Planned beauty

As populations grow but the distance to information shrinks we see the world we live in able to support growth in ways we would have thought impossible 50 years ago. A good example of this shift of growth can see seen in the differences of cities that are both existing and emerging around the world. Many older cities such as Paris, London, and even New York have been around for many years and grew into cities. Therefore this growth happened over the course of many years and had moments of reform in which the cities had to build up infrastructure on top of what already existed and that can cause many problems. For one these cities had moments in history where there were sanitation issues as well as housing problems. Now if we compare this to the newer Utopia cities that are emerging we see that not only do these cities have a technological advantage but the the infrastructure is planned and built according to what will be instead of what is. In this respect these new cities are very successful at mitigating many issues like sewage, electricity, and even traffic. But are these cities actually better ? To me I think that these cities loose the creativity and unique qualities that other cities have because they try to be perfect. In many iconic cities it is sometimes the flaws of the cities that make them stand out and I think by over planning these new Utopian cities we are actually creating very boring spaces that are as planned as developments. This repetition and cookie cutter approach to planning these cities may be great for a few years, but I foresee these cities slowly fading away because there is nothing that makes them different. I think that to create a true Utopian city planning is a great tool but it should only be used in conjunction with the natural growth of a city in order to create small flaws that could contain the fragments that makes the city unique.