Future Cities
NL
Lexicon

The terms, briefly explained

Every good idea builds its own language. Here are the words you will meet on this site, in plain words.

Hamlet
A small community of some 500 to 2000 people in the city's outer shell, with private gardens and a social heart of its own. Space and community at once.
Credits
What you earn by contributing to the city. You spend them on priority for better homes. They cannot be bought or sold, and they are valid across the whole network.
Community land
The land remains property of the community, the house on it is yours. You can own without anyone being able to buy up the city.
Greenbelt
The ring of farms, greenhouses and nature around the city. It feeds the city and separates it from its neighbour, so cities never grow together.
Pod
A small self-driving vehicle that picks you up on demand and takes you point to point. The complement to the bicycle for longer trips, cargo or bad weather.
Platooning
Pods automatically coupling into a train at rush hour, then splitting off again towards their own destinations. That is how they reach the capacity of a metro.
Gateway station
The point where the high-speed line between the cities hands over to the local pods. Here it sits at the core of the centre, inside the crown.
The crown
The central building in the heart of each city: the transit line runs straight through it, and its great covered hall is the town square for markets, concerts and daily life.
Sponge city
A city that catches and holds rainwater in canals, swales and ponds instead of pumping it away. Nature, cooling and storm buffer at the same time.
Social City
Ebenezer Howard's vision (1898) of a cluster of garden cities, joined by fast transport and separated by landscape. The blueprint for our network.
Data vault
Your own personal store of your records. The city asks for access for a stated purpose, instead of collecting everything by default.
Seasonal heat storage
Heating and cooling drawn from the ground, with heat banked in the groundwater across the seasons. It covers the huge energy demand of keeping warm and cool.
Aquaponics
Growing vegetables in a closed system tied into the water cycle, where the treatment that cleans the water feeds the plants.

Now you speak the language.

Dive back into the vision, or follow the build log while the concept grows.

Back to the vision