Medical progress and preventive healthcare have helped to increase life expectation globally and to broaden the age range in cities. In the year 2050, two billion city dwellers worldwide will be above the age of 60 — something that offers undreamed-of opportunities. Today the active participation of older people in urban life is already part of the city scene. Thanks to flexible social and technical structures such as unrestricted access to healthcare, cultural networks and the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, the quality of life for all generations will be improved. The city will be enhanced as a place to dwell and live life. In cities there is open access to diverse initiatives: education, the healthcare system, cultural institutions and new fields of activity. Life in the city has something to offer for all age groups. This sets free creative energy and moves innovations in cities forward.

Hypothesis 1: Transgenerational Capacity

„The city always gathers together a wide bandwidth of people of all generations. Because of its adaptive social and physical infrastructures, it can care for people far beyond the extended family network of rural settings. As public health experts note, it is because of the city itself that people live longer lives. Improved living conditions, access to health services and education, and ease of mobility enable older citizens to thrive in the city. As life expectancy steadily grows in all parts of the world through medical advances and preventative care, the age bandwidth of cities dramatically increases.

The traditional urban strength of overlapping generations will likewise expand exponentially. In the not too distant future, there will be many more people of older generations living in the metropolis. By 2050, 2 billion people over the age of 60 will be living in cities.

Extreme Cities take advantage of this increase in transgenerational capacity. The model of childhood followed by education then work then retirement will give way to new synergies between generations, and a blurring of education, work and leisure. New urban formations will encourage these synergies and maximize their effects. As people grow older and less resilient to the stimuli around them, they become more reliant on their immediate physical environment for assistance. The extreme sensitivity of the very young and the very old to environmental conditions can be turned into a major urban asset. In fact, many health organizations, most notably WHO, feel the best response is to enrich the urban realm. They believe to create an environment that is age-friendly (navigation, mobility, and other aging-in-place services) is the single most effective policy means to address this demographic shift. Just how will the city transform to accommodate the wider range of age of its inhabitants and maximize their shared potentials?“

^{Columbia University}

Read more about the ‚Extreme Cities Project’ and the five hypotheses.

Cities are places where different classes, ethnic groups and multicultural ideas meet. They are all connected to each other through the city and use common infrastructure and technologies. The premise of the complexity hypothesis is that this will produce an enormous concentration of knowledge in the urban environment. For example, if the ideas and data that are present today in the rush hour in the center of large cities were to come together and be exchanged, a high degree of creativity could result. In tomorrow’s megacities even more people will live together in a restricted space. The inevitable consequence of this is increased exchanges and potential for innovation.

Hypothesis 3: Complexity

„The city is the most complex entity humans have ever created. It is full of individuals in intensely specialized roles, connected to multiple overlapping local systems and supported by massive amounts of collective infrastructure and technology that interact in massively complex ways. This biodiversity and complexity drives the growth that triggers evolution in a relentless feedback loop. Each corner of this unimaginably complex system can trigger transformative and irreversible change. When asked what a city is, architect Louis Kahn said ‚It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life’.

Cities are full of people from all walks of life, places in which different classes, ethnicities, and ideas come together. As a measure of a collective intelligence, complexity is a measure of cities. Like cholesterol, there are good and bad forms of complexity in the city. Sociocultural richness, diversity, and open, easily fixable and modifiable forms of technology produce a complexity that allows cities to be more productive and resilient. Rising bureaucracy, incompatible closed technologies, and barriers to entry produce a negative complexity, making cities more vulnerable in an era of growing threats such as extreme climate events, urban warfare, and terrorism. As systems come to rely on systems, cascading failures can occur, producing accidents like the meltdown at Fukushima, the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon, or the Flash Crash, in which a series of weaknesses in related systems creates an event that spirals out of control.

Highly complex systems, in other words, are extremely vulnerable to stress. Just as the brain is the organ that is most demanding of energy, complexity demands massive amounts of resources. When civilizations fail to meet these demands, they collapse. When they do, however, their cities are places of the most immense vitality, allowing a diversity of exchange unmatched in human history. Extreme Cities maximize complexity, and foster new forms of complexity.“

^{Columbia University}

Read more about the 'Extreme Cities Project’ and the five hypotheses.

Cities are the product of migration. Their identity is continuously reshaped by the flow of immigrants. In 40 years migration will no longer be a one-off event in a person’s life, but the norm. In future people will move frequently between global cities. Today, for example, we live in Berlin and from there work for a company based in the USA. In 2015 a job offer comes in from New York, in 2020 it’s London, and in 2030 our children move to Asia and we go with them. The clear distinction between home and abroad is becoming blurred. Movements between cities and movements within cities will take on a similar level of complexity.

Hypothesis 4: Migration

„Cities have always been produced by migration. People move to cities because other people from other places are moving to cities. The identity of a city is continually reshaped by the arrival of outsiders, drawn by the possibilities and cosmopolitan densities that define the increasingly global metropolis. In a relentless and dynamic flow, cities are produced by migration and generate migration. Migration is not simply a movement between cities but a structural condition of the city itself. If the 19th and 20th centuries were marked by a vast migration from rural to urban areas, the 21st century will see greater movement from city to city and an acceleration in the flow of people, ideas, and goods across geographical borders.

Global itinerancy is on the rise, and the city’s magnetism stems from the simple fact that other people are there too, that it is a place where opportunities and cultures are at their most mobile. Migration originates in both progress and crisis. The dispersal of urban populations in the wake of humanitarian, economic, and environmental catastrophes, and the galvanizing of new urban populations through new opportunities creates a continuous urban flux. In 2010, the UN estimated that some 214 million people were in the process of migrating, the vast majority of them in the developing world. At the same time in the developed world, transnational and transgovernmental structures like the European Union and the IMF have increased the mobility of economic opportunity, while transportation infrastructures have created a new kind of global citizen.

In the coming decades, cities will continue to become increasingly diverse through the relentless arrivals. Migration will become massive. The line between those arriving and those already there will blur. Migration will no longer happen once in a lifetime. It becomes a norm for both workers and elites moving between global cities. The distinction between “home” and “travel” is increasingly blurred. The complexity of movement between cities will start to resemble the complexity of movement within cities. In the extreme city, whole new concepts of infrastructure will both absorb and foster this relentless and generative movement between cities.“

^{Columbia University}

Read more about the 'Extreme Cities Project’ and the five hypotheses.

At the second City Dossier Workshop in Ingolstadt, Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon presented their latest findings and talked with Audi experts, members of the Audi Urban Future Insight Team and representatives of the curator, Stylepark. This was followed by Audi experts presenting future technologies that could drive ahead the approach of Höweler + Yoon Architecture.

Two principles: sharing and switching

Höweler + Yoon Architecture introduced two important principles that will influence future transportation in the society of the USA.
The first guiding principle is sharing. In the future people will share more and more – in addition to music, information, bicycles and automobiles, they may also share space and time. They believe that there will be an increasing number of communities with common interests, which will make contact with each other in order to share.
On the other hand, the architects also emphasize the principle of switching – meaning that people will change in as easy and uncomplicated a way as possible between different modes of mobility. From the car to the subway, from the subway to the bus, and from the bus to a bike to get to the office. Without waiting times, without problems.

Eric Höweler: “The Boswash region is characterized by a high level of mobility, both public and private: many forms of mobility coexist within a diverse mobility ecology. However these different mobilities are not integrated in the sense that switching between modes is difficult and inconvenient, if not impossible. Taking the subway may not be an option, given that people’s homes are often too far from a station or stop. This gap between the public transit system and houses is often referred to as the 'last mile' phenomenon. The car has often been the only mobility system to close the gap in this last mile. Similarly, the first mile, and the mid mile have also been identified as gaps within contemporary commuting practices.”

Only when the gaps that interrupt the flow from A to B in some places have been identified, can specific solutions be developed. To this purpose Höweler + Yoon Architecture have researched four commuter typologies that are often encountered in the Boston metropolitan area. With the help of this information the architects aim to recognize gaps in the supply system and to derive solutions.

Four types of commuter with various needs

The different kinds of commuter are defined as follows:

THE ROAD WARRIOR

© Yuri Arcurs. Used under license from Shutterstock.com, 2013.

This are typical traveling businesspersons who live in the suburbs and commute daily from there to work and back again. This does not really present a difficulty – except for the fact that they do not always find a parking space straight away. Every day they therefore spend valuable time looking for somewhere to park. Altogether they take 20 minutes to cover a distance of 22.5 kilometers (14 miles).

THE REVERSE COMMUTER

© Rui Vale Sousa. Used under license from Shutterstock.com, 2013.

From their homes in the city center, commuters of this type drive their cars daily to work on the business premises of their companies, which are outside the center of town. Apart from a few traffic hold-ups there is no problem here. The difficulties start when they drive home again, as they find no parking spaces in front of their homes. 50 kilometers (31 miles) take them 44 minutes.

THE STRAPHANGER

© Bevan Goldswain. Used under license from Shutterstock.com, 2013.

Straphangers are those who commute in buses and by subway. They live in quiet surroundings some way outside the city and work in the center, approximately 19 kilometers (12 miles) away. To do this they have to drive each day to a park’n’ride area, change to public transport, and finally go to their destination on foot. Sometimes it happens that they find no more spaces at the park’n’ride station. It takes them a total of 55 minutes.

THE CAST-AWAY

© Aleshyn Andrei. Used under license from Shutterstock.com, 2013.

Cast-aways have to travel from one district of the city to another – every day. This takes them 44 minutes for a mere 8 kilometers (5 miles). Usually they first catch a bus, then travel by subway. Unfortunately the bus often arrives late, and there is a delay in getting the connection to the subway. When they finally arrive at their station, they continue to their destination on foot.

Next step: identify locations

The question that Höweler + Yoon Architecture now pose in the next step is: What precisely most slows down these types of commuter – and to what extent is there an accumulation of such experiences at particular places in Boston? Is it the time they spend looking for a parking space at the park’n’ride station? Or the fact that, although the train is a practical way of traveling , the journey there is not convenient as the bus to the station always arrives late? The identification of specific places and thus of related commuter habits is intended to help create a city dossier that is as close to real life as possible.

J. Meejin Yoon: “A thorough analysis of mobility practices, demands, and services in Boston has targeted a number of sites that would lend themselves to a first/last mile system. This system could consist of both hardware and software: vehicles, stations, signage and information, as well as a service and dedicated lanes for a new mobility infrastructure.”

Audi’s future technologies and the last mile

Which future technologies could drive forward this approach by Höweler + Yoon Architecture, and how could Audi make a contribution towards implementation? With reference to Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s research, following their presentation Audi experts from six different departments introduced future technologies which could be relevant for a specific development of the ideas and which are already the subject of intense research in the departments concerned. Some examples:

• Interfaces in the automobile: The experts at Audi for the human-machine interface are examining for example the alternatives for attaching interfaces to the outside of the car. These interfaces can transmit data from the car to mobile devices. In this way it is, for example, possible to receive data about your surroundings at a particular moment. The aim is to achieve a simple, adaptable, personalized and transportable user interface. The key phrase is “augmented information”.
• Lightweight material preferred: If a last-mile vehicle is being considered, as Höweler + Yoon Architecture suggest, in the opinion of the Audi experts lightweight construction would be especially suitable. Material for this purpose would be useful through being light enough to make mobile equipment that can be carried around – a folding bicycle, for example.
• Design of a last-mile vehicle: A vehicle that could be changeable in its shape and design, and be synchronized with users’ needs – this idea was taken up by the design experts at Audi. In their view the last-mile vehicle could be a smart system made from adaptable elements – in terms of the sound and smell of a car, for example.

Next workshop on 2 May in New York

Already on 2 May the experts are meeting again for the third City Dossier Workshop in New York, where the Ideas City Festival is taking place. One of the themes to be discussed here will be the situations in which commuters need help with their “last mile(s)” and, above all, in which locations: although this is a phenomenon that affects many people, the challenges that each different individual has to handle on his or her last yards seem to be highly diverse.

Further reports on the involvement of the Audi Urban Future Initiative in the Ideas City Festival in New York, which is taking up the issue of the future of cities for the second time from 1 through 4 May, are to follow.

How many years have you been driving a rickshaw?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: For twenty-five years.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: I have been driving since 1995.

What problems do you face on an everyday basis?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: No problems as such. We work to fill our stomachs. The fact that we meet unpleasant customers everyday is besides the point here. Nowadays, customers think that we never want to take customers anywhere. Everyone thinks that is rickshaw drivers’ attitude. When we are resting or standing along the side of the road, the traffic police fine us; customers complain to the police. Today, people take down the number plate of the auto rickshaw and message it to the traffic police with their mobile phones.

Have passengers always had this attitude toward rickshaw drivers?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: No! It wasn’t like this earlier. This has been happening in the past one or two years. Since 2010, such rumors about rickshaw drivers have been spreading. Simultaneously, the government has enforced a one-time tax on all rickshaw drivers. They have enforced the switch to electronic meters. Since 2010, they have been introducing newer laws every year. These are the worries for us. Next year, what new law gets enforced and what new challenges we have to face, we can’t say now.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: Also, the public is complaining that there are no rickshaws available in Mumbai.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: It’s just a rumor about auto-rickshaw drivers. Everyone thinks that we are cheating. Every other person thinks we are cheats; even a school-going child complains that our auto meter is fast. This is all a false rumor created by news media, and we have to bear the brunt. They have asked us to replace regular meters with electronic meters. Yet, the public is complaining that our meters run faster, and that we charge higher.

Who pays for installation of the electronic meter?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: We have to pay. It costs three thousand rupees to get it fixed [when it breaks]. Besides, it involves additional monthly costs of maintaining it.

How much do you earn driving an auto-rickshaw?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: On a monthly basis, we spend two thousand to three thousand rupees on maintenance. On a daily basis, we earn around two hundred rupees, on a monthly basis six thousand rupees.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: This is the reason why auto drivers are decreasing in number. The cost of everyday things in the market is increasing. A person who goes to work earns two hundred rupees a day. He goes home and uses it to buy everyday necessities for his family. At the end of the day, the money is not enough.

Why is the cost of auto-rickshaw maintenance so high?
Auto-rickshaw driver 2: The cost of metal has increased; the cost of oil, petrol, and auto parts has increased. The cost of everything has increased, but no one is paying heed or taking action.

Doesn’t your rickshaw union do anything to help?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: The unions are trying, but ministers shut down their requests. They aggravate the union leaders. They urge them to strike. The union leaders follow, and, in turn, earn a bad name for the union without getting any of their demands. The union needs money to fight legally in the court.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: The union has its own expenses. They have to pay light bills, office bills. How can they manage to do that and fight in the high court? Besides, there is no one union anymore.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: Every political party has its affiliated auto rickshaw union. There is no unity amongst us either. Although there are three thousand autos in the city, only one thousand are part of the union.

What can the government do to solve your problems?
Auto-rickshaw driver 2: There is nothing it can do. We feel that the auto rickshaws are going to stop [operating] in Mumbai soon, or when the Metro starts. Earlier, Mumbai had textile mills. A lot of people worked in those mills. Datta Samant was their leader. Slowly they replaced workers with imported machines. First, ten people got replaced by a machine, then ten more, and then hundreds. Now, there are two to three people working in the mills. We feel this is going to be our fate too. Slowly they are going to get rid of rickshaws in Mumbai.

This is what the new laws are doing. A one-time tax on rickshaws is being enforced, without considering the model of the vehicle.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: No, they do mention the model, but they do not consider the number of years for which you will drive the rickshaw. It’s a one-time tax for fifteen years no matter how long you intend to drive your rickshaw. So they tax us for fifteen years.

What do you think needs to be done to improve the situation?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: There is no way for anything to be done. Who do we go to to get something done? The union can’t do much, and the government pays no heed.

If the government says it wants to do something to help the drivers, what should it be?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: There is no path or platform for us to do anything. No one is supporting rickshaw drivers.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: No one listens to rickshaw drivers.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: We organized a protest [on September 3, 2012]; we came out onto the streets. The matter went to the cabinet minister. It later went up to the high court. But nothing was implemented.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: We filed a case. We demanded sixteen rupees as the lowest charge on the meter. They didn’t enforce that. Rather they simply increased it by one rupee to twelve rupees. It will take a really long time at this rate for us to get somewhere. Some of us have gotten fed up with this and even left driving rickshaws.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: They have left this occupation and shifted to something else. It won’t be long before rickshaw driving as an occupation stops being an option. If I had worked as a public servant for twenty to thirty years I would have gotten some money from the government. But do we get anything in this line?

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: Only if we were in public-sector jobs, things would have been so much different. But we are not.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: The only thing we get is a uniform.

How many rickshaw drivers are there in Mumbai?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: Three thousand to four thousand.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: There must [have been] around seven thousand, I would say, but it’s down to four thousand since the government has enforced electronic metering. Besides, people must have left, must have died, and so on.

Why do you drive?
Auto-rickshaw 1: We drive rickshaws out of despair. We drive to earn and provide for basic necessities. Soon we will stop driving.

How long did it take you to buy an auto rickshaw?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: It doesn’t take too long to buy one.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: The problem is not with buying an auto. When you are young, you have aspirations and desires. At that point, you buy what you want. The problem is with keeping up with those desires. It is difficult to accomplish that desire on a long-term basis. Say you bought a rickshaw, got a permit through a loan from a small chit fund. But it takes three to four years to pay back that loan.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: The government doesn’t give loans for rickshaws anymore. Earlier, they used to give loans to buy permits and rickshaws. Now, they have stopped. The reason being that rickshaw drivers can’t pay their installments, so the banks got orders from above to stop giving loans out to rickshaw drivers. Now, most rickshaw drivers have to break their chit-fund pots to be able to buy or maintain their rickshaws. And we don’t have money to just pay back; we have to earn to pay back. Besides, daily expenses have increased a lot, so our capacity to return loans is reduced. It takes us at least three years to pay it back. By the time I have paid it back, the rickshaw is already in a bad condition, so I have to spend on its maintenance.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: In those three years, we have our own household problems to deal with. On top of that, the government keeps enforcing new laws . . . meters, taxes, fines.

Do you think that Mumbai’s new metro system will reduce your business?
Auto-rickshaw driver 1: Metro won’t kill our business. Before that [happens], the conditions forced on rickshaw drivers will kill the business.

Auto-rickshaw driver 2: We feel that we will be driven out of this city soon.

Auto-rickshaw driver 1: They will force us to quit running this business in the central city, and they will move us to the peripheries of the city, outside Mumbai.

What is the driving force and logic behind Shenzhen’s urban development?
Weiwen Huang: Shenzhen was founded in 1979, and, in 1980, it was designated as China’s first Special Economic Zone within the framework of China’s open reform policies. By 2010, its population had increased thirty fold, with a yearly increase of 12 percent [permanent residents now total 10.36 million and actual residents more than 14 million].

This development could be regarded as a miracle in human urbanization history. Yet the driving force and logic is never complicated: It is a most intensive explosion of the long suppressed social energy in China.

Civic Square, Shenzhen's official city center, is designed to represent the spirit of a young city.

© Kevin Wang

Just one river away from Shenzhen, Hong Kong posed a strong contrast [to China’s closed economy]. It prospered under British administration’s liberal market economy. This was reason enough for almost one million Mainland Chinese to risk their lives to cross the border to Hong Kong. Having realized this problem, Deng Xiaoping, then leader of China, pushed forward the economic reform scheme in 1978, and picked Shenzhen as the lab for experiment. Shenzhen would open up to Hong Kong’s capital, as well as its technological and managerial expertise.

The “Shenzhen miracle” emerged naturally when the suppressions were removed: Farmers are allowed to nurture crops of their own choice, and they are also untied from their land and allowed to move. Factory workers get paid for the amount they produce. Entrepreneurs may launch production based on market need. The market allows relative free circulation of means of production and pricing of products. When Hong Kong, with its accumulated capital and expertise, met with the vast sources of cheap labor and land in Shenzhen, it created the pathway for China’s rapid globalization.

What are the so-called “urban villages” in Shenzhen? What is the logic and form of their development?
Huang: The urban village in Shenzhen is a development initiated by villagers who originally live on land that is surrounded by urban developments. The urban developments come, in turn, from a nationalization of rural land, or land owned collectively by villagers, a process during which the value of land increases. Villagers own the land collectively, while “urban land” belongs to the state, thus the phenomenon of two modes of development in a rapidly urbanizing city like Shenzhen. The smallest unit of urban village development is the one-hundred-square-meter homestead to which a villager family is entitled, and on which they may develop houses. Or the village may develop factory, commercial, or residential estates collectively. Typically, urban villages are highly dense—one house can stand one to eight meters from the neighboring house. They are not approved through official procedure for urban development, architectural design, quality control, or ownership registration. Rental [prices] remain low, which are ideal for newcomers to the city and lower-end businesses. Infrastructure and management tasks are undertaken by a collectively owned village company, which enjoys relative community autonomy.

An urban village house (right).

© Kevin Wang

The will of this kind of development comes from villagers taking initiative to participate in urbanization, and to gain their piece of the pie from it. The villagers adjust the density of this self-initiated development based on market needs. The urban village, in effect, acts as a complement to urban planning and urban management. It helps as a housing supplement, so slums don’t necessarily arise in the face of overwhelming numbers of newcomers to the city, and it could even serve as social housing estates for the middle and lower class. The pedestrian village culture is transformed into a urban principle that allows carrying out daily routines—connections to other urban centers and commercial and industrial areas—within walking distance, thus contributing to the relief of a worsening transportation situation.

The urban village as another kind of infrastructure for Shenzhen has not been fully and objectively discussed. Its extreme density and unsatisfying safety codes and living conditions, together with the desire to create ever more profit on the part of bigger capital holders, have led to the total erasure of some urban villages. Although the original villagers may have enjoyed sizable compensation from the developers—many became millionaires—the rights of tenants and the vibrant urban life they create are disregarded. John Friedmann, a scholar of urban planning, once remarked that urban villages represent the true characteristics of Shenzhen better than the planned urban spaces that are without much human touch.

What kinds of mobility will Shenzhen need in the future?
Huang: I mentioned the development logic of Shenzhen itself and the self-development of urban villages in Shenzhen. This achievement is built on the mobility of people and capital. Shenzhen is the first success story because of its unique geopolitical situation with both a border to Hong Kong and a border to Mainland China, and the mobility between these borders. The sustainable development of Shenzhen means, in a time when the world cannot be flat and there will remain geographical and political borders, to transform difference into impetus for mobility, and to create better conditions for this mobility.

Shenzhen's towering skyline.

© Kevin Wang

What does the future of Shenzhen look like? What role will its residents play?
Huang: As a longstanding practitioner in the field of urban planning, I know enough not to give any projection of the future. Urban planners in Chinese fashion love to grant the future city grand titles: modern, international city, pioneering, or model city. In my view, urban planning has to move away from grand visions and into research on livability and sustainability of cities. Residents should be enabled, through regulations, to participate in urban development, in a tangible way such as that of the villagers in urban villages. In Shenzhen and elsewhere in China, the players have been largely reduced to two: the government and the big real-estate developers. But they are not the users of the city, nor are they the subjects of urban life. The separation of subjects of urban construction and urban life will inevitably lead to the separation of physical space and real life.

Weiwen Huang.

Courtesy Weiwen Huang

What might be the impact of information networks that are transparent and integrated into different facets of urban life?
Huang: We could never overestimate the impact of information on future cities. The term “digital city” has been used by Shenzhen officials; the first step toward it seems to be implementation of citywide free Wi-Fi hotspots. I don’t know what qualifies a city as an “information city,” but I could say, if it could be realized elsewhere in the world, it wouldn’t take too long for Shenzhen to catch up. Shenzhen is, after all, a city with a majority of young people, and a city that has successfully transformed itself from a manufacturer town to a city that embraces high-tech industries.

On Mumbai. In the past two decades, Mumbai has seen some of the most innovative policies, institutional arrangements, and projects planned to produce efficient and equitable urban systems for an intelligible future. Large-scale infrastructure projects, cross-subsidization of housing, geographical and demographic information systems, and new urban (re)development policies are being put in place. But Mumbai, like any city, is a composite body, where spaces, identities, and forms constantly blur. Here, no form of policy, governance structure, or infrastructure can provide a platform for different groups to pursue their aspirations equally. Rather, they unsettle the city; create new ruffles, new possibilities, new actors, and new relationships. But the act of blurring creates interstices with high transactional capacities. It forms the logic through which the city opens for many to use and create their many futures.

On tools. The response to such an urban future is not to articulate a single idea of the future, but rather formulate tools that can be used and modified by different urban actors to negotiate with the emerging contradictions and alter their urban surroundings. These include tools to blur the social and physical edges to allow for higher transactions, tools to help create and harness new economic opportunities, tools to engage with the environmental crises, and tools to make the city livable for the elderly. The future city then becomes a site open for different actors to use, claim, and appropriate in order to pursue their desires and mobilize their own futures—a city open for multiple futures. Mobility is about navigating different ecosystems of the city to make one’s own future.