Failed Cities: Our next #CityTalk

Credit: dandeluca

by Alejandro Echeverria of This Big City

There is much talk about cities these days. Everything seems to have an urban element attached to it and increasingly exciting debates about the direction of cities are all around. In short, we are tackling how to overcome urban challenges as humans settle in cities and hence paving the direction towards the future. However and on a less talked about note, we hear little about those places that are no longer talked about, those cities that do not figure within the agenda of the years to come.

These cities are known as failed cities; urban areas that have not endured the test of time for economic, social, cultural or environmental reasons. History is full of examples; from biblical cities to 20^th century experiments in the Soviet Union to more recent examples such as the empty cities in China and Detroit in the US. More recently Detroit filed for bankruptcy in the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history by debt, while across China many new cities are being built every year each with the risk of failure.

So with so much talk about the future of our cities, what drives a city to become a failure and eventually vacated by its residents.

Join us for the next #citytalk as we discuss failed cities and the lessons that can be learned from a handful of examples.