Internationally they are called “smart cities.” But for Chinese President Xi Jinping, intelligence goes without saying… Thus he names the urban mega-project he is promoting the “city of dreams.” It involves the construction of an urban agglomeration covering 100 square kilometers in the first phase, only 100 kilometers away from the center of Beijing, in a rural area with plenty of water.
“We will not build skyscrapers, a concrete jungle or glass walls,” says Chen Gang, the design director of the “city of dreams.” “The buildings will work together with the water and the trees.”
Is the forecast of an “ecological city of the future” well-founded? Forests are planned to cover 40 % of the “dream city”. Building density will be below 30 %. Skyscraper disneylands are passé—especially when one is designing a model, exemplary project (with a budget of almost 300 billion dollars). The key issue is something else: its digital fortification.
Baidu is one of the three Chinese tech giants with a global reach – and it will take on the “creation of Xiongan – the name of the ‘city of dreams’ – as a city where artificial intelligence will be an integral part of everyday life.”
Beyond the sheer technological fetishism that has become dangerously commonplace: which “artificial intelligence,” I wonder, will secure the peaceful long-term survival of our species on this spinning rock?
(photo: model of the Xiongan administrative center)