Often conversations about the future of cities include the impact of new technology, and assume that the cities of tomorrow will be completely different. However looking back through a history of future cities we can see this is misleading.

Technology provides an interesting starting point though, it helps identify trends and it means we have to keep asking questions about cities; why society needs them, what they do, how they work, and also whether x new technology works with or against these.

In the last decade or so there have been a number of new, often tech enabled, businesses deployed in cities. Companies such as Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, etc are built on the application of digital tech to support new business models. This success has encouraged development of, and speculation around, further waves of innovation which go beyond digitally enabled business models to include physical technologies such as self driving cars and delivery drones.  

These innovations may be very clever in themselves, but because they are to be deployed in cities, which are complex environments, filled with people, they can have unintended consequences.