ZERØ CITY
The post-China pivot//Neville Mars
Forthcoming: the successor to The Chinese Dream—a radical vision for global urban regions.
Book launches near you →
The post-China pivot//Neville Mars
Forthcoming: the successor to The Chinese Dream—a radical vision for global urban regions.
Book launches near you →
Cities are not compact crucibles—their vast support structures consume, fracture and dissect the land. Three processes, one continent. Add the three processes; scrub the years; then apply the moratorium. Moratorium applied. No blueprint-on-greenfield* after 2000—growth held within already urbanised regions, compactness kept as the objective, the hinterland left whole. Long live our cities.
// Abstracted diagram. Positions, launch years and intensities are indicative—compiled for argument, not survey. Years mark announcement, masterplan or opening.
The future city is already here:
As planners, we talk the talk of pedestrian cities but fail to walk the walk. Hutong, kampung, gali and gang already sustain near-car-free neighbourhoods for millions. Across 43 inner cities, 8.2 million of 20.2 million residents live within reach of car-free streets. Count the organic lane fabric and informal settlements, and it rises to 10.9 million—more than half. In 38 of 43, the core outperforms its region.
// Abstracted diagram. Inner city: ITDP Atlas administrative units within 3 km of each historic core; metro: ITDP urban agglomeration. Population: ITDP/GHSL 2020 gridded estimates, which can differ from national censuses. Car-free access: ITDP Atlas of Sustainable City Transport 2025, residents near car-free places. Pies are nudged apart for legibility; thin lines lead back to true locations.
// Organic fabric (dark green): the higher of two estimates, counting only residents beyond the car-free share. (1) Street grain: share of OpenStreetMap street length within 3 km of each core that is car-free or a fine-grain lane (tagged 5 m or narrower, one-way, single-lane, service lane, or named gang, ngõ, hẻm, hutong, soi or gali), sidewalks excluded, assuming residents spread along streets in proportion to length; unclassified streets count as not walkable, so poorly mapped cities, most of South Asia, are understated. (2) Informal settlements, city-wide shares: Mumbai 41.8%, Hyderabad 32.7%, Delhi 14.7%, Jaipur 10.6% (Census of India 2011); Colombo about 50% (Sevanatha, 2012); Manila 27.5%, midpoint of 20–35% for Metro Manila (2012); Jakarta 16.4% of neighbourhood units classed as slum (2023). OpenStreetMap extract September 2026.
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