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This may lead to two different (non-exclusive) scenarios that enforce a broader trend in which people sort themselves out geographically, that is: people are more and more keeping in touch with people who share a similar identity or particular goal. Citizens may use digital media as ‘filters’ that allows them to find the spaces where they are likely to meet people who are similar to them. Institutions may use these same technologies to target particular audiences and make places more attractive to them, or even to exclude access to those who do not belong.

A second scenario also builds upon a broader geographic trend that has been called ‘Living Together Apart.’ This is a development in which various urban publics live in and use the same geographic areas, but do not interact much. An example is found in the former working class turned migrant quarters near European inner cities that have become gentrified over the last decades. Local working class people, young professionals and migrants share the same neighborhood. A Turkish coffee house might be located next to a designer coffee bar. They are geographically close, but are separated by a large symbolic distance. The filtering mechanisms of mobile media could enforce this scenario. The chaotic experience of all those different worlds on top of each other becomes ‘navigable’ and ‘inhabitable’ through the use of urban media that help users locate those microvariations in space that are relevant to them.

That, however, is only one part of my findings. Urban media also have the affordance to create a public sphere in new ways. Urban media can create a new type of platform that can bring forth collective issues around which publics can organize. Data from various sensor networks can be mapped to, for instance, show the air quality or energy use of a city. These mappings can become a condensation point around which publics start to organize themselves. In addition, the use of urban media can be used to make individual contributions to such communal issues visible. This could mean that it becomes easier to turn resources into a ‘commons’, a communally used and managed resource. First examples of these are the bike and car sharing schemes that have sprung up in various cities around the world. There is a chance that the communal use and management of these practical collective issues could lead to the formation of publics around these issues that bring together people from various backgrounds. I have shown how ‘open data’ initiatives could perhaps play a similar role. These too could create new platforms on which urban publics can form.

At the same time I have also argued that the introduction of a new platform by itself is not enough for a public realm to come into being. To function as a public realm, platforms need a program that provide one or more functions that will attract citizens from various backgrounds. This is true for physical spaces as well as for urban media platforms. Studies have shown that digital platforms can enhance the sense of a local community or public in a particular neighborhood, but that this does not happen by itself.

Megacities are our future: There are more than 20 megacities in the world today and by 2025 there will be around 30 of them. They are home to more than 10 million people and sprawl for hundreds of kilometers. Their projected rapid expansion by the middle of this century will drive our economies and shape our lives. But they are not carefully designed superstructures; instead, they are aggregations of building developments that spread like weeds over already stressed infrastructures. Megacities offer the greatest opportunities and challenges for humankind in the 21st century as they exist at the interface where urban systems meet technology to support human development.

With the appropriate infrastructures supporting them, combined technologies can form qualitatively new kinds of engagement between buildings and the megacity environment. An exploratory project between Astudio architects and AVATAR examines the potential for upgrading the environmental performance of entire buildings in situ. The structural bones of buildings are kept in place and pruned as fit for purpose frameworks, without having to displace existing inhabitants, which are then re-wrapped with living facades. These are the next generation of functional vertical gardens that are colonized by microorganisms and life-like chemistries that assist with the lifecycles of buildings being able to process waste and make biofuels using local resources.

Architecture does not need to be limited by inert surfaces, which create a barrier between people and the environment but could directly engage the surroundings through active interfaces which act as vast synthetic soils. These might be maintained under surveillance by smart microfluidics monitoring systems and robotic gardeners. A taste of these dynamic geotextiles can be experienced in the architectural installation Hylozoic Ground, a finalist for the Katerva Award insustainability. This jungle-like technology is a prototype for living building surfaces that combine cybernetics with smart chemistry. The immersive, evolving technology offers a responsive framework for a new kind of architectural experience that senses people and the environment and whose principles may be applied in other contexts, such as gardens. Hylozoic Ground could even offer its inhabitants positive emotional experiences similar to being close to nature.

The grand vision of achieving positive human development in the 21st century will require effective coordination between disciplines, institutions, cultures, and geographical regions. The pressing concerns that affect us all are many and varied—and would require humanity to perform at its very best to secure a long-term partnership with this unstable earth that is our home.

Questions:

What are the challenges to developing and implementing a global vision of positive human development?

How can developed countries best transfer knowledge to the Global South?

How can combined technologies in cities help address significant social inequalities?