Sustainable Cities and Climate Change

Global metropolises are getting hotter and hotter. They are certainly doing so because, as we discussed in a previous work (Scardovi 2020), the competition among countries and even geopolitical blocks—down to the very local level—will be increasingly fought among cities that in turn will become bigger and bigger, and richer and richer, further promoting a polarization effect, between the wealth and well-being of the people joining them and the rest of the left behind. In fact, global cities are already competing in terms of business and leisure attractiveness (the B-leisure index, as developed by The Economist) and for the sustainable growth in wealth and well-being (our “wealth-being”) they are targeting. Global and local cities are all pitching to billions of people to get the most and best of them. Not just current and prospective citizens, but also travelling businessman and tourists and, of course, investors in any real asset that may be associated with them. Beauty is also, obviously, a determinant of people’s attention, preference, and end choice, and as driving factor of the decision-making process of perspective “customers” (meaning, people that may select to spend time and money on a given city vis-à-vis many others and for whatever reason), it could be analyzed not only in terms of the natural resources of the original, pre-build place. But also, because of the exclusive features of its architectural and infrastructural developments (including public, open spaces). And technology, as we have argued, is the next big thing to come, to drive the competitiveness and attractiveness of cities—from new developments to large regeneration programs, everything should get not just “smart,” but “cyber” as well and actually “meta,” to ensure the optimization of the interplay and suffusion of the cy-phy dimensions that will determine our future way of being.