Envisioning Cities of the Future: A Malaysia Youth Perspective Using Concept Mapping

The global urban population now exceeds that of those who live in rural areas for the first time in human history. Spurred by the advances in technology, resources are funnelled into our cities, with an estimated 75% of global resources being used by cities which only accommodate 2% of the landmass. Looking at how far societies have developed within cities in a short space of time creates an alluring area of study of what future cities will consist of. Writers have created works to describe their ideal cities and societies of the future for centuries, but also there have been works of dystopias where society collapses. Such writings highlight the wants and concerns of their contemporary society. This study sought to explore the vision of future cities based on youth residing within Malaysia, with the focus question being: How do you envision the city of the future 100 years from now? The participants’ thoughts were collected and organized through a concept mapping methodology, which includes creating statements, sorting statements, multidimensional scaling, hierarchical cluster analysis and label clusters. Concept mapping was used within the present study as it provides an exploratory bottom-up research design and was undertaken in a half-day workshop. 106 unique statements were generated by 21 participants, which after being sorted, created seven clusters of Rights, Social Development, Environment, Sustainability, Welfare, Transportation and Technology. The results suggest that the participants wanted a more liberal and supportive urban environment which differs from the current conservative stance of Malaysia, with cities that are healthier and cleaner pointing towards Malaysia facing an obesity crisis and the environmental challenges of a quickly developing economy. However, much of this necessitates technology that may or may not exist in the city of the future.