June 11, 2024
Cities growing in the ocean. Metropolises designed from scratch. Technological capitals that make governments and investors dream. All over the world, new towns are the subject of renewed enthusiasm. But what is behind these mega-urban initiatives? Are they really the solution of tomorrow?
First, defining what a new city is is a challenge, underlines Sarah Moser, associate professor in urban and cultural geography at McGill University. The one who runs a laboratory on the subject, the New Cities Lab, explains that there are multiple definitions. “What constitutes a city?” This is not necessarily clear or easy to determine. »
Within its laboratory, a new city is defined as “any project which presents itself as a new city intended to be geographically separated from existing cities, administered separately from existing cities and designated in a different way by its own name”.
The identity of the city is also an important element to consider, to avoid it being confused with “a dormitory town or the extension of an existing town”.
The desire to build such urban centers from scratch is not new, points out the professor. In particular, traces of city plans have been found associated with the oldest settlements of the Indus Valley, a region located around modern Pakistan.
“The colonial powers also built cities from scratch throughout their territories,” adds the expert. Then, after the decolonization of Africa and South Asia, among others, new trends in urban planning pushed the planned development of cities everywhere on these continents, with the objective of building a new specific urban identity. to new nations.
Cities with mixed success
It was at the turn of the 1990s that we saw the emergence of the contemporary trend of new towns. According to Sarah Moser, there are between 150 and 200 planned cities – in progress or built since that time – spread across around fifty countries. “Almost all are located in countries of the Global South or emerging countries. » This count excludes China, which alone has hundreds on its territory.
In several cases, the intention behind these initiatives is to respond to a strong demand for housing, to offer up-to-date services to citizens or simply to revitalize an economy that is struggling to diversify.
However, the results often fall far short of expectations. Successes are very rare. The majority of projects are only “investment receptacles”, maintains the professor. “The housing function is often put aside or detached from the primary intention, which is to provide shelter to the population,” she explains.
Sarah Moser sees four main functions of contemporary planned city projects: in addition to investment receptacleswe also find leisure towns, intended entirely to stimulate the tourism industry (very often luxury). Some projects serve to operate a transition of the economy from a country towards other sectors (often technological), or to assert a national identity or ideology.
Concretely, how are these projects evolving? The duty explored around fifteen different cases, from South America to East Asia.