Closing

(chanting) (chanting and cheering) Cities, and their form, will always be the terrain of struggle, as different interests contest for power, for position, and for influence, in the shaping of the city. (whistling) Democracy, itself, is always showing the strains and stresses from time to time. In a way, the city is an expression of that, in many ways, in microcosm. (cheering) Some of those societies, which are now being torn by inner strife, and tensions and ambitions and repression, it is the public spaces which become the symbols. (haunting tone) (dramatic piano) (haunting tone) (dramatic piano) (footsteps) There's an optimism about cities in this century. (dramatic piano) There's a sense we're creating something that's truly global. We're creating networks of people, not experts, but people at all strata of society, who are involved in the building of something special. I'm city obsessed. I've always been city obsessed. Grew up in New York, so who would not be? This is the century for city lovers. This is where it happens. (busy traffic) The challenge, in the future, will be how do you manage demography? I think the physical part of the city, per se, will not be able to determine the success of the city. Architecture will not be the only spectacle. How you intersect architecture with mobility, with creating a humane environment through design, is going to be the critical challenge. (lively acoustic music) I'm assuming that the broad outlet of PO2 will be achieved by 2050. What that means for how everything is organized, from how you'd get a bus, what you consume, how things are packaged, everything, it will be completely different in just 40 years' time. That's the one side. On the other side, in Asia and Africa, you're going to have complete new cities that capitalize on all the new thinking about how we can reorganize cities. It will function completely different to everything we think and know about cities. That prospect of dramatic, disruptive change within one generation ... To be able to get that, we're in the middle, on the cusp, of this unbelievably dramatic set of forces coming together. Fundamentally, as a species, we need things that can power our imaginations, that can get our passions going, that can give us a sense of meaning. That is not a brick. It is not a pipe. It is an idea. That's what drives cities forward. (train whizzes past) lively music