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My dream city is one of ultimate connectivity and conviviality. People connected to each other, to the environment, to history, to the future. How? With the best of what future technology will bring us without diminishing our essential humanity. My dream city will ensure that all its denizens have equal, fast, and cheap access as an amenity and right as fundamental as clean air and water.
Human connections . . . The philosopher Martin Buber said that all true living is encounter, and my city planners will have created spaces large and small where people can gather, play, converse, and create together. There will be other places for respite from the buzz and perhaps silent reflection… lots of benches where people can linger, and linger longer if they need to or choose. Gardens everywhere, horizontal, rooftop and vertical… some to add beauty, others to clean the air and provide food.
Connection to history . . . to the past and the future. Timeline art in murals and mosaics. We need to know what came before to feel connected and care for the place we live. Dreamscapes of the future in murals and mosaics… created together by everyone from pre-schoolers, to graduate students, to the oldest residents of the city.
Great zero-emission public transportation . . . bike trails, state of the art recycling programs, great libraries, museums, cultural centers. The city will ring and romp with music, from huge venues to front porch jams.
Civic pride, born of a spirit of Ubuntu . . . the deep conviction that I am who I am because of who we all are together. This is not pie in the sky Kumbaya and tolerance. There will be the inevitable divisions, and competing agendas… but over time starting in the community and neighborhood smaller schools, conversation, mediation, civic engagement, and civil dialog will be elevated to where it belongs right up there with reading, writing, and math. The idea of “leave no child behind” will be superseded by “leave no person behind.” Homelessness will be almost unheard of… not because it is a blot on the city, or an impediment to commerce, but because if will offend it’s citizens core convictions about the values of the place they’ve come to call home and love.
This city will attract cultural creatives, artists and craftsman, entrepreneurs and perhaps even some light industry. But as that old Beatles lyric goes…” a workingman’s hero is something to be.” ALL work will be honored and respected and the minimum wage will be a living wage. And because all work will be respected… slowly over time, pride in work at every level will increase, and the city itself will work better.
Because the city is a beacon for how a city CAN work better, it will become a center, an incubator, and a catalyst for congruent and resonant efforts in other places. Our city will be a place of think tanks, foundations, formal and informal educational institutions. A city alive with thought, heart, and soul.
“Imagination is the beginning of creation.
We imagine what we desire
We create what we imagine
and at last, we create what we will”
Let’s get started.
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This post is an entry into our The City of the Future contest. See our compendium of all entries, here:
Re-imagined: The City of the Future (A Good Men Project Compendium of Contest Entries)
The Editors’ Choice Visionary Award is a special project of the Good Men Project’s Political Activism Social Interest Group.
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Photo credit: Getty Images