ARTE Night - The New Cities

Directed by

Frédéric Castaignède

Written by

Frédéric Castaignède

Produced by

© Docside Production - ARTE France - Rare Media

Documentary, France, China, 2014, 52 min

Urban populations have not ceased to grow, primarily due to the rural exodus in developing countries, in particular China and India. Each week, throughout in the world, one million more people move to the city. At this furious and unprecedented pace, 70% of all humans will be concentrated in cities by 2050. The planet will have 6.3 billion urbanites and some 400 cities with over five million inhabitants.

In South Korea (Songdo), in Saudi Arabia (King Abdullah Economic City)... just about everywhere on the planet, futuristic cities entirely created from scratch are emerging: hyper- connected cities where the “ubiquitous citizen” can be everywhere at once and where the new technology giants are testing their intelligent systems, a source of fantasies or, as the case may be, Orwellian nightmares, in real conditions.

Debate with :

• Frédéric Castaignède, Director
• Daniel Kaplan, Co-founder and CEO of the Foundation for the Next Generation Internet (FING)