The 21st century is said to be the century of the city. Overwhelming evidence from the UN and leading Think Tanks suggests this to be case. Under the leadership of Dr Joan Clos, the United Nations has made a paradigm shift from studying the ‘human habitat and urbanisation’ to ‘the city’ for Habitat III and the ‘New Urban Agenda’.

Governments and Cities are working to establish their identity within this context, with every new decade begetting a new urban slogan – as festival cities become sustainable cities then green cities and now – smart cities. But each of these labels does no more than reflect the mores of the moment. A true city is a whole city.

The Urban Age is an ambitious project run by the LSE that looks at the megacities of the World. If there is an ‘urban age’, it is important to speculate on what will this mean for Scotland’s principal cities – Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh – and whether they can get beyond Smart, Green and Sustainable to become the holistic urban leaders of a new urban enlightenment. Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen will be in the vanguard of Scotland’s Urban Age.

In this forward-looking piece of work, commissioned by Burness Paull, the Glasgow Urban Laboratory from the Glasgow School of Art will look forward to where Scotland’s principal cities might be as the 21st century matures within an era of seismic institutional change.

The work considers:
• Scotland’s urban hierarchy – the demographics, economics, markets and identities of the country’s three principal cities;
• Scotland’s Cities Alliance and Scotland’s urban system;
• Existing and future trends;
• Challenges and opportunities for the principal cities;
• What they might look like by the middle of the 21st century.