Imagining the future of urban planning
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This blogpost is our (winning 🎉) submission to Destination Earth’s challenge to envision the future use of their platform. The story is set in 2050, when “urban sims” have come to replace traditional city planning tools. Urban sims are like the early century’s sandbox games, say, Cities Skylines, but for real. Design proposals with a net positive impact are eligible for execution, on the condition that they gather sufficient support. The story follows Henry as he experiences the rise of city tweaking firsthand.
Mockup of an “urban design interface”, powered by the digital twin engine, that was submitted with the challenge.Henry is a city tweaker. He never really pursued his destiny, but in retrospect, it seems all his arbitrary endeavors have been in anticipation of his true calling, which will be revealed to him shortly by an unremarkable lady wearing a white fur hat and a rabbit tattoo.
His journey starts in the pouring twenties when urban sims are set to democratize urban planning. He makes his debut with an upgrade of the courtyard in his street. Replacing the paved square with a natural playground benefits the local climate, biodiversity, and perceived happiness. The timing is good too: with many new families moving in, there is ample support among the neighbours.
After this encouraging start, Henry is hooked. As his proficiency grows, people around him start approaching him with their ideas as well. One of his relatives wants to build a sand battery below the communal parking lot, and an acquaintance asks for his help in developing a manure fermentation plant. While urban sims are open to anyone, in practice, by the early 30s, most of the content is created by dedicated individuals, and Henry is your local guru.
Once he gains enough reputation to earn insider status, he learns to develop mods. This newfound ability draws the attention of companies and entrepreneurs. Mod creators are in high demand, but Henry isn’t in it for the money. He does a few collaborations with crop breeders, adding species to the agriculture module, and works with festival organizers to include an algorithm for acoustic barriers. But he consistently turns down their job offers.
Instead, he starts participating in so-called “hackathons for the greater good”, organized specifically to tackle grand challenges. He likes the collaborative spirit and the appeal of contributing something substantial, such as the introduction of local distribution networks and a true price concept for public services.
These are challenging topics indeed. While it is relatively straightforward to understand how design proposals interact with their immediate surroundings, non-local effects are much harder to grasp. Intrigued by the complexity of the problem, Henry spends a big chunk of the 2040s developing an X-AI module to unravel how genuine progress propagates through value chains.
And so we arrive in 2050 when Henry is startled by the doorbell. “Good morning, Henry.” The friendly voice pauses to let him regain his calm. “I’m looking for a benevolent city tweaker. May I come in?”
After the usual pleasantries, she turns serious. “Look, Henry. You know that genuine progress comes at the expense of concentrated wealth. You’ve seen it yourself with the distribution networks. Big players with a vested interest in the status quo are seeking to sabotage our system.” She pauses again. “We cannot play cat and mouse. The cat is too clumsy and the mice are too many. We need something of a more ‘viral’ nature. That why we started IMMUNE.”
“For your long track record of benevolent contributions and proven skill, you will receive an immunity status. You will be granted full privileges and access to a confidential forum. No strings attached. We simply trust that you will continue to serve society.” And with that, she stands up, leaving Henry as startled as she found him.
Backstory
While the story is completely fictitious, there are a lot of true ideas and concepts that have gone into it. Let me elaborate on some of them.
Progress indicators
The premise of the story is that “designs with a net positive impact are eligible for execution”. But what is a net positive impact? There are several proposals in the literature on how to evaluate “progress”. Our mockups draw inspiration from the Genuine Progress Indicator, and the “economic doughnut”. Both models take many different aspects of well-being into account, including social and environmental well-being.
Left: the genuine progress indicator (source). Right: the economic doughnut (source).The idea is that the urban sims will evaluate design proposals based on these indicators. Currently, several “local” versions of the doughnut (or rather, the planetary boundaries framework) and the GPI monitor have been published in the scientific literature. Automating this process and making sure that the local scale interacts realistically with the larger scale is probably one of the biggest challenges, both technically and scientifically, in making Henry’s story come true.
Democratization
Another central element of the story is the democratization of urban planning. At first, it may seem unrealistic to outsource important and complex municipality work to “mere citizens”. On the other hand, we do this all the time with (open source) software. Why not do the same with tangible real estate? Especially since it’s publicly owned.
In fact, at least in the Netherlands, we already have a process where citizens can apply for building permits with the municipality. It’s dull and bureaucratic, but it is there. Imagine what that could look like if you can simply upload a sketch of your plan as designed by a city builder. The design file would already have all the “technical” details required by the municipality. It would make the request and review process much easier.
Our submission also included a mockup of a “design proposal page”, where the design is advertised and discussed by the relevant stakeholders (see below). In the story, Henry needs to gather support from the neighbours. I think there is a potential here to address the lack of participation and, consequently, lack of support that we see for example with renewable energy projects.
Mockup of “design proposal page” that could be used to advertise urban design proposals, discuss them, and gather support.By the way, this design was inspired by Figma’s community pages.
Gamification, or rather “sciencification”
The urban sims in the story take the idea of gamification to the extreme. Games are optimized for a great user experience, and gamification offers immense potential in making science more accessible and engaging to society.
Recently, game developers have actually been pursuing similar ideas. For example, check out https://play.eco/, which aims to be a “forever game, growing in depth and breath and […] go beyond entertainment.” Perhaps we should be talking about “sciencifying” existing games instead. I would love to collaborate more with game designers.
On a side note: IMHO science teams could be so much stronger if academia embraced more diverse function profiles. Why not employ dedicated communication specialists (YouTubers / content creators), research software engineers, or game developers in every team/group/department?*
Conclusion
Imagination is a key driver of innovation and progress. Lifting the constraints of immediate feasibility inspires us to think big and let our creativity guide us. It helps to break away from doing more of the same and instead direct our research and energy towards an inspiring future.
Participating in the Destination Earth challenge was a very enjoyable experience, and it would be great to see more such initiatives. In the meantime, I will be on the lookout for opportunities to help make Henry’s story come true.
What do you think are the biggest challenges in realizing these urban sims? What would you add, or change, and what opportunities did I miss? Perhaps we can start shaping our future together!
