Professor Mike Jenks  

 Emeritus Professor Oxford Brookes University

Title of presentation :Future Cities: Future Forms

At best, cities are incredibly complex and hard to grasp, so any view towards the future is a highly risky business. Yet there are some indications of the future from research that has looked at cities internationally in both the developed and developing worlds, and that has considered what chances there are of making them less unsustainable. As cities get larger and become more and more fragmented, the need to consolidate polycentric city forms,

and to integrate and network becomes more important. It may also be one route towards sustainability. This paper will suggest that cities can be seen as a whole series of layered and overlapping networks – physical, transport and communications, social and

economic - and it may be through a better understanding of networks that new forms might emerge in the future