The Folly of the New Towns: Between Technological Utopia and Environmental Myopia

By LDV Urban Studio 
French original here.

In recent years, ambitious visions of “new cities” have proliferated across the globe—futuristic urban experiments promising to reconcile innovation, sustainability, and human flourishing. From the high deserts of the American Southwest to the arid plateaus of the Arabian Peninsula, these projects are marketed as the bold blueprints of tomorrow’s world: climate-responsive, technologically sophisticated, and socially equitable.

Despite their rhetorical appeal and visionary aesthetics, such projects often raise more questions than answers. What lies beneath the allure of these so-called “smart cities”? Who funds them, and to what end? Do they represent genuine models for future urbanism—or are they monuments to excess, destined to fade into obsolescence like so many failed utopias before them?

To understand today’s new town phenomenon, it is worth revisiting its origins. In France, the concept of the “ville nouvelle” emerged during the 1960s, at a time when urban centers were straining under the pressures of rapid demographic expansion. In response, the 1965 Master Plan for the Paris Region (SDAURP) envisioned a decentralized network of new urban and economic centers designed to alleviate overcrowding in Paris and rebalance regional development. These planned cities—such as Cergy-Pontoise, Marne-la-Vallée, and Évry—offered an opportunity to rethink conventional urban forms. Their designers hoped to distribute public services, housing, and employment across a wider area, cultivate vibrant local life, and experiment with new models of architectural and social organization.

In many ways, these original new towns fulfilled their immediate goals. They absorbed population overflow, introduced novel design paradigms, and allowed urban planners to test the boundaries of postwar modernism. Yet, as the decades passed, the utopian promises that animated their creation often gave way to more prosaic realities: stagnant economies, fragmented communities, and insufficient infrastructure maintenance. Between the dream and its realization yawned a persistent gap.

Today, a new wave of new towns has emerged—one that claims to have learned from the shortcomings of its predecessors. These 21st-century projects present themselves not simply as urban expansions, but as total reinventions: city-building as disruption, as start-up, as spectacle. But have the lessons of history been internalized—or merely overlooked in the name of technological triumphalism?

The Rise of the 21st-Century Utopian Metropolis

Unlike the targeted problem-solving that characterized their mid-20th-century forebears, today’s new towns are often untethered from specific social or geographical needs. Their rationale is broad, even amorphous: to respond to the planetary crises of climate change, inequality, and urban dysfunction with radically new spatial forms. Innovation is the common denominator. From vertical agriculture and autonomous transport to carbon-neutral energy systems and artificial intelligence–driven governance, these cities propose to solve urban problems through total reimagination.

On paper, they dazzle. Car-free streets, lush vertical forests, self-sufficient energy grids, 15-minute neighborhoods, seamless digital infrastructure—such features are designed not only to impress but to reassure. In a world marked by ecological uncertainty and political volatility, these new towns promise control, order, and sustainability. They are future-proofed enclaves for an anxious age.

The sheer scale and audacity of these projects often exceed anything attempted in conventional urban development. Consider “The Line” in Saudi Arabia—a component of the larger NEOM project initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Planned as a linear city stretching 170 kilometers across the desert, only 200 meters wide, and capable of housing nine million residents, The Line purports to reduce ecological impact through vertical stacking, centralized infrastructure, and ultra-fast transit systems. Its built footprint will cover just 34 square kilometers—an astonishing compression of urban density.

Yet behind the environmental rhetoric lies a paradox. While The Line claims to be an ecological marvel, it is situated in a previously undeveloped desert ecosystem, far from existing infrastructure. The energy and materials required to construct such a city from scratch—let alone to sustain it in an arid environment—raise profound concerns about its actual environmental footprint. Building a "zero-carbon" city by razing virgin landscapes is an irony not lost on critics.

Cities as Personal Brands

In examining these projects more closely, it becomes clear that they often reflect the ambitions—and egos—of their wealthy backers. The new town is no longer solely a public project driven by civic need. Increasingly, it is a privately funded venture, shaped by the vision of a single entrepreneur or royal patron, and governed by logics drawn more from Silicon Valley than from traditional urban planning.

Take the example of Telosa, a proposed city in the U.S. designed and financed by billionaire Marc Lore, former Walmart executive and e-commerce entrepreneur. Envisioned for an unspecified desert location, Telosa aspires to house five million residents by 2030 and claims to embody a new social contract—one that prioritizes sustainability, equity, and participatory governance. According to Lore, Telosa will "create a more equitable and sustainable future," setting a global standard for urban living.

While the language of equity and sustainability is prominent, Telosa—like The Line—is, at heart, a privately led, top-down initiative. Its financing mechanisms, land acquisition strategies, and governance models remain vague, and its democratic bona fides are open to question. As one urban theorist put it, such projects often oscillate between libertarian technophilia and crypto-utopian social engineering. They are start-ups in the guise of cities, risk-intensive ventures that promise world-changing results but may ultimately serve narrow interests.

To be sure, private investment can unlock innovation that traditional public-sector planning cannot. Conventional urban projects are often constrained by layers of regulation, budgetary conservatism, and political compromise. The boldness of new towns like NEOM and Telosa arises precisely because they circumvent these constraints. But this raises ethical questions: Should the future of urban life be shaped by billionaires with minimal democratic accountability? Can cities conceived as branded products ever serve the public good?

Technological Spectacle or Environmental Solution?

The environmental ambitions of these new towns are often central to their appeal. Whether nestled in deserts or perched on coastlines, they tout regenerative design, circular economies, and integrated green infrastructure. Many of them champion the now-popular “15-minute city” model, wherein all essential services—from healthcare to groceries to leisure—are within walking distance. Others propose ultra-efficient mass transit systems that eliminate the need for personal vehicles.

These aspirations are not inherently misguided. Indeed, they echo many of the best practices long advocated by environmental planners and climate scientists. However, implementation matters. When cities are constructed in ecologically sensitive areas, require massive resource inputs, or displace existing communities, their green credentials become dubious. Building an ecocity on a tabula rasa may simplify design—but it often ignores the complex social and ecological webs already in place.

Moreover, the new towns’ focus on novelty often sidelines the harder work of retrofitting existing cities. Around the world, there are countless urban areas in need of revitalization, densification, and ecological restoration. But such projects rarely attract the glamour—or capital—of a brand-new city. In the dominant cultural narrative, innovation must be built ex nihilo. Yet true sustainability may lie not in invention, but in repair.

One cannot help but ask: what if the resources directed toward new towns were instead invested in the just transition of existing cities—into walkable, green, socially integrated spaces? Could the aspirations of NEOM or Telosa be realized not through virgin construction, but through thoughtful transformation?

Between Utopia and Dystopia

It is easy to be captivated by the aesthetics and ambition of these new city projects. Renderings depict gleaming towers, verdant boulevards, and seamlessly integrated digital-ecological systems. The language of the future—resilient, autonomous, regenerative—permeates their promotional material.

But the risks are equally real. Cities do not emerge whole from the mind of a designer or the wallet of a financier. They evolve through conflict, negotiation, adaptation, and time. They require not just infrastructure but culture, memory, and rootedness. The failure of past new town experiments—many of which now suffer from social isolation, underinvestment, or physical decay—offers a sobering reminder that cities cannot be willed into existence by fiat.

More fundamentally, the fetishization of hyper-innovation can distract from the core principles of good urbanism: inclusivity, equity, resilience, and ecological humility. The future of cities does not lie solely in spectacular experiments. It lies in the quiet, patient labor of making urban life more livable for more people in more places.

Rethinking the Urban Imagination

New towns, with their bold rhetoric and seductive imagery, serve as mirrors to our collective anxieties and aspirations. They dramatize the desire for control in a time of climate breakdown, the longing for order in a world of flux, and the belief that technology can redeem what politics has failed to resolve.

Yet the folly of the new towns may lie in their very premise: that cities can be designed from scratch to solve our deepest social and ecological dilemmas. The truth is both more challenging and more hopeful. A sustainable urban future will not be built in the blank spaces of the map. It will be grown, incrementally and imperfectly, from the cities we already have.

To build truly just and resilient cities, we must move beyond spectacle and toward substance. That means asking hard questions about who cities are for, how they are financed, what they displace, and what values they embody. It also means embracing the possibility that innovation is not the same as transformation—and that sometimes, the most radical thing we can do is care for what already exists.

The biophilia hypothesis revisited

The term 'biophilia' has become something of a buzzword in the fields of sustainability, design, architecture, real estate and elsewhere over recent years. Its manifestations in some of these conversations often have a strong whiff of faddishness about them, but the concept itself is crucial in developing a holistic understanding of the importance of nature for human wellbeing.

 

Derived from the Greek words bios (life) and philia (love or affinity), biophilia describes an innate, subconscious human inclination to seek connections with the rest of nature. First introduced by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in the mid-twentieth century, the concept gained traction within the scientific community in the 1980s through the work of biologist Edward O. Wilson, whose 1984 book Biophilia framed this affinity as a product of evolutionary development.

Wilson argued that the human species evolved in close contact with natural environments, and this prolonged coevolution has produced an innate emotional and cognitive bond with the living world. In other words, our brains and bodies are biologically predisposed to respond positively to natural stimuli. This hypothesis has since been supported by empirical research in a range of disciplines, from psychology and neuroscience to urban planning and environmental health, demonstrating the measurable benefits of nature exposure for human wellbeing.

Green infrastructure for pollinators

Pollinators – bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, beetles, ants, bats, hummingbirds and others – are a vital component of the planet’s ecosystems. Almost 90% of all flowering plants and more than a third of the world’s crop species depend on them. Countless species of birds and mammals feed on fruits and seeds that couldn’t exist without them. With pollinator populations in steep decline, it is becoming ever more crucial to ensure that these imperiled creatures have safe havens in which to thrive.

Through the smart use of so-called “green infrastructure,” the same urban landscapes that are eating up wildlife habitats also present opportunities to create those havens. From street trees to green stormwater infrastructure like the bioswales and rain gardens now used in many cities to manage stormwater runoff and mitigate flooding, much of this infrastructure can double as wildlife habitat, and some can be particularly beneficial to pollinators.

Rewilding the ocean

As the global push to create Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) gathers pace, driven by the 30x30 campaign to protect 30% of the planet’s wild lands and waters by 2030, so too have the misgivings being voiced in various parts of the conservation community about just how effective MPAs really are. Vox senior environmental reporter Benji Jones recently summarized some of these concerns in a dispiritingly titled article “America’s best idea to protect its oceans has one big problem: It’s not working.” 

 

Jones’s article shines a light on some important issues surrounding the current state of MPAs – the main one being that a lot of them aren’t actually protected at all. While on paper, almost half of America’s ocean is covered by some form of protection, in reality, only around 3% of the total U.S. MPA area is completely off limits to human interference, leaving the vast majority vulnerable to exploitation – including hugely destructive fishing practices that have in some cases led to immense damage to ecosystems within their borders. 

The specific criticisms Jones raises in his article are not wrong. But the headline is, at best, misleading. As real-world experience of MPAs grows, it’s becoming abundantly clear that fully protected “no-take” MPAs – those in which all extractive and destructive activities are banned – are actually highly effective in preserving biodiversity, strengthening the resilience of marine ecosystems and helping to restore wildlife habitats and populations.