Future cities, between technology and environment

The 21st century has turned the spotlight on climate change, which has altered the balance of the environment, placing the emphasis on the actions to be taken to safeguard the world to be handed down to future generations. One example of this is the Fridays for Future movement led by the young Greta Thunberg. Cities have had to cope with rapid climate change, which has increasingly affected coastal areas and helped to isolate marginal areas considered at risk. There have been many urban regeneration projects related to sustainability, especially large projects in Northern Europe, aimed at creating the right proportion between architecture and nature. Yet cities have been unable to cope with and counteract, both economically and socially, the effects that the global pandemic has generated in the last two years. The enormous concentration of the population in the city, the so-called metropolitan areas, has meant that the negative effects on physical and mental health are spreading fast. The indoor and outdoor spaces of the contemporary city have not been sufficient and adequate in guaranteeing public health both from a health and psychological point of view. City services have been interrupted. Places of sociability and open spaces have been banned. Homes, formerly familiar and intimate places, have become offices, working spaces that are inadequately equipped and comfortable. From a place of the heart to a place of stress, where everything happens. Architectural spaces, especially those related to work, have not allowed social distancing, in the contemporary city everything is concentrated in order to guarantee the citizen services and infrastructures within a few kilometers. And yet, until now, spaces have been planned with the idea of combining services, infrastructure and well-being for the citizen. The pandemic has highlighted the great problem of long-term planning, with objectives primarily for public health as well as the environmental and socio economic well-being of the city. The role of the designer becomes central, the cities of the future will have to be designed according to constant variables. The concept of multidisciplinary is therefore the keystone for long-term planning and landscape design, the professional figures appointed will have to interconnect themes such as sociology, environment, health, economy and technology.