Are our Utopian future city dreams just that?

Contributed by Gemma Milne, Science & Technology Writer; Co-Founder of Science: Disrupt

In my hometown of Stirling, Scotland, it’s an unfortunate joke that when a shop, cinema or library shuts down, it gets turned into a car park.

Normally the place is a beloved part of the community. A place where teenagers gather to gossip, young mums meet, or a place that simply is part of the town somehow — a place you’d bring up if you were to run into someone abroad who also hails from there, to reminisce and swap stories.

But with market decline and the advance of tech, these places slowly fade from the town, leaving empty spaces that, eventually, turn into car parks.

Take my beloved Rainbow Slides. The swimming pool where every kid in town learnt their doggy paddle from their butterfly. It had these awesome flumes round the back which you accessed from a strange door inside the changing rooms. A few years ago, Rainbow Slides closed because the council decided it wasn’t worth investing in crucial repairs, and that swimming lessons and the other community services could be split up between other facilities in town. So with its central location not far from the train station, ‘Rainbow Slides Car Park’ was born.

It wasn’t long before the weeds took over, the white painted lines chipped and the car park was reduced in size to make way for a Premier Inn.

Now, maybe I’m looking back through rose-tinted glasses. Maybe that swimming pool was actually pretty gross, my younger self blinded to its failings. But I can’t help feeling that turning a community sports venue, right in the centre of a town (Stirling is technically a city, but if you’ve been there, you’ll know it’s a town) into a car park then a Premier Inn, is really a waste of community spirit.

Go to any ‘Future Cities’ summit, read any foresight piece on autonomous cars, and you’ll see beautiful illustrations of our towns of tomorrow. ‘There will be no need for car parks’, they’ll proclaim, ‘and these empty spaces will be given a new lease of life, creating a glorious public space for the inhabitants to enjoy’. It’s compelling, as don’t we all want a beautiful open space to hang out in and enjoy?

But the problem is that you only have to drive 20 miles out of London, New York or Beijing to begin to see how the rest of the country’s towns actually function. Many towns are already full of unkempt spaces, made way for by the closing down of shops, bars and businesses unable to keep up with the fast-moving, technologically-advanced economy. Spaces that have the potential to be beautiful central town spots, but which councils cannot afford to tend to, in their own back garden. Spaces which become ‘car parks’, because car parks are easy to create and accrue revenue quickly. Or if not ‘car parks’, they are bought up by corporate giants like Premier Inn and Starbucks — further neutralising our towns.

I’m not here to say autonomous cars aren’t the future, but we need to be more mindful when we consider the effect these new technologies really will have on our towns. With ride sharing and less of a need to own a car, will we see the decline in car parks taking up valuable space? If we’re already at a point when we can’t afford to keep a central town car park looking relatively neat, or those central town car parks next to train stations aren’t even full and hence sold to a hotel chain, how can we possibly expect councils to reclaim (and maintain) un-used land in the future?

And it’s not just the towns outside the capitals that are having issues in managing public spaces. Last year, plans for the controversial Garden Bridge proposed for the centre of London collapsed. Over £37m of taxpayer money had already been spent, without anything actually being built. And with the project leader being a private entity, relying on the council’s funds for support, even with the public being the ones who pay for it, there were to be restrictions over who could use the bridge at certain times of the day. Even in one of the richest cities on the planet, plans to build a beautiful communal public space for all to enjoy couldn’t be brought about.

I don’t believe it’s impossible for us to build a future where cities prioritise the wellbeing of the inhabitants. But we must be more realistic about the cost of technological progress, and the broader changes required to realise our utopian future towns. Getting rid of traffic and lowering emissions can only be a good thing, but will autonomous cars mean less income for drivers, and thus less money flowing through the town, and thus less taxpayer money available for investment in the public spaces? Or will it mean more people affording to work in the city, and thus more money flowing through the town, and thus more investment available for public spaces?

We cannot know how the future will unfold, but we must design new technologies now which keep in mind both good and bad scenarios, as opposed to focusing only on the vision of the innovators. We don’t want to end up with our utopian dreams for cities being only just that — a dream. Whether it’s a simple well kept car park or a fancy garden bridge, we need to find ways to make progress look and feel good for those living there. Inventing something new which solves a real problem is admirable. But building a world in which more people can benefit as a result — well, that’s the better goal.