GEAB 182

As we diligently observe the geopolitical shifts in our world each month, the analysis of futuristic city projects and new urban developments proves to be exceptionally revealing. Like dreams, these projects unveil our hopes and fears, ultimately reflecting the visions of perfect, celestial, or ideal cities that their sponsors aspire to create. In embracing this exercise, we choose to delve into the exploration of future city projects, not to dissect their technical feasibility or promised technological advancements, but rather to scrutinize the political, social, economic, and ideological underpinnings that drive them. From NEOM (Saudi Arabia) to Praxis (the first crypto-state city dreamed up by Silicon Valley), via Nusantara (Indonesia’s new capital city-province) and the floating city of the Maldives, these urban ‘utopias’ have similarities and tensions that tell us about the visions and wills that inhabit our present and that are helping to shape our future, come what may.

At first glance, the most striking thing is that most of these ambitious projects, some of which have already begun, are located in the Global South, and it is not the West that is driving dreams of the cities of the future, but the multipolar world. Here, the world-before and the world-after are no longer concepts, they are embodied in tangible, budgeted and committed initiatives.