It is very difficult to imagine the city of the future, its architecture, urban landscape, public space, and city-country relations.
At the crossroads of four intelligences – rational, emotional, natural, artificial – and with so many technical and technological devices on the ground, let's say that the city of connection and cooperation between all those interactions is only now beginning.
For too long we have practiced a dual and dichotomous policy that severely punished city-country, urban-rural and modern-traditional relations. Now, the major transitions of the 21st century – climate, energy, ecological, digital, labor, social, security – require us to reconsider this set of relationships, this time in the name of a more collaborative and creative society, ethically inclusive, and which know how to preserve rare materials and common goods, and promote the management of shared resources and the rights of the absent, especially future generations.
It is in this particularly complex context that we must consider and appreciate the issue of urban landscape architecture and public space in the city of the future.
Let us look, then, at some aspects of this reticular mesh induced by the connection and cooperation between space-territories, for the benefit of new multiterritorialities such as urban networks, the CIM-region, European cross-border cooperation groupings or, even, the new economy of geosystems of territorial base, examples of which are Terra Quente and Terra Fria in Trás-os-Montes, the Alto Douro wine region, Cova da Beira, the Alqueva multipurpose development, the Algarve barrocal mountain range, among others.
1) Firstly, the architecture of built space as a result of new forms of urban mobility and, as well, a much more inspiring ecology made with our human condition in mind; as a result, we will have more public space at our disposal to redesign the urban landscape; Today cities are already cataloged according to travel time to the center, for example, the city of 5 m, 15 m, 30 m, 60 m;
2) Secondly, a new digital architecture as a result of the digitalization process of activities that transforms business models, the physical configuration of commercial spaces and their redistribution in the surrounding space-territory; as a result, we will have a more differentiated relationship with peri-urban and suburban spaces and also with rural spaces; with the increase in teleworking, digital nomadism and the four-day week, the complex of relationships between the center and the periphery changes;
3) Thirdly, a new urban architecture as a result of the new energy matrix and the transformation of built space to respond to energy efficiency requirements, but also to new urban uses such as urban and vertical agriculture; We will thus have more public space to form local energy communities and agriculture that is more accompanied by the community;
4) Fourthly, the architecture of socio-labor spaces, as a result of the dematerialization and automation of the labor economy and a substantial change in business models, as well as technical-administrative work in public functions, opens up new avenues not only for business spaces and for mobility within and outside the traditional urban space; the contractual relationship itself will undergo profound changes, more binding and less binding, more permanent and more intermittent, more fixed remuneration and more variable remuneration, that is, we will certainly have many more tailor-made solutions according to the wishes of the parties;
5) Fifthly, the new architecture of the city-country relationship as a result of the decarbonization process and the role of ecological infrastructures and a network of green corridors in the urban-rural connection model and in the delimitation of new public connecting spaces, in accordance with the principle of more countryside in the city and more city in the countryside; thus, the municipal or intermunicipal agroecological park will be the shopping mall of the XNUMXst century;
6) Sixthly, the architecture of collaborative spaces of science, culture and creativity as a result of the central place that, from now on, they will represent in the territorial cartography of the city of the future; we will have at our disposal a very varied range of public space options at the interface of this multi-territorial architecture of science, art and culture;
7) Seventhly, the architecture of social protection and inclusion networks, in particular, in the design of proximity and outpatient services for the benefit of the most disadvantaged groups of citizens; we will have many mobility solutions at our disposal for senior citizens and other more fragile groups; co-housing, shared services and volunteer banks will allow new solutions to be designed and implemented;
8) Eighthly, the architecture of the business environment, not only in the connection of traditional business parks and industrial zones, but also in the intelligent mapping of the ranks and value chains that make up the business city-region and, also, in the infrastructures welcome and advice that inform the new digital economy;
9) In ninth place, the architecture of civil protection and risk communities, firstly, in mitigation and adaptation actions to climate change, but, more especially, in ecological and energy pedagogy related to decarbonization, circular economy and biodiversity policies; We will therefore have at our disposal several programs with this specific purpose, both in the PRR and in the next PT 2030, which also need to be implemented in the daily lives of ordinary citizens;
10) Tenthly, the architecture of public participation, in response to the major transitions of the XNUMXst century, will require the reorganization of the academic space, the media, the associative space and the general reform of public administration; This is a task as demanding as it is necessary and much of the success of major transitions will depend on this fundamental reorganization.
Final Notes
Two final notes to highlight the reticulation of these various architectures and, therefore, the delimitation of new public spaces of connection, cooperation and multiterritoriality.
The first concerns the city-region, the polycentric network of cities and towns, what I have already designated as the CIM City, the city of our imagination with regard to the design of collaborative commons and the management of shared resources between towns. and cities. Intermunicipal Communities (CIM) play a prominent role here.
The second note concerns the connection of the interior spaces of the future region-city.
I refer to the formation and articulation of localized territorial systems, for example, local agri-food systems (SAL), agroforestry systems (SAF), agro-tourism systems (SAT) and agro-landscaping systems (SAP).
This geoeconomy of localized territorial systems currently operates in a dispersed order and without economies of network and agglomeration, it is therefore time for a new cartography and territorial mapping that is, in the current situation, especially adapted to the administration of the CIM City, all the more so as delimits and stimulates a new network of inter-municipal public spaces of the greatest relevance.
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