"The current trajectory of urbanization and city-building is not going to get us where we need to go," writes Ethan Kent. "In fact, if you google 'The Future of Cities,' the images that come up reflect a dominant vision, and a caricatured extrapolation of what is currently being built in the 'most developed' human settlements."

Those caricatures are the impetus for the Future of Places program, led by UN-Habitat and the Project for Public Spaces. The program, as described by the post, wants to shift the thinking about the future of cities away from objects and toward places.

The remainder of the article provides resources and recommendations for how such effects can be achieved, calling especially on past research and products from the Project for Public Spaces. (via Planetizen)

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The current vision of “the future of cities” is void of people, difference, chaos, street life, and interaction – the very qualities that make ‪cities valuable and viable. While depicting the misdirected urban goals of ‪mobility, icon, and open space, these images of the future ignore the qualities that great cities can produce: access, sociability, use, comfort, and identity – the ingredients of place.1