Keith Griffiths, Chairman of Aedas, recently revealed his prediction on our ever-changing lifestyles and the future of cities. He gave a thought-provoking speech ‘Surprising Cities’ at the TEDx conference in Shanghai, China and sparkled inspiring conversation.

“You or someone you know will realise by the time you retire you will have wasted three years of your life travelling to work,” Keith opened his speech with his own experience in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. While our entire lives have become faster and more convenient, our cities are having a hard time adapting to our new demands for flexibility, variety and convenience.

With the continuous emergence of technologies, city dwellers are demanding for increasing vibrancy, efficiency and connectivity. While we enjoy living in the cities because there are many choices of job, entertainment, housing and community, different people have different priorities and choices of lifestyles. The future cities will adapt and accommodate our needs. Keith predicts that the future cities will consist of high-density city hubs that are built around the CBDs, over subway interchanges and major road intersections. “In these city hubs we live, work and recreate within a short distance and much shorter journey time,” he said. The land outside the city hubs, on the other hand, will be developed into lower density residential communities with parks, community centres and educational facilities for families.

The mix of different building types already exists in our cities – mixed-use complexes, SOHO, loft, elevated parks, public rooftops, but we need to join the dots and develop live-work-recreate developments in areas of high connectivity across the city. “With public spaces at multiple levels, elevated parks and bridge links as connectors, we are going to create exciting three-dimensional, connected spaces where people can enjoy all the happy choices and serendipity of a modern city life,” he concluded.

TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a programme of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share a TED like experience under the general guidelines of the original TED conference.

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