An Essay on Globalisation, Urbanisation and Digitalisation (GUD) Age and its impacts on Cities' Sustainability and Resilience Shima Beigi, PhD Free University of Brussels University of Oxford shima.beigi@gmail.com shima.beigi@kellogg.ox.ac.uk With the rise of urbanisation across the world, cities have pushed their way to the forefront of global socio-political and socio-economical change. Cities are also called as a force for change in the era marked by increasing impact of human actions on Earth (Grimm et al., 2008). In this globally changing environment, many argue that the future of cities has to be consciously redirected toward better consumption of resources, toward enhancing social cohesion and toward making sustainability a framework of evolution (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2013). These arguments predominately have noted that manifesting change requires building a closer connection between citizens and the city itself. In pursuit of such goal, building a better connection between people and city, some scholars began to question the extent to which cities’ size can contribute to building better cities. Better in this argument refers to better consumption of resources, enhanced connectivity between cities’ elements, and improved social cohesion. In search for a better urban future it is inevitable to explore, ponder and interrogate ways in which cities are built because most of the cities across the world are exposed to the increasing changes of climatic patterns and thus are in the consequent need of introducing adaptation methods and enhancing urban resilience. Envisioning of a novel future for urban systems, the literature of urban change (Hunt and Watkiss, 2011), future of urbanisation, urban sustainability and adaptation (Change, 2014) is mainly categorised in two directions. The first argument for rethinking future of cities is focused on the need for adaptation in the cities that are growing with a rapid race aka big cities such as New York, Dubai, Johannesburg. The second form of the need for urban adaptation is manifesting itself in the relationship between cities’ scale, size and its impact on urban sustainability. Following the second trend, impact of cities’ size and other physical characteristics such as density and population level on sustainability and in predicting a viable future scenario of urban growth, Kunstler (2012) speculates the following: “... I see that cities getting ‘smaller and denser, with fewer people, and lower, with the skyscraper obsolete, travel greatly reduced, and the rural edge growing more distinct (Kunstler, 2012)”. In his book, Too much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, Kunstler (2012) argues that because of the continuous gap between population growth and resource availability, and because of existence of “wishful thinking” in solving problems in our world, the apparent growing trend of big cities popularity will change. Kunstler further justifies that: “... A recognition that a whole new disposition of things is under way will prompt demographic shifts into our smaller cities and smaller towns, especially places that have some relationship with the local food production, water power and water transport (Kunstler, 2012)”. Kunstler (2012) observations can be further justified in the growing scientific recognition of anthropogenic forces in driving global change (Bell and Jayne, 2009), and of an existence of an intricate feedback mechanism that runs across atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and social systems (Waters et al., 2014). In reviewing the stability period of Earth Steffen et al. (2009) provide observations compatible to that of Kunstler (2012) and write that human induced aka anthropogenic impacts on Earth have caused significant shifts in biophysical thresholds (Rockström et al., 2009), leading socio-ecological systems to cross over tipping point of sustainability, productivity and adaptive capacity (Folke et al., 2004). Such biophysical shifts therefore have to be a guiding roadmap“for defining preconditions for human development (Steffen et al., 2015)”. Because of consequences of climate change and emergence of Anthropocene, as a global community, we are pressured to realign humanity's’ future actions with regard to the limits of Earth . Indeed, this global pressure to revisit future development agenda is further reinforced by socio-technological and socio-political movements. And, because cities are becoming our future settlements destination (World Health Organisation Centre for Health Development, 2014.), urban systems are called to play a leading role in promoting sustainable living. This leadership role of cities, nevertheless is not achieved automatically. Cities cannot automatically achieve sustainability for two reasons argues Rees and Wackernagel (1996). The first reason that cities are not able to achieve automatic sustainability is due to the inherent dependence of human enterprise on Earth life supporting systems. This means that the pushing force of human growth demands outreaching for more resources and often from remote sources. The second reason behind cities’ inability to achieve automatic sustainability is due to the Carrying Capacity of Earth (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996). Combined with the rising demand of big cities for more resources, the limits of Carrying Capacity or “the maximum persistently supportable load (Catton 1986)” put an end of an ideology that cities can naturally grow toward sustainability. However, this inability of cities to achieve natural or organic sustainability should not be seen as a wishful desire that cannot be achieved. Instead, this understanding can be seen as an invitation for “consciously plan” for sustainability-"... At the same time, cities and their inhabitants can play a major role in helping to achieve global sustainability (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996).” This understanding that cities and their inhabitants can actively participate in creating global sustainability creates a pitchfork in shaping future urban agenda. From the vantage point of Kunstler (2012) for instance, when we realise “No More More, No Bigger Bigger”, cities start to shrink in size because people no longer see value in living in expansiveexpensive cities. This organic shrinkage of cities in size while maintaining high density with few people seem to result from either Kunstler’s failure to imagine cities beyond their energetic reality, Pick Oil and the need for cheap energy or from falling prey to the trap of wishful thinking that he actually endeavoured to avoid. In short, Kunstler’s view on future of cities while stands merits in the argument for the need of denser cities, it cannot be generalised because the issue of urban sustainability cannot solely be limited to cities’ size or cities’ population. Additionally, the combination of small city, high density, small population or few people is not compatible with studies on the link between urban scale and sustainability that will be discussed later. From a more critical vantage point, thus one can analyse the expansive-expensive potency of cities and identify undesirable parameters, trigger points and patterns that can be redirected. This form of imagining future of cities is more in line with Rees and Wackernagel (1996) argument that actually cities and people can play a conscious role in shaping urban sustainability. Also, in rethinking the future of cities and urban life Glaeser (1998) provides another counterargument to Kunstler’s view. Glaeser (1998) argues “Actually predicting the future of the city requires a framework of understanding the costs and benefits of urban life (Glaeser, 1998)”. Understanding the “costs and benefits of urban life” while on surface matches the scaling of cities based on the energy realities of future argument presented by (Kunstler, 2012), it goes further in discussing the dynamic role of urban components in defining the economic shape and magnitude of future urban lifestyle. Conceptually speaking, a city is made of dense agglomeration of energy and matter in form of people and assets (Glaeser, 1998). Technically speaking, however, a city is a complex system in a dynamic state of flux. Therefore, cities are more than just energetic realities and “their future changes as future changes.” Perhaps it is the first time in human history that we are forced to realise imagining future is a futile effort. Or maybe it is the first time that spirit of the time aka Zeitgeist is calling us to adopt a different mindset, a mindset that appreciate change, adaptation and resilience. The call of Zeitgeist to avoid silo thinking and generalisation and to welcome embracing change can further be identified in the emerging conceptualisation of 21st Century’s cities which puts emphasis on ‘abilities of cities to attract people’ and ‘economic management of the costs of moving creative workforce, ideas, know-how, and knowledge’. Take for example the study of cities’ degree of attractiveness and the rising awareness of relationship between innovation, creativity and urban growth (Bettencourt and West, 2010). Bigger cities have good, bad and indeed ugly sides. This means that bigger cities contribute to positive values such as growth of knowledge, innovation and wealth as much as they contribute to undesired consequences such as increasing crime, traffic congestion and incidence of certain diseases. Consequently with this formulation comes a novel way of looking at urban systems, as emphasised by Bettencourt and West (2010), in which detailed data can guide “the performance of a city relative to baselines for its size defined by scaling laws”. Expecting future cities to shrink in size, while remaining dense with low level of population therefore has to be backed up with further detailed data collected from complexity perspective (i.e., that is considering the future of a city as a changing vector, shaped by a diverse range of networks of people, places, infrastructures, goods, knowledge and ideas all interacting with each other). Further to this argument, it is essential to note the role of Data Revolution in reshaping hierarchy of power, giving rise to bottom up changes in the city governance system. The future of urban life style is hence further interdependent on what governments decide to do with the effects of change on urban system. For example the extent of impact of Data Revolution and information spillover on the division of labour in urban systems is highly uncertain. So, it is unlikely that one can provide a prescription for future urban lifestyle exclusively based on parameters such as city’s size, density, population, and energetic footprint. However this difficulty in prescribing a recipe for future of cities, should not limit our imagination in providing competing future urban scenarios. With the growing impact of climate change on urban systems, the rising demands for buildings socially inclusive urban systems, the rising awareness of the powerful role of technology in shaping both social fabric and urban architecture, and the rising evidence in patterns of change in the criteria of living and therefore change in people’s choices over where to settle, we are witnessing a growing desire to label cities. We can additionally track this expansive pattern of labelling cities, in an attempt to make sense of the highly complex and wicked matters of globalisation, urbanisation and digitalisation (GUD)1 . GUD is a terminology coined by the author and it is a part of a larger article on future of cities and the intersection of wellbeing. 1 In this complex landscape of GUD, it seems natural that we start our ‘preliminary search’ for a better future city by focusing on scalable parameters such as energetic realities of cities and their role in exhausting the carrying capacity of the Earth. In short, Kunstler (2012) thinking on arguing that future cities shrink in size, while remaining dense with fewer population seems logical. In other words, if we limit our analytical lens to the sole energetic realities of cities, then it seems smaller cities stand a better economical advantage in managing themselves at least resource wise. However, to deeply discover the complexity GUD, and its compound impact on future of cities we must go beyond ‘preliminary research’ and avoid shortcut arguments. A complex web of forces is leading cities toward becoming further connected. Let us take a look at recent changes in urban lifestyle. Take for instance the rise of collaborative platforms and sharing economy. Sharing economy transcends the problems of bigger cities by creating mutually beneficial connections and by linking cities across scale and it is enhancing interconnectivity of cities. Take a look at Uber Eats or Deliveroo as two of shining byproducts of digitalisation. These platforms connect many systems without citizens being conscious of it. In the past to have a food delivered to your door from a restaurant at another neighbourhood depended on the restaurant accepting to deliver to another neighbourhood. So, in the past this desire could be framed as a “wishful thinking”, something that Kunster (2012) attempted to argue against. With technology wishful thinking can be seen as a potential for innovation. Having the role of technology in mind, speculation on future of cities therefore cannot be limited into “No Bigger Bigger” urban system. Globalisation combined with digitalisation plays a focal role in shaping the future of urban lifestyle. In 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 the world witnessed a rising trend in new form of terrorism that feeds off of digital revolution and as a result many cities across the globe became target of these attacks (Hershco, 2017). At one level, these attacks upset the entire physical, mental, and spiritual landscape of urban systems. On another level, they also shape the collective memory of people living in cities in multiple ways. For example, the attacks in Turkey and France have dramatically upset the tourism industry in these two countries. However, these attacks ‘shifted the desire for tourism’ to other places in the world (Fig. 1). Figure 1. Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Spanish and Portuguese Tourism Portugal’s and Spain's tourism industry for example are two of those countries that are actually benefiting from this shift. Looking at statistics of Spanish tourism inflow for example demonstrate a seemingly incremental pick of 0.4% in inflow of travellers that results in a potentially sustainable demand for tourism in this country in future (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2014). Integrating the emergent and unpredictable effects of globalisation and digitalisation therefore further challenges our imagination to envision the future of urbanisation and predict the likely future urban lifestyle. What if this shifting trend in tourism industry results in further shift in social, technological, political , spiritual, architectural dimensions of urban systems? Thus once again it is evident that imagining cities’ future seem to be far from their size, density and population. Earlier in this essay, I argued that despite the fact that denser urban forms are better at certain aspects of sustainability such as resource mobility, an element of Kunstler theory, and it is argued by other scholars (Bramley and Power, 2009), it, the density argument, cannot be generalised to all cities across the world. The reason behind this is that urban sustainability cannot solely be limited to cities’ size or cities’ population. In addition, recent studies on the link between urban scale and sustainability demonstrate that finding the optimal size for cities is still an open question. Cities are complex systems. And one of the characteristics of complex systems is nestedness. Nestedness, being originally a biological concept refers to the inherently interdependent and interconnected nature of species across scales (Staniczenko et al., 2013). Nestedness of complex systems creates difficulty in determining what exactly would be the future of cities. Moreover as we become more and more technologically advanced, many of our previous needs can be met through online platforms. This multidimensional distribution of labour allows people to afford living in further remote areas of urban system. And these settlements, incrementally build their own communities. To separate however these smaller settlements from the formal city and assign them with a new city unit seems paradoxical because it requires us to find a distinction between what we ‘today’ would call a town from what tomorrow we might call a city. Furthermore, bigger cities according to the emerging study of attractiveness of cities based on their size appear to be more attractive because they better at creating wealth, faster in driving innovation whereas it is easier to move resources in smaller cities. Thus, there seem to be a tension between distinguishing which one, innovation or mobility of resources and in what combination be most important for future sustainability. Looking at the growing desire for labelling cities, it is also apparent that imagining urban future is dependent on where we put our focus. In the past for example, research was mainly focused on traffic patterns, embodied energy and cities’ energetic footprints. As a result, a future city had to focus its future developmental trajectory according to its ability to manage resources. Nevertheless, the growing literature on urban studies is indicating that future cities are rather unimaginable. In the below table, (Table 1), a short breakdown of recently emerging future types of cities is provided. In these very brief but intensely discussed types of cities, what motivates cities to achieve their desired future narrative is not about preliminary parameters such as city size, density and population. For instance in the category of future Resilient Cities, a combination of elements allow the city to become better at adapting to change, managing risks of climate change, and rise to the complex demands of city’s web of interactions (Tyler and Moench, 2012). In the category of ‘Sustainable Cities’, the thesis is that a city revolves around its people, and sustainability ultimately improves their quality of life. Cities across the world are struggling with the balance between three pillars of sustainability. Thus the Sustainable Future is imagined by focusing on how the three pillars of sustainable development can interact to solve popular problems of cities (Gill et al., 2007) (e.g., Urban Heat Island and Investing in green urban infrastructure such as the green-space network). In the urban labelling movement we can observe that the desired characteristics of a particular category of a city, take for example the Smart City Typology, does not deal with size, density and population size of a city. A city cannot become smart by shrinking or putting a stop button on its expansive potency. Cities become smarter by directing their evolution. The only typology whereby size seems to matter is Garden Cities. However, a deeper analysis of Garden Cities movement demonstrates that the gist of the argument is about human-friendly-ness of cities. Emerging Types of Cities Resilient Cities (Index, 2014) Sustainable Cities (ARCADIS, 2016) Smart Cities (Hollands, 2015) Derived from Rockefeller Foundation and Arup, 100 Resilient Cities Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index IBM thesis of building a smarter planet The Economist Intelligence Unit's Liveable Cities (Unit, 2015) Global Liveability Ranking for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors Overcrowding and industrial Garden Cities (Wainwright, 2014) pollution of growing Victorian Criteria Resourcefulness, Reflection, Inclusion, Integrated, Robust, Redundant, Flexible Ranking based on the three pillars of sustainability namely People, Planet and Profit Embracing technology to unprecedented degrees for security and infrastructure management Scoring of five categories of Stability, Healthcare, Culture and environment, Education and Infrastructure Community-led planning cities Table 1. Emergence of Labelled Cities Moving from current existing typology of cities and to further discover the complexity of cities we can also observe the emergence of Second-tier cities (Markusen et al., 1999). These cities indeed do not signal movement toward smaller denser cities with few people. In fact these cities are continuously investing in their expansive power, particularly in infrastructure sector to improve their quality-of-living standards and ultimately attract more people. Additionally, second and third-tier cities demonstrate that the staggering ‘pull of bigger cities’ in attracting immigrants of East Asia while smaller cities in attracting immigrants from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Western Europe (Frideres, 2006). In this case, the success of smaller cities in attracting immigrants was not because of what Kunstler discusses, the No More More No Bigger Bigger. Instead smaller cities became more attractive because of an existence of a priori social integration platforms such as “Attracting and Retaining Immigrants”, writes Frideres(2006). Batty (2008) argues that density is an elusive concept and therefore, “...We cannot have a clear view of what density means, what energies and costs are incurred by different urban geometries, and how feasible policies are for increasing compactness and managing sprawl until we have good answers to these questions” (Batty, 2008). Future of cities is more than their size, density and population. Future of cities in reality is more about their abilities to encourage social integration, mobility of resources, adaptation to change, enhanced interconnection, and improved interoperability of their supporting infrastructure systems. Future of cities is also more than their physical characteristics (Jayne et al., 2010). 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