Evolution is by choice. This is not a passive truth, but a conscious commitment, one that lies at the heart of what I call the Advanced City. Coined and thoroughly introduced here in the book, this new concept is based on people-centric and data-informed processes to enhance our cities and communities for their future, and not for imagining future cities. This is not another model in the long line of urban prescriptions, nor a distant techno-utopia to be fantasized. It is a paradigm shift, an invitation to think, feel, and build differently. The Advanced City is a lived revolution, a dynamic process grounded in values, purpose, and practice.
Too often, we romanticize the future city: glass towers, flying cars, machines and robots everywhere, data-driven dreams. But these visions distract us from the urgency of the present. They bypass the real work of transformation by projecting change onto an abstract tomorrow. The Advanced City asks something deeper: What kind of cities are we actively creating, today, here, and now? It is not about waiting for innovation to arrive. It is about choosing a different path, rooted in responsibility, equity, and long-view thinking.
This book is not about cities as machines, markets, or spectacles. It is about cities as ecosystems of meaning, struggle, creativity, and care. The Advanced City is a movement of re-engagement, for academics, for planners, for civic leaders, and for all who call the city home. It calls on us to be co-creators of our urban futures, not passive consumers of predesigned and predetermined solutions.
We need radical honesty about the failures of current systems, and the intellectual courage to reimagine whats possible. The advanced city resists the illusion of smartness and returns us to human truths: interdependence, justice, and purpose. It is about making change, not waiting for it. So, this is not a new product for urban branding, it is rather a process for transformation, a paradigm shift, and an urban revolution. A call to co-create cities that are not merely advanced in function, but advanced in wisdom. Here, I also call for the development of Brother Cities and Advanced Development Goals (ADGs).
If not now, when? If not us, who? Let the Advanced City be an urban revolution of now and the future to be lived; not later, but now not for the future cities, but for the future of our cities and communities.
