National Geographic

|EXPLORE|CITIESIn this futuristic vision ofGhana’s capital of Accra,GHVWUXFWLYHXUEDQƄRRGLQJhas taken its toll. In nearbyforests, people build treecabins that hover aboveWKHGHOXJHSURQHODQG``````+\GURJHQEDOORRQVVXVSHQG6LQJDSRUHŠVUHVLGHQWVRYHUWKHULVLQJVHD7KLVVSDFHstation–style city has anindependent ecosystemthat recycles air and waterDQGJURZVLWVRZQIRRG``````Utopia. “The main thing about the uto-pian impulse is that things can changefor the better,” says Marshall.The Ecotopia project grew fromMarshall’s concern about the earth-quakes that threaten his hometown ofWellington, New Zealand. Designs thatanticipated potential disasters, he re-alized, could ensure the city’s survival.He wondered what it would look like ifthe population embraced hobbit-styledwellings rather than high-rise apart-ment buildings. “We use fantasy as a wayto make people think differently,” saysMarshall, whose cityscapes combine rus-tic sustainability with futuristic design.After years of working on solutions,Marshall has grown more confident thatsociety will be able to prevent a dysto-pian future. Nevertheless he’ll exploreworst-case scenarios in “Frankencities,”his next project. “If we don’t changeour ways, this is what will happen toour cities—they’ll become unlivable,”Marshall says. “It’s scary, but it’s notwritten in stone.”``````The year is 2121. Stilted houses in PhnomPenh sit above urban farms fed by theMekong River. Athens is smog free aftera ban on cars, and Tokyo’s families livein nuclear radiation–proof homes. InGreenville, South Carolina, off-the-gridhomes are powered by solar energy, andwater is filtered off the roof (below).These cities of the future spring fromthe mind of Alan Marshall, an envi-ronmental social science professor atMahidol University in Thailand. With thehelp of university students from aroundthe world, Marshall imagined what citiesthat had successfully adapted to the nextcentury’s environmental threats wouldlook like. He collected those visions inthe book Ecotopia 2121—and published it500 years after Thomas More first wroteof an imagined, perfect place in his book``````D E S I G N S F O RFUTURE SURVIVAL``````By Nina Strochlic``````,//8675$7,216$/$10$56+$//$1'*,86(33(3$5,6,ǖ%(/2:Ǘ$/$10$56+$//ǖ723%27+Ǘ