Half of All People Today Live in a City

Around 1900, approximately 10% of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2015, the figure has exceeded 50% for the first time—54% to be exact. They use 80% of all energy resources. And their numbers are steadily rising—human beings spurred by hope to survive, to find a better way of life, and to live a lifestyle of their own choosing.

(Photo: Library of Congress / Alphonse Liébert)

The City as Symbol

But cities haven’t only been places that promised security and prosperity; they’re also symbols of freedom and progress. And they’ve always been flashpoints of all the social conflicts that humankind has had to manage in every epoch. The buildings we’re erecting now and the traffic arteries we’re laying out constitute the cityscape of the 21st century, and also determine coming generations’ quality of life.

(Photo: Zara Seemann)

Future Mobility

The city as transportation hub

Future Work

The city as workplace and marketplace

Future Citizens

The city as community

The self-driving car is simply a logical consequence of the Digital Revolution. From the mainframe dinosaurs to the PCs and mobile devices to ubiquitous computing—the huge scale of omnipresent devices and things interlinked in networks will create a reality in which motorists behind the wheel will be about as exotic as horse-and-buggies in midtown traffic today. Engineers already have a pretty good idea of how such robotic cars and trucks will function; still among the big unknowns are how they’ll be integrated into our lives and our living spaces, and how they’ll communicate with us and we with them.

Will the city of tomorrow be able to provide work for people? What will be their occupations after the big economic crisis? Will we simply have to accept that there is no afterwards because the crisis isn’t a temporary illness but rather chronic suffering due to the incapacity to adapt to these new realities. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll rise from the ashes like a phoenix as the creative, innovative driving forces of a future with a humanistic sense of proportion.

Cities are characterized by their capacity to foster social integration, by their infrastructure and networks, by their scientific facilities and cultural institutions, and, above all, by the diverse array of competence, knowledge and initiative of their inhabitants. How do we go about organizing societal coexistence after the birth pangs of Digital Society with its new economies, with its reordering of private and public spheres, with all the collateral damage and lifestyle diseases that we still have no high-tech means to prevent?

The city was always a place of refuge, of safety. The “peace of the city” in the Middle Ages was an essential element that went into making cities an economic success. The architectural and administrative manifestations of this security had manifold effects on the appearance of cities and the coexistence of their inhabitants.

Gerfried Stocker (AT)

Gerfried Stocker is a media artist and telecommunications engineer. In 1991, he founded x-space, a team formed to carry out interdisciplinary projects, which went on to produce numerous installations and performances featuring elements of interaction, robotics and telecommunications. Since 1995, Gerfried Stocker has been artistic director of Ars Electronica. In 1995-96, he headed the crew of artists and technicians that developed the Ars Electronica Center’s pioneering new exhibition strategies and set up the facility’s in-house R&D department, the Ars Electronica Futurelab. He has been chiefly responsible for conceiving and implementing the series of international exhibitions that Ars Electronica has staged since 2004, and, beginning in 2005, for the planning and thematic repositioning of the new, expanded Ars Electronica Center.