Ideas for a city of the future, it can be done

AND 2043. A twenty-year-old wanders around the city. The air is clean, because few electric cars are circulating. He travels by bicycle, on foot or by subway, which reaches everywhere even late at night. In every neighborhood there is a park, green corridors full of plants run between the buildings. Cars parked everywhere and hot asphalt in summer are a thing of the past. Within walking distance the boy will find everything he needs, there are houses to rent at fair prices to go to university or to live alone.

Building the cities of the future

This dream could become reality. As long as we start building a different future today. There already exists an international network of around 100 mayors of the major metropolises – from London to Bangkok, from Delhi to New York, including Milan and Rome – which is working to the project of changing the city to make it more sustainablefinding solutions to reduce greenhouse gases and contain the rise in temperatures within 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels, and more equitable.

«Cities are destined to grow: in twenty years, 70 percent of the world population will be urban» he explains Stefano Boeri, architect, scientific director of Forestami and director of the Rome 2050 laboratory. «On the one hand, cities are the cause and acceleration of climate change, producing 75 percent of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, this phenomenon increases desertification and contributes to its growth in size, due to climate refugees. In 20 years there will be 250 million people. And they will try to head towards the north of the world and into the more habitable areas. We need to start equipping ourselves to welcome this flow.”

The 3-30-300 formula for living better

Boeri is clear: trees absorb the CO2 that we have already produced, they are an effective, economical, inclusive tool. And as such, they should be planted everywhere. The solution is not immediate, but in the medium to long term it allows us to address the causes of climate change and reduce its disadvantages. «Each tree creates shade, cleans the air of fine dust pollution, contributes to biodiversity and human health. Green counteracts the increase in temperatures and increases the permeability of the soil » he comments. «A friend, the Dutch scholar Cecil Konijnendijk, summarizes what we would need in a formula: 3-30-300. Each of us should be able to see at least 3 trees from our home, live in a neighborhood with at least 30 percent trees and be able to reach a park within 300 meters.”

The devastating effects of climate change

Despite being at the forefront in Italy, Milan and its trees have not been spared in the last two years from the devastating effects of climate change: in 2022 a terrible drought, this year storms with winds over 100 km per hour which they uprooted and broke even healthy specimens. We must not be discouraged: we must continue to plant trees, but above all take care of them in the right way after planting them. No to pollarding and wild pruning which weaken and kill the plant, no to cars parked on the roots, no to anything that makes the soil as hard as concrete and incapable of absorbing rainwater. Their roots must also be respected when digging to lay urban pipes.

Plants do better if they are planted in small groups: a grove in a large flowerbed or in a square, for example, provides coolness, is more resistant and becomes a small oasis of biodiversity. The golden rule is to recreate an environment as similar as possible to the natural one. As for extreme events, we must be ready, because they can happen again. One strategy is to prune the trees following particular techniques already used successfully in America, allowing the plants to resist tornadoes. With the right approach, trees can do it.

Remote work for everyone: cities are improving

Paris is trying. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has embraced the philosophy of the “city 15 minutes away” where primary services are available to residents no more than a quarter of an hour’s walk from home, which avoids having to travel by car. «We must return to the archipelago city“, comments Boeri, “where each neighborhood unit has the necessary services, green corridors and parks that connect it to the rest of the city”. A principle that must apply to all neighborhoods, central and peripheral.

«Covid has made us understand how useful local services are: public schools, kindergartens, shops, health and cultural services. Spreading them everywhere and with the same quality level serves to reduce inequalities.” Living, working in smart working and enjoying free time without major travel changes people’s lives. «Artificial intelligence may come into play in the futureas long as remote working is for everyone, and not just for the richest groups.”

An archipelago city, Vienna pioneered as early as 1923

If the idea of ​​the archipelago city seems innovative to you, know that in Vienna the first experiments with neighborhoods with a pharmacy, a park, a dentist, a library and even a clinic date back to 1923. And they concerned public housing. «In the Seventies and Eighties we also tried it in Italycreating concrete dinosaurs, with services that have slowly been abandoned and with inhabitants of the same socio-cultural group, thus generating a ghetto” explains Boeri.

What is needed are places of inclusion, where Italians from different social groups, immigrants and young people can coexist. In Northern Europe, social housing has more space than in Italy. These are homes built by private individuals and rented at prices higher than public housing, but lower than the market. In Eindhoven, Holland, Boeri’s studio created Trudo, the first Vertical Forest in social housing.

Cities of the future: fewer cars on the move, cleaner air

Is it possible to live in a metropolis without a car? Tokyo – 13 million inhabitants – has succeeded. There are cars, of course, but parking spaces in the city are few and expensive, and it is strictly forbidden to park on the street. With super efficient public transport, which moves 30 million commuters by train every day, using the car makes no sense. In Milan, as in other Italian cities, too many cars enter every day (over 800 thousand). Traveling by car is an obligation when there are no alternatives competitive to get to the job. But car traffic is the main cause of poor air quality.

«According to a study, 73 thousand people die prematurely in Italy every year due to particulate matter (PM 2.5), of which 40 thousand in the Po Valley» explains Anna Gerometta, president of Cittadini per l’aria. «To these people must be added the sick people who weigh on the public health budget. Activating measures to improve the air would also have economic benefits.” It’s not just fine particles that poison our lungs. According to a survey by Cittadini per l’aria, nitrogen dioxide in Lombardy is equal to 44.8 micrograms per cubic meter on average, a concentration that exceeds the WHO guidelines by four times and even the most permissive limit of the Directive European Union on air quality.

More efficient transport

In a letter sent to the mayors last March, 14 thousand pediatricians and neonatologists denounced the negative effects that exposure to air pollutants has on children, in particular on the lungs and central nervous system. Where measures have been taken to pedestrianize the streets in front of schools, nitrogen dioxide levels have dropped. According to Gerometta, change is possible. With an efficient public transport system (London and Berlin are virtuous examples), with interchange car parks where you can leave your car to take the metro or electric bike, encouraging active mobility with cycle paths, establishing pedestrian or low speed zones (20 km per hour) near schools, setting the limit of 30 km per hour without prejudice to the traffic axes, increasing the trees…

The problem is complex and to improve it is necessary to intervene on everything that generates harmful emissions: the use of wood for heating, intensive agriculture and livestock farming. Our politicians need to have a far-sighted visionwhich truly considers public health as an asset to be protected and intervenes to strengthen railways and public transport, rather than favoring cars and road transport.

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