The future of cities and societies is burdened with uncertainty as well as numerous unknowns which make it difficult to predict it precisely. In the author’s opinion, the basis for actions in the formation of an urban housing environment at present and in the future can be some timeless values related to the broadly understood ecology of a space of residence. Messestadt Riem in Munich makes a model example of consistent planning and investment activities which aim at obtaining a high-quality sustainable living environment in harmony with nature and a sustainable social environment. It is also a prime example of town-planning and architectural solutions related to the philosophy of treating water as a vital resource conducive to optimal utilization.

The existing trends in city development indicate that cities of the future will not be any better than those that we live in today. In order to reverse this trend, it is essential to identify the imperfections in current city development strategies and devise tactics to eliminate them. These imperfections are: increasing social and economic stratification; divergence from pure principles of sustainable development; the state of cities as money factories; the rejection of the notion of cities as being objects of beauty; ignoring citizens’ initiatives. Finally, one cannot forget about New Planning which will determine changes in urban planning. Those changes should aim at diversification of space in conformity with the growing demand for this diversity.

Currently many cities are experiencing a so-called urban renaissance. This has led to large scale rehabilitation of historical centres and living quarters, inflated property prices and to what is generally known as gentrification. Whilst we have seen many attempts to explain these processes through the housing market – focusing either on the demand of the supply side of the market – in this paper I will seek to establish the urban pastoral as a specific mode of urban life, which expresses itself in many ways, one of which might be gentrification.

Due to several factors, cities in Europe and North America are stopping to grow. At the same time industrial processes are being delocalized and substituted by “clean industries”. Two new necessities arise: Where can the new labour and leisure activities be located close to the centre? What shall be done with the obsolete industrial tissues? The answer to these questions, if added, is obvious: part of the future city life will take place in the recycled industrial heritage.
The paper uses 22@ plan in Barcelona as a case study.

Great Cultural Projects (GCPs) have a multi-layer influence on the development of cities, their socio economic situation, functional-spatial structure, tourist attractions as well as their environment quality. The article focuses on their role in water-side area transformation as over 70% of the events were located in the waterfront areas, however, the research covered all the GCPs in the world from the 19th till the beginning of the 21st c. The research allowed to define four GCP types: world and international exhibitions, gardening exhibitions, Olympic Games and the projects by the European Capitals of Culture. GCPs have acted as a catalyst for the development of new districts and the regeneration of degraded areas which resulted not only in creating numerous architectural icons and new city image but also in the social awareness raising and global education.

In previous article under the same title [10] it was stated that nowadays two parallel processes are observed: the urbanization of wars and the militarization of cities. Future wars will be waged in cities; civilians and urban infrastructure will become the main assets of war. Rich cities of the North will be the target of terrorist attacks, whilst overcrowded and fallen cities of the South will be the main theatre of military operations. In the second part, relations between war and urban science, urbanization and suburbanization will be discussed. The example of Israel will show that the process of urbanization, apart from its traditional defense role, can develop into an offensive role – becoming a weapon of territorial conquest and a way to control a hostile population.

How do we understand the life of the city, its time and its space? What requirements do we impose on the space we live in? What does the future mean to us? Today, answers to these questions are marked with a reflection upon the dynamic and scope of changes which affect us and our cities. What is and should remain the same; what changes or should change? Instead of presenting answers and visions, we ought to ask a number of questions which will define probable directions for the evolution of the form of the city. Is Kazimierz Wejchert’s spatial city – a kind of spatial, pedestrian continuum – the answer?

The article attempts to define how the film picture becomes a medium to record urban space. The cinecamera showing urban landmarks resulting from the composition allows to note impressions, sensations in real time. Over time, the captured moment becomes a historical record illustrating the character of the city, place or point in space. In the film picture, dynamic rather than stable, urban space is subject to change. Can we still say nowadays that the film picture and the modern city are made for each other?

In the era of suburbanization, urban development is carried out in functional urban areas. Regardless of the intentions of planners, an increased role of flow in the modern economy determines the growing importance of the spatial processes of metropolization, which concern both the relationships between large cities and the relations within the cities’ functional areas. Consequently, the analyses, recommendations and instruments to support urban development should address the spatial scale of functional areas (metropolitan), and not merely the core cities. In view of the observed processes of civilization, the contemporary challenges for urban policy are associated with increasing density and compactness of urban development and with the reduction of relative distances within metropolitan areas. In view of the observed processes of civilization, the contemporary challenges for urban policy are associated with increasing density and compactness of urban development and with the reduction of relative distances within metropolitan areas. The competitive position of cities depends, to an increasing extent, on the social potential (human and social capital) and economic development of the entire functional urban area. This is the most important and most difficult challenge for both planners and the governing bodies of the cities of the future.

The expression “future city” is used to be understand semantically as “ideal city”. The tendencies dominating recently in urbanization of Polish cities, like: urban sprawl, deindustrialization of the country, spatial chaos in urbanized areas and the symptoms of city shrinking, awoke serious concerns about the future of Polish cities, what makes thinking about the future city as the ideal one more difficult. It seems of great importance to undertake strategies of recovery and rescue of the contemporary cities already today, in order to make them ideal for the future.

Global urbanisation processes do not only account for quantitative growth, but also bring about qualitative transformations of our urban environments. They lead to the formation of new typologies of settlement forms. Besides the monocentric metropolises and mega-cities, we observe an increasing number of large-scale urban forms that grow together out of former single cities merging into one interconnected city-region. In many respects, Frankfurt Rhine-Main demonstrates the elements of a polycentric city-region, characterised by a network of large, medium-sized and minor centres that build up a system of decentralised centralisation. Challenges for sustainable development include the creation of integrated mobility systems, a nexus of settlement form and public transport, compact multi functional nodes, connectivity of regional open spaces and the conception of a common vision for the future.

Residential complexes make the prevailing part of urban structures determining their expansion and spatial form. In certain historical periods, the intermingling of various functions identified housing zones with the area of a city. Even at that time, however, we dealt with diverse spatial forms – those organized rigorously and totally free alike. As a result of the development of civilization and cities, the appearance of new functions as well as the subjectivity and independence of the housing function, the form of individual residential complexes became the testing ground for search and experimentation. Significant questions arise here: To what extent are forms and their acceptability related to civilization and technological changes as well as the altered perception of the surroundings which follows them? What impact will these processes have on the structure of the contemporary and future city?

This paper concerns directions for the development of housing architecture and housing environment in the city of the future. The author bases the presented development forecasts upon an analysis of tendencies in the formation of housing architecture and housing environment within the first thirteen years of the twenty-first century in Europe taking the aspect of time, threats and Earth protection into consideration. The presented residential complexes located at the centre of Lyon (La Confluence) and in Graz (Messequartier) reveal a new approach to the issues of shaping places of residence, recreation and work in the man-surroundings and architecture-nature relations. The author poses a thesis that the future of housing architecture and housing environment will depend on the pace and degree of the economic development of the societies of the future as well as the political will of the world’s leading nations. The housing architecture of the future will be intelligent, sustainable, harmonized with the surroundings and nature. It will allow for social, economic, energy-saving and ecological objectives. There will be further development of new forms of residence with unknown composition and aesthetics in the intelligent and sustainable urban structures of the smart city of the future.

The role of architect in city-making has been the theme of unsolved debates in urbanism. Committed as performers and recipients of a holistic knowledge, architects-urbanists keep acting, still today, in-between idealism and pragmatism. The city, being frequently defined as a text, becomes the molten object where projects brought to materiality are able to build an intangible narrative. The paper presents the ongoing research 6by6, a compared analysis of cities where the apparent contradiction between idealism and practice is solved. Acknowledged American and European cities are analysed as a mean to illustrate the connections between the most extreme city-narrative – architectural manifestos ‒ with the most tangible material commitment – actual and implemented urban projects. This article announces them and reports on the manifestoes they are the cores of.

For several thousand years, cities in different scales – small and big – have been created and built by various civilizations on our planet. Beside the realized ones, drawn cities – constructed in the imagination of designers and artists, poets and writers – have sprung up. Nonexistent cities, which have never been created and will never be created, carry some emotional values which are important to contemporary man. Drawn “paper” architecture is not just an art in itself and for itself – it makes a testing ground and a research field for the development of new forms, for the creation of new worlds. Unhampered by the conditions of living “here and now”, it facilitates a freer flow of thoughts, the realization of dreams, the implementation of a creator’s inner world.