This article imagines what the future city will look like. Here it is only conceived based on subjective expectations. After all, it is too difficult and too troublesome to really predict the future city requires corresponding technological and social knowledge. In order to prevent the imagined city from being too exaggerated, we only imagine the city that can be reached within a few decades, and try not to be falsified.

There are two key ideas leveraging technology - advanced artificial intelligence and controlled nuclear fusion. It is not set as strong AI here because strong AI should evolve into super AI in a very short time, so that the whole world will have subversive changes, which is not easy to describe, so only advanced AI is set here.

It is difficult to determine whether the population will be mainly distributed in large cities or small and medium-sized cities in the future, but large cities represent the highest level of urban development, so only large cities are mentioned here.

Architectural aspects:

The overall architectural structure of a big city is roughly like this (refer to the three-body description of the future city): The entire city looks like a forest, with tall buildings far apart as tree trunks, these tree trunks are not necessarily cylindrical, any shape will do, The unifying characteristic is very high.

These tree trunks grow many branches as supports for aerial highways or other buildings, and they are connected to each other. The open space between the tree trunks is a building of normal height.

The shape of the building will be all kinds of strange, but the overall shape will not exceed the imagination of contemporary people, only the details. Because buildings are closed or semi-closed three-dimensional objects, as long as there is no breakthrough in basic science, the overall shape of the building will not significantly exceed the description in science fiction or fantasy.

In addition, most buildings in the future should have the characteristics of simplicity, so that the architectural shapes will not be arbitrarily arranged and combined, resulting in unimaginable ugly buildings, which also limits the possibility of architectural styles.

In the end, the role of architecture is primarily to provide place and aesthetics. The former has a limited effect on human activities itself, and more importantly, is the tools that human beings use and human beings themselves. The latter is not just needed. Many buildings in Europe were left over a hundred years ago, but they are not in a hurry to demolish and build new buildings. Therefore, in the future, human beings will not have a strong need for buildings to be infinitely beautiful.

Based on the above three points, the overall shape of the future building will not be much different from the current imagination.

Although there are many tall buildings in the city, the spacing is relatively large, so that it will not cause a very crowded feeling. In addition, there are some aerial buildings, similar to what is said in the Three-Body Problem, with some small houses hanging on both sides of the branches as human dwellings. Aerial buildings are not necessarily just small houses, they can be tall buildings, but they are not as big as tree trunk buildings. This requires that the bearing capacity of the branches is very strong, so high-strength lightweight materials are used.

The emergence of high-strength building materials can make many new possibilities for future architectural forms. Because there are almost no large aerial buildings, the current buildings basically have the upper section not exceeding the lower section, so the diversity of building forms is limited. . At present, the pictures of sci-fi cities on the Internet basically do not exceed this range:

After this restriction disappears, in the future, there will be many buildings that are thick and thin, stretching out like banyan trees. Together with the aerial buildings, many new buildings can be combined, which will have a three-dimensional effect. Then simply construct a new building here (make up your own brain):

Four large tree-trunk buildings with a height of more than 1,000 meters are located on the four corners of a square with a side of 1,000 meters, forming a cube with a side of 1,000 meters. There is a large ball with a diameter of 300 meters in the center of this cube, which is connected to the head and tail of the four trunks through eight branches... Well, maybe this is the case, it is not beautiful, but it is a new style. If the artist processes it, it will look better~

The urban buildings formed in this way are more than a kilometer high everywhere, and lighting may be a problem. Therefore, there will be intelligent light sources distributed in various places in the city, which will be automatically adjusted according to the specific light intensity. The light source is distributed and is mainly used to provide line-of-sight lighting, not responsible for heating, so it will not be particularly dazzling. This way, even in the daytime, the city is full of lights.

Although the distributed light source is not as bright as the sun, it is not so dazzling, and can be adjusted, just right. Another benefit of it is that you don't need to take light into consideration when building and choosing a home, because there is plenty of light everywhere.

The above is only the overall form of the building, and the details should consider the specific needs of future urban people and the development of architecture. I can't give a specific description here, but we can say one thing - ecology.

The Lord of the Rings has a scene where the elves live, also in the forest, with towering trees and a huge canopy above. Very beautiful~ As long as human aesthetics do not fundamentally change, their love for these natural landscapes will not change. So the natural elements are added here.

On the basis of the above-mentioned forest city, the real forest is added. First of all, the surface of urban buildings is covered with flowers, plants and trees. As for how to cover it better, it is up to the artist to make it; then the canopy is made. In fact, I don't know whether it is good to cover a part of the city with a large canopy, so I assume it looks good here~

Build some scaffolding on top of the city with building materials, and then grow artificial trees on it. In this way, the whole city looks green and bright~ However, these vegetations need to be modified to prevent mosquitoes, otherwise the citizens will wait to be bitten by mosquitoes.

It is not enough to have vegetation, it also needs water. The water is pumped to the top of the city and then flows down along artificial rivers and waterfalls. In some places, aerial glass pipes can be designed as river channels, and some underwater vegetation and animals can be raised in it, so it will be very pleasant to watch. In addition, various swimming pools can be built in the air, and the public can go in and rub the mud to wash and take a bath at any time~~

OK, the above architectural forms are only static, and dynamic...

Yes, an efficient and intelligent city should be dynamic, the dynamic that is dynamic to the naked eye. There is a very serious problem in the current city. When it is necessary to change the buildings in a certain place, it is difficult to achieve because the local buildings have already occupied the place. For example, a supermarket needs to be built in a certain place when the flow of people increases, but there is no way to build a supermarket because there are private residences around.

So it is very important that the house is dynamically remodelable. Dynamic buildings can be constructed in two ways: modular and bionic. Modularity means that the building is made up of modules one by one, just like building blocks. In this way, if you want to increase the house in the building, you can add a few building blocks. Biomimicry refers to the construction of buildings with biological materials. After specifying the shape and structure, it grows by itself, or a certain part can be disappeared to eliminate the redundant part.

Returning to the above situation, dynamic buildings can build a new supermarket in the original building without causing the original building function to be lost. It is even possible to move the original building as a whole, and build a supermarket in the vacant place. Of course, dynamic buildings cannot be used on the backbone of the city network, such as tree trunks, main branches, and some larger aerial buildings. If these buildings are moved, they will affect the whole body.

In addition to making the building dynamic for functional modification reasons, it can also be dynamic in terms of aesthetics. No matter how beautiful the current urban architecture is, it is also aesthetically exhausting to see too many. If the building is dynamic and changes its posture at any time, it will be very fresh.

There are already relevant examples of modular buildings. It seems that bionic buildings have only appeared in games. Although it cannot be said that it cannot be built in theory, it is undoubtedly more difficult than modular buildings. Modular buildings and bionic building technologies should be mixed and matched. The main frame of the building is partially modularized, and the details such as the exterior wall use bionic technology, so that the building looks like a big tree from the outside, and integrates with nature. .

The above is in terms of functional changes and aesthetics, and then supplemented with the construction performance aspect. Modular and bionic technologies will greatly improve the efficiency of building construction. In fact, even without these two technologies, the future building efficiency will be rapidly improved due to robotics. A building now takes several years to build, and it may be completed in less than a week in the future. , which will make the cities of the future look different every day.

Modularization is the modularization of building units, and then assemble them, which reduces the workload a lot. Biomimetic is that part of the building grows by itself, and the robot completes the rest of the construction at the same time, and the efficiency is improved. Because buildings are dynamic, this means that many buildings are not finished because they are subject to change at any time. And it also means that the new building can be occupied after a part of it is built, while people work and live in it, while the subsequent construction is carried out.

But this requires at least one thing - quiet construction work. Fortunately, modularization and biomimetic itself will be quieter than traditional construction methods. The former is because there is only assembly work, while the latter relies on biological growth and is done at the microscopic level. In addition, in the initial construction of the building, due to the simple outer wall, it will not look very good-looking, so it can be wrapped in a beautiful shell or use another beautification technology - holographic imaging, which will be discussed later. Of course, other technologies are required to ensure quietness, but these details will not be discussed.

The whole of this city is dynamic and ever-changing, not only looking spectacular, but wonderful. It's a pity that I can't draw it here, so let's make up your mind~~

These are all from the city as a whole, but from a personal perspective? Just talking about living.

Since the whole city is so big and beautiful, the living houses are not bad either. A more ideal type of residence is a high-rise super duplex residence, similar to the picture below, but it can make the sense of depth stronger, and the distinction between households is larger. After all, there are super strong building materials, and the design can be very bold. ~~

The duplex houses have gardens, swimming pools, etc., in short, everything that is currently available in villas. Feel comfortable just thinking about it~

Transportation:

Since it is a three-dimensional forest city, the transportation unit is naturally the flight unit. In terms of energy, it is not a problem because of nuclear fusion, but there should still be many units with large loads driving on the ground. There are two driving modes: traditional wheeled driving and magnetic levitation.

There is one thing worth mentioning about the traditional wheel type - noise reduction. The sound of the current car is quite obvious when driving on the road, which is especially obvious at night for people whose bedrooms are on the side of the road. The noise of the car mainly comes from the impact of the wheel pattern and the road surface. There is no theoretical solution on the Internet, so here I try to guess a technology - elastic road.

The pavement is composed of high-strength elastic patterns. When the wheel hits at high speed, the pavement pattern will move with the wheel pattern to play a buffering role. The relative speed is not so large, and the noise may be reduced a lot. Of course, this is just a conjecture. If it doesn't work, I hope that experts can come up with better solutions in the future. This is just to express a good vision.

The elastic pavement solves the noise from the source, and there is another method that can be realized now to solve the noise from the propagation process - sound insulation glass. In the future, it should be installed in every household, but it can only solve some problems. For example, the doors and windows of roadside shops and restaurants cannot be closed tightly, so noise reduction from the road can be solved fundamentally.

The magnetic levitation vehicle needs to be covered with magnetic tracks on the road surface, and there is not much noise when driving, which is ideal. However, it is estimated that the magnetic track can be popularized in cities, and it is estimated that it is not enough to be popularized nationwide. OK, next~

The noise problem of flying cars is not small. The current flying cars are all turbo engines or jet engines, which are very noisy. Heard that multiple small rotors can reduce noise, but not sure how much. Guess a technology here - imitation bird flight.

Birds don't make any noise when they flap their wings, so maybe cars have wings too, let's just say so. However, due to the weight of the car, the wings need to be very large and need to be reduced. It may be good to use multiple wings. Similar to a waterwheel, there are multiple small wings on a rotating shaft, which are fanned as the rotating shaft rotates. Of course, the fanning rate should not be too fast, otherwise noise will be generated.

Another improvement would be a heart-like engine that sucks air in on one side, closes the door, and blows it out on the other side. Similarly, the frequency of door opening and closing and the jet rate should not be too high, otherwise there will still be noise. Well, maybe neither of these two methods can solve the noise problem, so let's think about another method - the energy field engine.

Imagine that a flying car stretches out several antenna-like things around the car, builds a strong electromagnetic field in the area around the car, ionizes the air in front of the car, accelerates it and ejects it backwards, and is neutralized by the tail electromagnetic field when ejected. Due to the large energy field, the air jet speed does not need to be too fast, so as to provide enough power without generating noise... Haha, it seems even more boring~~ In short, I hope that the noise problem of flying cars can be solved in the future. Fix it.

Then talk about the rest of the units. Among the manned vehicles, cars are relatively large units. Smaller ones include bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, portable unicycles, etc. In short, let them have the flight function. Here we focus on a unique vehicle-flying suit.

Compared with the other aircraft, the flight suit is actually mainly for entertainment. The appearance looks like Iron Man, and the flying posture is controlled by the hands and feet, allowing people to fly freely like a bird. This feeling will attract many young people to experience it.

Of course, normally, wearing a flight suit will be more troublesome. Here, imagine that the clothes can fly over and wear on people like Iron Man. When not wearing it, it will become a small suitcase-like box to follow you. run. Just imagine, as long as the flight suits are mass-produced, how many sports will be born in the future?

Then there are unmanned cargo vehicles, generally drones and unmanned trucks. Needless to say about the latter, let’s talk about the former. In the future, the volume of logistics will be much larger than it is now. It is basically transported by unmanned furniture, and the goods are transported by unmanned vehicles on the way. The "last mile" will be completed by drones and delivered directly to the home.

This requires a pick-up window in each household, after all, it is impossible for drones to make it up the elevator or stairs. The whole process is done automatically, and the owner is not at home without getting in the way.

Now that housing and transportation have been introduced, let's introduce the combination of the two - mobile store and mobile home.

Mobile store: In the future, cars should be basically driverless, and people can do other things freely during the ride. Various shameless merchants will not let passengers' attention be wasted during this period of time, so various advertisements in the car are very common, and many vehicles themselves are stores, fully tempting passengers to buy goods. Of course, passengers may not ride if they feel annoyed.

In the future, shopping should still be a major activity for people, so mobile stores will give full play to their sales talents, dangling around the city, combining AI and big data to attract tourists to buy goods. In short, the mobile store is also a unique landscape.

Mobile Homes: Now if we buy a house, we basically live there for many years. The rich are better and can buy a few more suites to live in, but they can only settle in those places, and living in one suite is a waste of the rest. In the future, resources should be extremely abundant and at the same time the utilization rate of resources will be very high, so mobile housing will become possible.

As the name suggests, an automatic house is a house that moves freely. Since buildings can be modularized, dismantling is easy. If you get bored of living in one place, you can move your family to another. The moving process is probably like this, contact the moving machine.