Future cities: moving from technical to human needs

Abstract

The article argues for a foregrounding of human needs at the heart of urban societal futures. While economic, technical and environmental imperatives are understandably the focus of policymaking and governance arrangements at national and supra-national scales, defining and targeting priorities in the ‘ordinary’ city is key. The argument is that it is now time to place basic human needs (as enshrined both in international agreements and in the more prosaic conditions of specific cities) at the centre of thinking and planning for future cities. The piece therefore proposes that plans for urban futures start from an elaboration of contextually sensitive as well as internationally negotiated needs rather than from macro-scale and potentially ephemeral visions of glittering technological future metropoles.