City Regions, Regional Cities
The 21st Century will be an urban one

Moving to the city? Or is the city moving in on you? 2007 marks a dramatic shift: Yesterday’s fields and flowers – tomorrow’s urban wildlife. For the first time in history, half of the world’s population now inhabits cities!

As the urban population increases, so do the challenges facing urban life.

Which challenges do you expect to have the greatest impact on the cityscape, on the countryside, on the built environment, on where you live, study, and pursue your dreams?

What agenda, environment, site or scale do you consider most important to the theme “Futures of Cities”?

What implementations would you like to see? What plans and building programs do you propose for the Futures of Cities?

Where will you be in 2030?

Where will you be in 2030? Where will the rest of the world be? The competition is a worldwide call for proposals for implementations securing the Futures of Cities on all levels and scales, from the globalized city, the buildings that constitute cities, to the individual housing unit, to the quality of the urban realm which binds the city together.

Is the future of cities on the urban fringe or at the city center?
Is it size or sense of place that matters?
What defines a city – people, places or public edifices?
What is on the academic agenda at your school?
Planning for megacities or micro-communities – what is your academic focus?
What does mobility mean to you? Social climbing or alternative traffic solutions?
What is your definition of innovative architecture?
What is your definition of urban life and what is your urban ideal?
How do you hope to outfit the city for the future?

Levels of Intervention

The futures of cities can be addressed at various levels. Traditionally speaking IFHP encompasses housing and planning. Here we are expanding the scope to the following four levels of intervention: planning, building, housing and urban quality. 

We call upon the competition teams to address a single level or transverse several levels of intervention, which you consider to be the most crucial to the futures of cities.

Planning

Is it master plans or major infrastructure that define our cities?
With the majority of the world’s population having made the move to the city, not only do we need to plan for urban growth, there is likewise a need to plan for the decline being experienced elsewhere. Nor can we strictly speak of people migrating to city centers, rather growing urban populations are occupying all sorts of inbetween spaces. The urban world is no longer one of clearly defined cities as unique entities, rather it is evermore a network of cities and regions, giving way to  city regions, megacities, and megalopolises. What plans do you propose for the futures of our cities? How are we to bridge cities and regions? How are we to structure our infrastructure, transportation, water, energy, sanitation?
Work, life and play, and how are we to move around into between the three?

Building

Is it the urban fabric or individual buildings that define our cities?
Many cities are pursuing to position themselves through buildings of high architectonic profile: awe inspiring architecture, innovations in building technology, green building, experimental housing, public works. The parameters vary from city to city, region to region, place to place. How can good architecture secure the futures of cities? What can you propose as a best building practice? 

Housing

Is it the housing or the occupants they are home to that define our cities?
Where and how are the majority of the world’s population going to live? It is not merely a matter of providing housing machines, but rather housing solutions? How do you propose to house the growing numbers of urban dwellers? What kind of solutions do you have in mind for affordable housing or high-residential? high density living? sustainable lifestyles? small-scale communities in large-scale cities?

Urban Quality

Is it the physical surroundings or the life within that defines urban quality?
Urban quality has become one of the most important parameters for the positioning of cities in on the global playfield. The interplay between a city’s spaces and its urban life is considered to be a prerequisite for a city’s urban quality. It is the spaces of the city that offer corridors of mobility, areas for public art, patches where gardens can grow, arenas for sports and recreation, places where people can meet. This and much more is makes for the quality of urban life. How do you propose to accommodate life and recreation on the street? urban ecology? forums for democracy? in an expanding urban world.

The level of intervention is left to the competition teams – it is up to you to decide and define.