Futuristic, smart, green and sustainable cities are the dream of many political leaders, especially dictators. Built from scratch, these urban utopias promise to solve the problems of overcrowding, pollution and poverty that affect any city with centuries of history. More than a hundred have been designed and put into operation in the last two decades, but none, however, has achieved what it set out to do.
"It is very difficult to create a city from scratch because it is very difficult to create a community", explains Agustín Fernández de Losada, director of Cidob's Global Cities program. "A city only makes sense if it allows the full development of its inhabitants and facilitates access to housing, employment, health and education, and it also does this by promoting equality, something that is almost impossible , especially in authoritarian regimes that do not respect human rights and that are the main drivers of these projects".
The new administrative capital of Egypt, on the outskirts of Cairo, a government complex designed in 2015 for five million people, is a clear example of this failure.
On the plan, everything is square, but on the ground it is not the same. The figures in the promotional brochure are far from being achieved. 1.1 million homes, 663 hospitals and clinics, 150 mosques and churches are promised. Also a pharaonic obelisk one kilometer high that will be the tallest building in the world.
The new Cairo aspires, with a planned area of 700 square kilometers, to be the largest planned city in the world. It is the flagship project of President Abdul Fatah Al-Sissi's Vision 2030 program.
The project, however, makes much more sense if it is seen as a real estate development for the benefit of the armed forces, the main player in the Egyptian economy, and the civil servants who will live there. China contributes with a credit of 3 billion dollars.
Business is guaranteed, even if expectations are not met because the city will host the main buildings of the republic, such as the army headquarters, the presidential residence, the ministries and the Parliament.
Another thing is that people want to live there. The average price of an apartment is around 60,000 euros, an exorbitant cost for the vast majority of Egyptians.
The new Cairo will therefore be an administrative capital, of civil servants, without the social and business mix of a normal city. It is even likely that the officials who have to work there will continue to live in old Cairo, which is much more affordable, although also much more difficult due to traffic congestion and air pollution.
Taking weight out of a large city has also been considered in other countries. In South Korea, for example, the city of Songdo was designed two decades ago, a space of six square kilometers won by the Yellow Sea. 40% of this surface is green area. There are cars, but a system of sensors in the streets and avenues warns the user when to leave the house and what is the best route to minimize traffic jams.
About 167,000 people live in Songdo, half of the expected number, because the price of housing is much higher than in Seoul and Incheon, the neighboring city.
The garbage collection system is exemplary. It consists of a network of underground tunnels and machines that not only collect and sort waste, but also convert it into energy.
Luis Bettencourt, a leading urban planner at the University of Chicago, believes that Songdo, like New Cairo and so many other planned cities – some with a few buildings built, like Masdar in the United Arab Emirates, but others only on paper, like Telosa, in the United States–, they do not solve the basic questions to justify a city.
"Cities - explains Bettencourt - are the main source of growth and change in human societies. It has been this way since the beginning of history until today, when most of humanity lives in cities. Cities confront us with the deepest questions about society and human nature. How does culture develop? How does behavior change to favor hyper-sociability and long-term planning? Where is the balance between cooperation and competition? How does technology change society? Is inequality an inevitable consequence of growth? Is a prosperous and sustainable future possible?".
Fernández de Losada, for his part, believes that planned cities cannot answer these questions because "they cannot guarantee inclusive and sustainable development".
Sometimes, though, living in a big city becomes very difficult. Cairo's problems are replicated in many other cities in the developing world, especially in Asia and Africa.
Urban massification is unstoppable. Every day 200,000 people around the world move to live from the countryside to the city. Population growth is exponential in cities like Lagos, Manila and Dar es Salaam, where all kinds of infrastructure are lacking.
Jakarta is another example. The capital of Indonesia, located on the island of Java, is sinking, and the president wants to move it. The sea level is rising due to climate change and the drying up of the 13 rivers that converge on the plain on which the city was built.
40% of Jakarta is below sea level. The neighborhoods in the northern area have sunk four meters in the last 20 years. Half of the 30 million inhabitants do not have access to running water. Pollution, overcrowding and earthquakes further exacerbate the problem of recurring flooding.
Jakarta is on the north coast of Java, an island similar to Cuba and slightly larger. While 12 million people live in Cuba, Java has a population of 141 million.
This difference in density and resources, between the most and least populated areas of the planet, creates inequalities that urban planners believe can only be solved by improving existing cities, not by building new ones.
"It is much more sustainable to improve the cities that already exist", affirms Agustín Fernández de Losada. "Planned cities, to begin with, need a space that is usually virgin, as in the case of Nusantara, the capital that has been planned to replace Jakarta. In the case of Masdar, New Cairo and Neom, the developable land is desert. Cheap land attracts real estate investors and the whole project ends up pivoting on economic profitability, rather than social or environmental.
"Many planned cities - explains Oxford University urban planner Nicholas Simcik Arese - end up being speculative urban planning projects for the rich. We can talk about a high standing apartheid".
This segregation is what will most likely be present in Neom, the futuristic complex in Saudi Arabia that is part of the Vision 2030 project, an ambitious program to decouple the oil economy.
Designed for nine million people spread over four cities, it will function as an autonomous entity and, on its own, will have to prove that a hostile, desert and resource-free environment is not a problem that technology cannot overcome. Its inhabitants aspire to live in the best of both worlds.
A planned city, however, is not viable if it cannot create jobs. That is why many are state capitals. The Line, Neom's central project, will not be, but it is designed to host a powerful technological industry, the engine of the new Saudi economy.
Planned cities are an opportunity to reinvent a country. They are presented as the definitive solution to the challenges posed by the climate crisis and the emergence of renewable energies.
The serious problem is that almost no one wants to live there. Nusantara, the new capital of Indonesia, will not save Jakarta, just as the new Cairo will not save the old one.
And, although it may seem paradoxical, the vast majority of the inhabitants of cities that do not work prefer to continue living there, putting up with traffic and pollution. They distrust urban artificiality, no matter how sophisticated and intelligent it is, because it is managed from above. They prefer neighborhood communities, even if they are chaotic, because they allow a lot of autonomy.
The old and mammoth cities offer spheres of freedom that are sources of life for authoritarian regimes.
