Cities of the future

An article titled 'What If There Were Another Technologically Advanced Species?' appeared on LiveScience on January 20, which spoke about how two intelligent species would coexist on the same planet. The article assumed that one of the species to be human for arguments' sake, and charted out, albeit superficially, how their culture would shape up in the presence of another species.

The article was fascinating for two reasons. The first reason is a not-so-important one: that LiveScience picked such a curious topic to write about. The second reason is that this clash of civilizations can be envisaged not only as a clash of two cultures but, by extension, also as a clash of two political states. Because the author, Natalie Wolchover, mentions in the article that conflicts arise when resources and/or ideologies are matters of contention between two factions, why not attempt to understand what might happen at the interface of conflict of two cities?

William Harcourt-Smith, whose opinions on the subject have been solicited in the article, says that the most likely outcome of an encounter is armed conflict. And if one of the two sides is stronger in anyway than the other, the latter will be eventually thoroughly defeated. However, if after years of internecine of warfare, no side has emerged victorious, they either start to populate geographically different parts of the planet or adapt to consume different resources - like what happened with the Darwin's finches and their beaks.

[caption id="attachment_21359" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="The beaks of Darwin's finches"][/caption]

Cities as today's centres of development are expanding at sprightly rates, especially at their peripheries, where they "acquire" land around them during the urbanization process. They attract investments, they sustain development by providing opportunities for growth, and they consume resources whose value originates from the people inhabiting the cities. With this picture in mind, it is not hard to imagine a time in the future when some cities have grown so massive that, apart from being political and military powerhouses, they could get in the way of development of another such supercity.

And when two supercities clash, they could closely resemble the clash between two intelligent civilizations. Assuming that each city wants different resources, according to Harcourt-Smith, the cities will ignore each other as long as they're not competing for the same thing. In reality, however, all cities have many things in common, such as water, food and electricity. So if one city treads on the toes of a second, then the pressure on existing water-related infrastructure will force conflict, for example.



At the same time, if there is abundant water, food, electricity and other amenities available, and if we posit a significant difference in the cultures of the two cities, how would the outcomes chart out? Will one city's "essence" percolate into the other, like a cultural invasion, until the other's culture becomes highly localized? Will the tendency to ignore persist such that, over time, two distinct sub-species of humans exist? Will the cost of conflict deter cities from expanding to that extent at all and keep them bound to a well-defined region?

I seemed to have assumed, subconsciously, that cities will be allowed to grow and operate freely without the intervention of the state governments. This is not the case... presently. There have been policy-makers and academics in the past who have advocated for a city free of larger political intervention, and even though that's obviously a long way off, it's an idea that has a good chance of becoming real sometime within the next few centuries.