By 2050, 8 billion people will live in cities, placing increasing pressure on resources and the environment. Future cities will need to cut energy consumption through sustainable design like passive housing and dense, mixed-use neighborhoods to reduce emissions. New mobility systems using real-time data and shared infrastructure can replace car dependency. Parametric design connecting cities to their environments can help achieve sustainability goals. However, integrating growing informal settlements of 2 billion new "squatters" by 2030 into prosperous, socially inclusive cities will be a challenge requiring regenerating existing communities over rebuilding.

1. What can we expect
from our urban future?

2. In the next future pressing
environmental issues will force
us to reduce Co2 emissions
• The mobility model we have today won't work
tomorrow
• Providing clean energy for such a fastly growing
population is impossible. What's the solution?
By 2050, 8 billion people will live in
cities or in a day travel distance

3. Future cities will cut energy consumption opting for
sustainable design solutions.
Passive design takes advantage of
daylight, breeze and sunshine to
provide light, heat and cool buildings.
In dispersed cities we are more
dependent on transports. As the
cost of providing public transport is
higher, cars are dominant.
Dense, mixed use neighborhoods
reduce significantly the carbon
footprint.

4. Green infrastructure use
vegetation, soils, and
natural processes to
manage water and create
healthier urban spaces.
They connect us to the
environment and allow soil
and carbon sequestration.
Sustainable materials will be
used more and more. They
are environmental-friendly
over their whole life cycle,
from the extraction until the
final disposal.

5. What' s the way to a
viable mobility?
Car dependency will be
replaced by integrated
systems that use real time
data to optimize personal
mobility on a massive scale.
Similar systems have been
devised for Curitiba and
Masdar City.

6. The key to
susteinability is
parametric design
Computational processes (e.g.
genetic algorithms) can
associate the architectural
properties of more elements of a
design. Applied to urban
planning, parametric design
allows to connect the city with
the environment.

7. Technology will also ease the transit from the
current comsuption model to a collaborative
one. The surplus capacity will be turned into
shared facilities.

8. Is this what we should
expect?
Truth is we risk to have
two worlds in one..

9. By 2030, 2 billion people
will be squatters.
These people are going out
of poverty as fast as they
can, upgrading the slums
they live in.
What this implies is that, in
order to achieve social
integration, regenerating
will be prefered to
rebuilding.

10. According to Un-Habitat City Prosperity Index, prosperity comes from the balance of more dimentions...
• Productivity
• Quality of life
• Infrastructure
development
• Environmental
sustainability
• Equity and
social inclusion
Capital investment, formal/informal employment, inflation, trade,
savings, export/import, household income/consumption
Education, health, safety, social capital, public space
Infrastructure (connection to services, waste management, knowledge/
health/transport infrastructure), housing (building materials, living
space)
Air quality, Co2 emissions, energy and indoor pollution
Inequality of income/consumption, social/gender inequality of
access to services and infrastructure
DIMENTIONS Variables
WE CAN'T FORESEE FUTURE...BUT IT IS OUR DUTY TO
DRIVE THE CHANGE
IN THE DIRECTION OF A SHARED PROSPERITY IN WORLDWIDE
CITIES.

11. UN-HABITAT is the lead United
Nations agency responsible for
promoting socially and
environmentally sustainable
human settlements development
and the achievement of adequate
shelter for all.
The Enhanced Normative and
Operational Framework:
• Effective advocacy, monitoring and
partnerships
• Participatory planning,
management and governance
• Access to land and housing for all
• Environmentally sound basic urban
infrastructure
• Strengthened human settlements
finance systems
"There is a sense of great
opportunity and hope that a
new world can be
built" (Habitat Agenda)