THE END OF ALL CITIES

Let me give you a romantic picture. You live in a beautiful little village of about 300 persons. They're your kind of people, and there are no criminals or gangs as those people were kicked out long ago. It's a sunny village, with lots of plants and extremely light traffic, and with discrete roading that doesn't dominate the atmosphere. Instead natural sounds and rugged garden dominates. It's a relaxing place, friends and a cafe' are walking distance, and the work loads are comfortable. Everyone works only around six hours a day to get the jobs done, and they rarely stress over anything much in their professional world. The older people are more of a help than a burden, as they slow down yet don't stop. No one second-guesses whether they can pay the bills and put food on the table, and the food is excellent. The houses are modest, but well-windowed and with good privacy, yet placed in beautiful settings so no-one feels a pressing need to 'escape' or up-size in exchange for crippling debt.

Now here is the problem. Except in the most lucky areas, that was not quite the picture of the old-world village. In some ways it was, with the peace and the beautiful atmosphere, but the poverty factor was prevalent. And so, people were driven to cities for the natural advantages that could be provided by industrialisation.

Jumping into the stack-and-pack of those particularly nasty early cities was no fun. If the prosperous village as I described it was the norm, I doubt we ever would have fled to the cities. People would have seen no point in it, and they would have been automatically revolted by the comparatively awful existential conditions.

The city as we know it is and always has been a compromise. Most people don't like living close together in unnatural settings, nor amongst people they would rather not have to know. Indeed, always we see the wealthy moving to the most beautiful areas in a city, with the least ambient traffic and social tension.

Those who can afford the best of both worlds of course embrace it. But even the rich tolerate compromise. The leafy suburbs are no utopia as they're rarely leafy enough, nor private or spacious enough, because the wealthy still need to avoid a punishingly long commute. And that means tolerating a degree stack-and-pack, typical of classic suburbia. The final result, is a luke-warm version of what we really want, at best.

The reason why cities are powerful economic drivers is of course the agglomeration dynamic. That is, the ability to connect many individuated parts into an efficient co-operative whole; allowing for economies of scale, competition (fuelling innovation and commercial discipline), and advanced specialisation.

The old way of achieving agglomeration was (and is) by keeping business and people geographically close together. Again, this all-powerful economic dynamic is what drove us out of the semi-rural ideal. But I argue that this is about to change, and radically so.

There are three major technologies that will make geographically-based agglomeration obsolete. The internet moving into 5G, driverless cars, and mobile robotics.

To put it most simply, the result will be that no-one will need to leave home to get nearly anything done, to either work or live. Hence, location won't mean much for agglomeration. The city--or should I say 'the agglomeration dynamic'--will be replaced by the electronic cloud and its sprouting mechanical limbs.

Soon we can, and will, go back to the natural ideal of mass-decentralisation, and into what I call private cells; that is, self-selecting villages of your kind of people, built in the very best environments and in the image of good living, uncompromised by the need to get to work. The evolving result will be the death of the city as we know it.

The starting gun for mass-geographical decentralisation will be the implementation of driverless cars [Correction: Covid-19 has started it], which is a truly revolutionary movement only a few years away. As soon as a small car can drive itself to the next customer, it's game-over for transport as we know it.

With driverless technology's capacity to rapidly post any item anywhere, and at very low cost, standardised and highly flexible mobile robots can be put to work 24/7, doing various jobs throughout the metropolitan area. The robots will rapidly pay for themselves due to their then high immediate productivity. Most constructive operations will outsource to robotics services, and as soon as they become available. (Especially with our love affair with forever increasing the minimum wage).

5G internet is being rolled out today, and this will take care of itself of course. But it's noteworthy that 5G is important to facilitate timely remote-controlling, when and as required, for mobile robotics to be practical. 5G is an important supporting technology. It's also far superior for practical video-intercom.

Worried about the environment being ruined from "hyper sprawl"? Please don't. Contrary to decades of propaganda, the geographical human footprint on the natural world has always been a food issue, not a housing issue, and garden-style residential developments that are more planted than concreted are in no way an environmental toxin. Also, with driverless transport we will see a remarkable increase in automotive efficiency. Driverless cars may use only about 10% of current energy for a given transport productivity (too long-winded to explain here, but I will just say that transport today is morbidly inefficient compared to theoretical potentials).

There will always be mega-centres of built up areas, but they will have more to do with supporting highly automated industrial bases, recreation, and meeting the demand for mate-selection, etc, than the need to travel to work or go shopping. Otherwise, we will see most of us will go back to a modern style of remarkably beautiful, private, plant-ridden villages, with technology and convenience on tap. And the short, temporary, and too often painful age of the live-in city will be over.

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-Andrew Atkin