Ask a kid what they think the future will look like, and you'll get some strange answers. But if you actually listen, you might get some good ideas.
Out of the mouths of babes, the saying goes. Taking this quite literally, the Spanish design firm Play Studios gathered a bunch of children together and asked them for their visions of the cities of the future. Adult designers took these ideas and rendered them into pop-up book form. The pop-up book was then beautifully animated to show three different possibilities for our future urban living:
[vimeo 23573620]
The first city is a tree-filled landscape; green roofs writ large, perhaps. The second shows massive towers built over--but preserving--the existing landscape, while buses and people make their way on elevated roads that connect the tops of the skyscrapers. The third envisions a massive building with pod-like transportation and internal environments like oceans and forests, a sort of arcology.
All fanciful, to be sure, but they're kids. And why shouldn't the kids have something to say about the direction of the cities that they'll be living in? By the time they're adults, it will be too late, the urban environment will already be set, and they'll only be able to influence it for future generations.
[Hat tip: NotCot]