Skywalk City 2050
A speculative fiction exploring how people live and get around when climate change is at the forefront of daily life — submerged roads and subways replaced by skywalks, floating platforms, and vertical neighborhoods.
Year: 2020
Roles: Designer & Researcher
Practices: Speculative Design, System Design, Emerging-Tech R&D
Domains: Speculative Futures
Skywalk City 2050
Skywalk City 2050 is a speculative fiction that attempts to answer the question: in a future where climate change is at the forefront of daily life, where roads and subways are submerged, how will people live and get around?
Skywalk City 2050 suggests a few ways that cities could adapt:
- Skywalks that connect buildings to each other
- Floating buildings and platforms for public transport
- Vertical neighborhoods that minimize the inconvenience of travelling
- Elevated public roadways tightly meshed with existing structures
- Green facades that double as vertical farms, tended by synchronized drones
These speculative details focus on limited land but taps into the affordances that a city with skyscrapers offers, such as large vertical surface areas that can be used for urban vertical farming.
Each intervention offers a solution but also creates issues, which in turn allows for other solutions. For example, the increase in skywalks and platforms above ground obscures natural light below, calling for sunlight to be channeled via conduits.
Illustration style inspired by Archigram.
Tags
Speculative Design, Climate Futures, Urban Design, Architecture, Design Fiction