William Gibson on cities and the future

Scientific American interviews William Gibson about the present and future of cities, as they become the central feature of human life in almost every place on the globe:

It seems to me that they must, inevitably. Paris, as much as I love Paris, feels to me as though it's long since been "cooked." Its brand consists of what it is, and that can be embellished but not changed. A lack of availability of inexpensive shop-rentals is one very easily read warning sign of overcooking. I wish Manhattan condo towers could be required to have street frontage consisting of capsule micro-shops. The affordable retail slots would guarantee the rich folks upstairs interesting things to buy, interesting services, interesting food and drink, and constant market-driven turnover of same, while keeping the streetscape vital and allowing the city to do so many of the things cities do best. London, after the Olympic redo, will have fewer affordable retail slots, I imagine.

Cities in Fact and Fiction: An Interview with William Gibson

(via O'Reilly Radar)

(Image: mcdonald's, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from lisap's photostream)