Humanity has long proved an extraordinary capacity for survival. Our ability to adapt to changing circumstances underscores the remarkable flexibility of human culture, proving our civilization to be capable of adapting to anything, even in the face of profound collapse.
Throughout history, Babylon has endured not just as a place, but as a symbol. A city of extraordinary ambition, profound knowledge, and inevitable transformation. Once the beating heart of a vast empire, Babylon stood as a marvel of engineering, agriculture, and architecture. Its famed Hanging Gardens, an ancient wonder, demonstrated how human ingenuity could overcome environmental limits through infrastructure, beauty, and innovation. But Babylon was also mythologized in scripture as a cautionary tale: a city that reached too high, a hubris punished with collapse. From empire to allegory, Babylon came to represent both the potential and hazard of urban civilization.
‘New Babylon’ Today, as we face overlapping global crises, climate change, resource scarcity, rising inequality, and technological disruption, the legacy of Babylon feels more relevant than ever. Our contemporary cities stand at a crossroads between collapse and reinvention. Discussions about the future of urban life are increasingly divided between two dominant visions: the rapid-response promise of the Technofix, and the slower, more enduring path of Systemic Change. One leans into smart cities, AI, and digital optimization; the other into social equity, participatory planning, and regenerative systems.
In the process of envisioning the evolving roles of artificial intelligence and automation, Constant Nieuwenhuys emphasized the importance of infrastructure in fostering human creativity and freedom. He imagined a society where automation liberates individuals from the constraints of labor, enabling a lifestyle centered on creative play and self-expression. With “The project of New Babylon’ he intended to give the minimum conditions for a behavior that must remain as free as possible.” This vision underscores the belief that thoughtfully designed infrastructure is not just a foundation for cities but a catalyst for empowering individuals to freely create, explore, and thrive.
Survival Urban history tells us that survival is not new to cities - it is their very reason for being. From Babylon’s irrigation systems to the aqueducts of Rome, fortified cities of medieval Europe and the modern seawalls of Venice, cities have long functioned as humanity’s most powerful systemic tools, built to confront existential threats. These spaces of concentrated infrastructure, culture, and governance have adapted over time, absorbing shock after shock, and offering frameworks for continuity despite chaos. Cities are like Babylons where past and future serve as cultural and infrastructural ecosystems of survival. By examining the interplay between technology, community, and nature, we can argue for an integrated vision of urban resilience, one that draws on the symbolic power of Babylon to imagine cities not only as engines of civilization, but as evolving, collective organisms designed to endure.
Looking through urban history both strategies of ‘Technofix’ and ‘Systemic Change’ are highly relevant and has proven the city to be humanity’s powertool, providing collective solutions to pressing challenges such as natural disasters, wars, and resource scarcity. The history of Venice demonstrates how cities are build and survive against all odds, and continuously are protected through existential threats. Today the ongoing Mose Project, designed to protect Venice from catastrophic flooding, represents a monumental investment in urban survival - estimated at €5.5 billion. This project illustrates not only the lengths to which societies will go to safeguard their urban economies but also the critical importance of technology and adaptive infrastructure in a changing climate.
The Ecotropolis Looking ahead, cities will continue to insist on and invest in their own survival, addressing multiple threats with ever-increasing levels of innovation. Urban adaptivity will remain a cornerstone of resilience, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the face of the current polycrisis. By managing new ideas for survival, cities can exemplify how collective ingenuity, and strong institutions drive civilization forward, ensuring not only survival but also progress in the most challenging times. This can only be achieved through new partnerships across public and private interests showcasing how cities work as engines of human civilization concentrating knowledge networks around resources and infrastructure supporting complex societal functions.
Multi-faceted infrastructural systems dimension how our cities can serve as more regenerative and adaptive resources for various and possible futures. Our ecological systems, the infrastructure of nature, will play a crucial role in urban resilience where urban green spaces, wetlands, and forests mitigate pollution, regulate the climate, provide biodiversity and protect from flooding. Treating ecological systems and nature as an essential, renewable resource that cities must protect and integrate across scales of neighborhoods, cities, regions and national borders.
Enabling Futures Our power of collectivity within cities, and multiple layers of infrastructure is the systemic enabler of more reliable futures. It’s the circulatory system of the city that sustain life and activity for people. Networks of transportation, energy, water and digital connectivity. Thus, the role of the city continues to expand, cities are no longer mere havens; they are dynamic ecosystems that serve as hubs of innovation, sustainability, and collective action. The meta-layer of cities as survival frameworks underscores their historical and ongoing role as adaptive systems that integrate natural, physical, and intellectual resources.
The city of the future is a city of collective resources, drawing on historical ingenuity and present-day innovation to create more regenerative systems. It’s a dynamic space where humans, nature, and technology co-evolve to address the challenges of the 21st century and beyond, ensuring a sustainable and thriving urban existence for generations to come.
Within the capital region of Copenhagen we see how urban planning with continues investments in infrastructure and enhanced connectivity from bike paths to bridges can foster livability and growth across districts, cities, regions and national borders. Connecting people and places across different scales facilitates flexibility between different economies. To some extent, it is also bridging the gap between city and countryside, at least within the metropolitan area. Though, the growing network of urbanism has its downside from the lack of attention towards natural systems that will be essential parts of solving the future of climate change.
It's becoming clear that Copenhagen metropolitan area is in need of more than a ‘Mose Project’, since Lynetteholmen alone won’t solve the threats of flooding. The need for a cross-regional project combining systemic planning and localized technology. A state initiative for a regional masterplan, as a hybrid of the ‘Mose Project’ and the ‘Hanging Gardens’, could implement systemic change towards a more regenerative future. Bringing forward new potentials of nature-driven innovation as connected projects within the different municipalities.
In just four years, the Femern Bridge will open, connecting Copenhagen metropolitan area with the urban regions of Hamburg, Berlin and the broader European continent. This transformative link will reshape growth dynamics, with increased pressure on the region’s infrastructure. A continued emphasis on urban networks alone risks missing critical opportunities for long-term resilient planning, to tackle the multiple challenges of climate change.
Thus, a collective question remains unresolved: Are we destined to witness the allegory of Babylon - as potential or hazard to our Nordic civilization?
Ultimately, the strength of cities lies in their ability to harness collective intelligence and shared resources. If managed inclusively and sustainably, they can indeed become the hubs of a thriving, equitable future. But this will require not just innovation, but also political will, public participation, and a commitment to balancing growth with ecological and social well-being.