Urban migration, changing mobility needs and pressing climate issues call for innovative ideas for the urban development of the future. What the city of the future will look like depends above all on culture, says ETH professor Sacha Menz.
“We will create a beautiful picture for the cities of the future,” says Sacha Menz, ETH professor and co-founder of the Future Cities Lab Global. The communally functioning elements will remain, the self-referential ones will disappear, he is convinced. “Cities are culturally, historically, economically and geographically determined,” he says.
Still, not everything remains the same. “Heat bubbles due to hard, reflective surfaces do not contribute to well-being,” he says. Green concepts and streetscapes that favour wind currents can help. Noise also plays an important role, he says, and profound changes are to be expected, especially in mobility. “The way people travel is currently changing rapidly,” says Menz.
According to Menz, technological progress and digitalisation also play a decisive role. At ETH Zurich, for example, they are experimenting with robotics, digital fabrication and timber construction. “Wood as a traditional building material in Switzerland plays an enormously important role for me,” he says. Wood grows here, is cheap and the wood culture is “inside us”. It is an excellent material for shaping our cities of the future.
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