New Eco-Cities, New Open Spaces: The Future of Green and Blue Infrastructures

This paper analyses how some key eco-city models have proposed the creation of networks of green and blue spaces and discusses how these strategies can be relevant for new greenfield cities in 2050. New urban settlements being planned from scratch, such as Dongtan and in China and Masdar in Abu Dhabi, are hoping to become models of sustainable urbanism for the future. In its first part, the paper discusses the emergence of the eco-city ideal and the conditions we expect to face in 2050. Secondly, it investigates how some of the newly created cities organize their green and blue infrastructures, and how they envisage their role in contemporary life and in the future urban environment. Finally, building on this analysis and focusing on the environmental, social and economic challenges that are expected in 2050, the paper discusses its findings and presents a vision for the role that the networks of green and blue spaces can play in future cities. To conclude, this work aims to inform discussions on the future of open urban spaces in the design of cities in the 21st century