Well its official, Chicago is the United States' City of the Future. UrbanLab was voted Winner of City of the Future Design Challenge. This Chicago team wins a $10,000 prize and some recognition. All the contestants addressed future engineering challenges to the built environment faced by cities in the coming century.

Here in the US the History Channel sponsored a competition of visionary ideas based on the 'Engineering an Empire Series.' While it has a kind of Sim City approach to Urban Planning look to it, the competition showcased some illuminating ideas for New York, Chicago & Los Angeles. Some of them take into account sealevels upto 4 meters higher and temperatures that will approach those of the last interglacial period. Think grapevines in Scotland and Palm Trees in New York. Urban Labs winning proposal featured a series of eco-boulevards, 300 ft wide canals filled with different vegetation and habitats including savanahs, marshes & dunes. All native to the Chicago area. These canals would run through the city every half mile and would biologically filter and clean runoff from the city and the waters of nearby Lake Michigan. 21st Century bio-active versions of theChicago Ship & Sanitary canal.

ARO’s plan for New York came in second, and the scheme for LA by Eric Owen Moss in third. For New York City I particularly like the self propelled islands that move around Manhattan and can have various functions. We saw something like that earlier this year with Robert Smithson's postumous project. Perhaps with rising sea levels the future holds something like that for the world's oceans. Hydropolises that manoeuvre with the current and alter course away from weather obstacles as they cruise around the planet like mini citystates, large ships or mobile duty free ports.

Unfortunately their are no plans for a new 'Urban Makeover Competition' television series this season.
But you can tune in live this afternoon, from 12pm-3pm GMT -5 and listen to the 2010 Imperative Webcast featuring James Hansen from NASA and a cast of Architectural Luminaries. Sponsored by the New York Academy of Science.

2010 Imperative