The conversation about cities is dominated by the old ones — the metropolises of the developed world, with their heritage, their density and their problems. The conversation misses the bigger story: the cities being built now, for the first time.
Across the emerging economies, the urban future is under construction — new cities rising where fields and villages stood, built by the migration of the millions. The building is the biggest urban story of the century, and it is happening now.
The scale of the building
The scale of the new urban building is the largest in history, and it is easy to underestimate.
The cities of the emerging economies are growing by the millions every year, and the growth requires the building — the housing, the streets, the schools, the water, the power. The building that the developed world did over centuries is being compressed into decades, and the compression is the scale. The new cities are being built at a pace that the old world never experienced.
This is why the new building matters: it is the urban history of the century, written at speed.
The city from nothing
The new city is being built from nothing, and the nothing is both the challenge and the opportunity.
The city from nothing has no old infrastructure to inherit and none to carry — no old pipes to replace, no old streets to widen, no old rules to undo. The city can be built with the new — the planning, the technology, the standards — from the start. The opportunity is the clean slate; the challenge is the blank page. The new city is the test of whether the urbanism of the present can build the city of the future.
This is why the new city is the experiment: it is the building of the city in the present, for the future, without the past’s constraint.
The informal beginning
The new city begins, often, in the informal — and the informal is the reality that the planning must meet.
The new arrivals build where they can: the settlement without the plan, the housing without the permit, the services without the grid. The informal city is the first city, and it is where the new urban majority lives. The response is not the demolition but the upgrading — the formalization of the informal, the bringing of the services and the rights to the settlement. The informal is the foundation, and the upgrading is the city’s work.
This is why the informal matters: it is where the new city actually begins, and the meeting of it is the measure of the city’s care.
The infrastructure of the new
The new city has the chance to build the infrastructure of the present rather than the past.
The new city can be built around the transit and the walking rather than the car; the water and the waste can be managed as the systems rather than the afterthoughts; the energy can be the solar and the distributed rather than the central and the fossil. The new city can skip the infrastructure that the old city is now trying to undo, and the skipping is the opportunity. The new city is the chance to build the urbanism that the old cities wish they had built.
This is why the new infrastructure matters: it is the chance to build the better city, from the start.
The density and the sprawl
The new city is deciding its shape, and the shape is the choice between the density and the sprawl.
The city that grows dense can support the transit, the services and the community; the city that sprawls is built for the car, and the car is the cost. The new city is at the fork, and the choice is being made by the land, the policy and the market. The shape is the city’s future — the cost, the equity and the environment of the decades to come. The shape is the decision, and the decision is being made now.
This is why the shape matters: it is the choice that the new city makes once, and the choosing is the future.
The identity of the new
The new city is also being asked what it is — the identity of the place being built from nothing.
The city that is built from nothing must find what it is: the culture, the character, the sense of the place. The identity is not given; it is made — by the people, the institutions and the history that the new city accumulates. The new city is the place of the becoming: the identity is being formed, and the forming is the story.
This is why the identity matters: the new city is not only the buildings; it is the becoming, and the becoming is the city’s meaning.
The honest conclusion
The cities being built for the first time are the biggest urban story of the century, and the building is the story.
The scale of the building, the city from nothing, the informal beginning, the infrastructure of the new, the density and the sprawl and the identity of the new — the new cities are being built now, at a pace and on a scale that the old world never experienced.
The urban future is being decided in these new cities — the shape, the infrastructure, the equity and the identity of the places where the world’s urban majority will live. The building is not a footnote to the urban story; it is the story. And the story is being written now, in the new cities rising where nothing stood before — the biggest construction of the century, and the most consequential.