, instant colony, highly structured in many ways, popping up in places to accommodate a circus, carnival or festival, or arising out of strife, emergencies or natural disaster, or simply occupying sites of ritual, religious or seasonal gatherings–from hunting camps to pilgrimage sites. Contemporary concern over changing environments–the realization that the planet’s temperature, along with ocean levels, is steadily rising, or that oceans’ gyres now have dead zones, has provoked intense interest in new solutions that involve ecological human settlements. Cities that are made up of movable, inter-changeable components, cities that float upon or are anchored on water, cities that use zero energy or generate more energy than they consume, cities that incorporate agriculture so as to be self-sufficient in food production are some of the themes preoccupying contemporary designers.
A sense of urgency suffuses the contemporary invention of visionary cities in the 21st century. Current ecological discussions often bring up the idea of the ‘tipping point’. If climate warming continues, change could come suddenly and drastically, just as a bottle tilts until its stability is lost and it tips over, or a change of torque forces a spinning whirlpool to collapse suddenly into unsettled liquid. Below-sea-level nations–from the Maldives to the Netherlands–are exploring the idea of ‘seasteading’ and researching alternate city design. There is a renewed emphasis on merging landscape and infrastructure with the disciplines of architectural and urban design. And designers are referencing the natural sciences: biologist Janine Benyus introduced the term ‘biomimicry’ as a means to connect environmental design to rigorous scientific environmental research. Biomimicry relies on observation and...(extrait)

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