About

Future City Lab is an open-source initiative created by a worldwide collaboration of leading engineers, universities and scientists in order to launch an urban vision for a sustainable future. Climate Change, rapidly growing megacities and the need for new energy sources are issues that need to be resolved in the urban context. We want to raise awareness and leverage the inherent opportunities to develop visions of cities that are vibrant, energy-efficient and sustainable.
Cities all over the world are facing the biggest challenge in history to immediately and drastically reduce CO2 emissions to combat climate change. Cities need to respond to increasing temperatures, frequency of storms and limited resources. The trend of people moving from rural to urban areas makes cities the focal point in the search for a solution. Increased density will need to be addressed through the optimized use of façades as vertical parks or for energy generation.

By 2050, we have to adapt our cities to a new climate, build sustainable and liveable cities for 2 billion new inhabitants and realize a CO2 neutral building stock. This requires a massive change within a short time. In order to meet these challenges leading engineers, universities and scientists worldwide have collaborated to launch the open-source initiative Future City Lab. By sharing their knowledge and leading discussions about possible solutions, a comprehensive roadmap will take shape. This roadmap will function as a springboard for planners worldwide to find solutions and establish the planning directives needed today.

Urban planning is the design of the unfinished; it is a process that is driven by change. In Future City Lab students and experts investigate, design and illustrate visions in selected cities solving their specific problems. The visions are created for a real site in a city, first showing the current condition and then transforming it visually to a sustainable utopia. The visions are published and are put forward as a starting point for professional discourse with, a mosaic of visions accessible to everyone.

Future City Lab is aiming to revolutionise the design of our future living and city environment. The open-source initiative uses crowd sourcing to give rise to an urban utopia by 2050. Using a web based platform everyone in the world can participate enabling collaborative work between students and experts from different universities and companies. Visions, research results and specialized knowledge are made public. Furthermore all authors and web users are invited to comment on contributions, submit information and take part in the development.

We believe that only by sharing knowledge, developing synergies and by thinking the unthinkable can we create a sustainable vision for our future cities.
Universities in ftr.ct.lb: Alghero Italy, ESA Paris, ETH Zürich, UPenn, TU Delft, Syracuse NY, Ryerson Toronto, IUAV Venezia