June 17, 2014 — Earlier this week, in the second installment of our Envision 2050 series, in which experts from around the world describe their ideal for human systems in 2050 and what it would take to get there, we asked five visionary urban planners, designers and architects for their views on what cities would be like in 2050. One of those experts, Tony Chan, associate director of the design firm Arup, noted that China’s current urbanization is unprecedented and pointed to a startling fact: “Over the next two decades China will potentially build 20,000 to 50,000 new skyscrapers and have more than 220 cities with populations of more than 1 million.” The country, Chan said, has cities that embody both a romantic and dystopian view of future cities — with smart, connected and green technologies alongside high pollution and resource scarcity.

For more on the future (and present) of China’s cities, you might want to check out the new three-part series in the South China Morning Post about the rise of Asia’s megacities and the issues they face. The first installment was published last week and in it writer Vanessa Collingridge has some startling figures of her own. “In 2010,” she writes, “just nine of the world’s megacities were located in Asia; scroll forward 15 years and 21 of the projected 39 megacities will be situated here, with the biggest growth in population expected to take place in the new or lesser-known cities in South and East Asia.” Photo by sebastien batardy (Flickr | Creative Commons)