Leading cities expert says emergence of super-prime residential markets in cities around the world for helping create 鈥渄ystopian鈥� urban environments
A leading academic on global cities has criticised the emergence of super-prime residential markets in cities around the world for helping create 鈥渄ystopian鈥� urban environments.
Saskia Sassen, co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, told the World Architecture Festival in Singapore that the emergence of luxury residential areas populated by a wealthy global elite was damaging many cities, citing London as the鈥渘umber one example鈥�.
Sassen, who said Asian cities including Singapore and Hong Kong were exhibiting a similar trend, said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 the future for many cities and I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a good thing.鈥�
She added: 鈥淚 have two visions for the future of cities, one dystopian and one wonderful. While I am essentially an optimist, many of the current trends are bad.鈥�
Sassen criticised the development of many cities as being solely focused on density: 鈥淲e have a lot of stuff that is densely built terrain, but it is not a city. We鈥檙e in the business of building homogenous terrain - offices, residential, warehouses.
鈥淲e have to have a clear idea of what a city is. The cities we are building are not successful.鈥�
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