Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today's cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way of life. The fundamental tool we use to make sense of these uncertain city futures is the imagination. Architects, artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have long been inspired to imagine cities of the future, but their speculative visions tend to be seen very differently from scientific predictions: flights of fancy on the one hand versus practical reasoning on the other. In a digital age when the real and the fantastic coexist as near equals, it is especially important to know how these two forces are entangled, and how together they may help us best conceive of cities yet to come. Exploring a breathtaking range of imagined cities--submerged, floating, flying, vertical, underground, ruined, and salvaged--Future Cities teases out the links between speculation and reality, arguing that there is no clear separation between the two. In the Netherlands, prototype floating cities are already being built; Dubai's recent skyscrapers resemble those of science-fiction cities of the past; while makeshift settlements built by the urban poor in the developing world are already like the dystopian cities of cyberpunk. Bringing together architecture, fiction, film, and visual art, Paul Dobraszczyk reconnects the imaginary city with the real, proposing a future for humanity that is firmly grounded in the present and in the diverse creative practices already at our fingertips.

即便如今能看到更多的城市，当今的城市却活在多重威胁的阴影中：气候变暖、人口过剩、社会差距、城市战争都危及着都市生活方式。我们理解这些城市未来的不确定性所使用的最基本工具是想象。建筑师、艺术家、电影制作者、科幻小说作家长久以来一直不断受到启发，想象着未来的各种城市。但他们猜测的愿景却与科学预测大为不同：一方面是大胆的设想，相对的是另一方面现实合理的推理。在数字时代，当真实与梦幻并存，甚至近乎等同之时，了解这两种力量如何交织缠斗、了解两种力量如何共同协助我们**地构想未来城市就显得异常重要。本书探索了各式各样让人惊叹的想象城市——水下的、 漂浮的、飞行的、直立的、地下的、被掩埋的、被打捞的——未来城市梳理出推测和现实之间的关系，认为两者之间并无清晰界限。在荷兰，浮空城市模型正建造； 迪拜最新的摩天大楼与过去科幻小说中城市相仿；而发展中国家城市穷人所建造的临时建筑已经类似赛博朋克科幻小说中的反乌托邦城市。将建筑、小说、电影和视觉艺术融合在一起，Paul Dobraszczyk（作者）将想象城市和现实重新联系，为人类提出一个坚定地立足于当下、以触手可及的各种实验性创造为基础的未来。