The Best City?

Abstract

Designers have long tried to design the best possible city. Many ­examples illustrate however that buildings and cities are although designed with the best ­purposes, in reality not function very well. The local climate is often difficult to influence the designs in a way that these buildings are successful, even more needed in a changing climate. Explorations of the past planned, sustainable and ­self-organising cities illustrate that despite the fact that these cities were developed with honest and valuable goals, there are many side effects that contradict with the original aims. When smart people from another culture, without constraints about regulations and political habits are asked to design the best city, a wide range of climate adaptive strategies are implemented in the designs. It is clear that the best city doesn’t exist, but six actions are distinguished that enhance climate adaptive cities: analyse networks, focus on key nodes, free self-organising developments, plan the unplanned, release control and check-up regularly.