Abstract

This article explores the dynamic relationship between human and city systems, emphasising the need for holistic urban planning to ensure cities remain sustainable and resilient.

It advocates for a comprehensive approach that views urban systems as interconnected and interdependent, incorporating diverse contextual perspectives on future city development and redevelopment.

While future urban planning faces unique challenges within specific local contexts, addressing these hurdles requires a focus on the underlying causes and narratives within those contexts, while considering the interconnected factors that can expose cities to risk and undermine their functionality.

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The degree of urbanisation classification defines cities as settlements with at least 50,000 inhabitants in contiguous dense grid cells, or 1,500 inhabitants per km. Some national definitions of cities include other indicators such as built-up areas, population density thresholds, employment, infrastructure or services. Malaysian cities have the following definitions:

“The gazetted area and the contiguous built-up area and the combination of these two areas have a population of 10,000 or more; or special development area; or district administrative centre even if the population is less than 10,000 people and at least 60% of the population aged 15 years and above are engaged in non-agricultural activities.”

Cities are innovative places with enormous potential to drive transformational agendas such as climate goals, digital transformation, and economic growth. Cities have played an important role in many aspects of modern history and global development. They promote economic growth, encourage innovation, and provide access to amenities and services such as housing, and transportation.

History demonstrates how cities in historic regions such as Mesopotamia (around 7500 BCE) and cities along the Nile River in Egypt became important in human civilisation when they served as trade centres, centres of governance, and cultural and education hubs. Cities underwent significant changes during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries as science and technology advanced.

Urbanisation has changed and evolved economies and cultures, as seen by how industrialisation has transformed some cities into new spatial arrangements and increased the use of natural resources. For instance, the economic base of pre-industrial Penang transformed from agricultural and forest products towards port trading as the new engines of power promoted urban growth. Lodz, a city in central Poland, is another example of how industrialisation changed an agricultural town into the biggest textile production in Europe. In these instances, industrialisation positively created more employment and transformed how cities were designed. Interactions between city elements also increased, creating transportation, human settlement, and economic activities.

However, history also shows how various factors, such as trade routes or economic activity shifts, can cause cities to lose their ability to function.

In the 90s, Lodz was severely affected by the decline in textile production and the lack of new investments. It not only affected the local economy but also caused urban decay and loss of identity. This is not surprising since economic variables have been discovered to be powerful predictors of both dispersion forces (which cause de-concentration) and agglomeration (which is the concentration of population and economic activity) in a city.

Given that cities encounter issues that go beyond economic considerations, such as social, health, environmental, and infrastructural-related, more research may be necessary to fully understand how non-economic elements impact the identity and function of cities. Furthermore, each of the factors mentioned interacts, possibly creating lasting domino effects if not adequately addressed.