This City Science Summit explores a future WITHOUT top-down and increasingly obsolete systems. A majority of urban growth is expected to happen in the vast shantytowns of informal settlements, or in cities with almost nonexistent or collapsing infrastructure. What if heavy infrastructure can be replaced WITH lightweight, distributed and ultimately autonomous systems? We will explore the possible convergence of two powerful forces:

1. Extreme Urbanization. By 2050, 68% of the population will be urban, which means that most of the global population growth, wealth creation, innovation, energy consumption, and CO2 generation will be concentrated in cities. How cities develop over the next 20 years will largely determine our ability to address the grand societal challenges of our era, from climate change to public health.
2. Ubiquitous Autonomous Systems. While “smart city” technology can be useful, it is mostly focused on the optimization of existing legacy systems. Emerging technology, however, promises to fundamentally transform nearly every aspect of how we live, work, learn, produce, move, and consume, and requires not only technological improvements but also a huge change in the global mindset.