Urban planning on a whole new level: What are we to make of “instant cities”?

When it comes to urban planning, there’s nothing more urban and planned than so-called “instant cities,” or cities built by visionaries from scratch in strategic global locations. Frustrated with the limitations of today’s cities to address overcrowding, pollution and inequality, visionaries are pursuing instant cities, which tend to share the common ideals of creating connected, sustainable, inclusive and equitable societies, thereby providing residents with a life in balance.

Instant city developers seek renewable energy sources like solar and wind to reduce carbon emissions and counteract climate change. Similarly, they want to eliminate the need for cars and streets, and they lean heavily toward the construction of energy-saving green buildings. Using water more efficiently is an overarching theme, as is employing artificial intelligence to discover how day-to-day life and city services can be improved.

What follows is a brief overview of instant cities of note—two that are not yet built and two that are currently under development. The four cities with eccentric names—Telosa, Neom, Masdar City and Songdo—range from grand, bold and futuristic blueprints to projects that are still very much works in progress, as all cities are, to some extent.

Greg Lindsay, Senior Fellow at NewCities and a visiting scholar at New York University’s Ruden Center for Transportation Policy and Management, has been studying instant cities for more than a decade, and says he finds them fascinating on multiple levels. “One is the realization of just how hard it is to build a city,” Lindsay says. “It seems no matter how much time and effort a team of architects and engineers can put into it, they can never quite replicate that lived-in feeling.”

Lindsay says instant cities serve best as prototypes for what you can achieve by networking cutting-edge technologies into a unified system to see what’s possible. Songdo, for instance, has pneumatic tubes for waste collection and burns that into clean electricity.

But the larger problem is, as fast as these cities get built, they don't get built fast enough. “We call them instant cities, but when I visited Songdo there was sprawl all the way around the urban edge that popped up long before they ever even broke ground on the sustainable district,” Lindsay continues. “So, it underscores that urbanization is going to happen much faster than any of these prototype cities can solve.”

Songdo

Planners conceived Songdo IBD in 2001 on reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea and within the larger footprint of Songdo City. The master plan calls for an ideal mix of live-work-play environments, including 40 million square feet of commercial space, 10 million square feet of retail, and 35 million square feet of residential units. Some 40% of the acreage is reserved for public green space—primarily the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea and a central park.

Construction began in 2005, and planners originally envisioned completion in 2015. But Songdo IBD remains under development, and the population remains lower than first envisioned by 2022. An estimated 1,600 domestic and global companies operate in Songdo IBD. The district has 20 million square feet of space that meets the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards, including an exhibit hall, a school, a residential tower and the Sheraton Incheon Hotel.