THE CITY
The city is an extraordinary invention. A nexus of trade, culture, and ideas, it has always been a crucible of progress. But in our present age, something has accelerated beyond recognition. The city today is faster-paced, more competitive, more digital—and, in many ways, more detached from the human.
Streets channel workers with clinical efficiency, focusing our attention on material worth, fuelling a culture of endless desire, urging us to aspire ever upwards in the social and economic pyramid. There is a logic to it—some would argue it is necessary for the continuation of society. Growth, competition, and ambition drive innovation and prosperity.
But viewed from the outside, there is also something systemic and, perhaps, terminally lacking: the human.
The Technological Tide
We live in the dawn of the so-called “second machine age.” Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar, in The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future, warn us that advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology are not just new tools—they are new fundamental forces reshaping society. AI promises new heights of automation and efficiency, while biotech offers unprecedented control over biology itself.
These advances, though awe-inspiring, also risk entrenching the logics of control, prediction, and optimisation everywhere—including, crucially, in the places where we should be most human.
The workplace has long been a space of measured outputs and quantifiable targets, but increasingly this logic seeps into our homes. We see it in smart-home devices measuring our habits, algorithms optimising our choices, and social media colonising our attention. The boundary between productive self and private self blurs.
The Changing City
At the same time, the very meaning of the city has shifted. Once, it was a necessity—a place people migrated to for work because production, commerce, and opportunity were centralised there. Yet the rise of remote work in the last decade has decoupled productivity from geography for many. Affordability issues, once a crucial limiting factor, have been partially offset by the freedom to work from anywhere.
One might expect this to herald the decline of the city—a slow dispersal to rural areas, a return to localised living. And indeed, there has been some of that. But the city endures. It even thrives.
Why? Because the city is more than a marketplace for labour. It is an engine of cultural exchange and social dynamism. Though cities can seem alienating or anonymous—defined by relentless movement and diversity that can dilute old forms of tight-knit, homogenous community—they paradoxically enable new forms of belonging.
Communities in cities may be less traditional, but they are often stronger and more diverse. People find solidarity across cultural, linguistic, and class lines, building networks of mutual support that would be unimaginable in more uniform rural contexts. Cities offer the possibility of friction, of meeting the "other," of negotiating difference. In this friction lies creative potential—a space where empathy is not merely inherited but forged.
The Persistence of the Human
It is easy to lament the city's fast pace and apparent loss of the human. But I would argue this loss is only skin deep.
Look closer, and you see glimmers of humanity everywhere. The bustling market vendor who remembers your name. The quiet ritual of sharing coffee with a colleague. The chef who crafts meals not merely for sustenance but to evoke memory, pleasure, and connection.
Nowhere is this more evident than in hospitality. Amid the algorithms and metrics, hospitality resists reduction to mere efficiency. It is an industry that depends on nuance—on reading body language, anticipating needs, telling stories through food, drink, and design. It is where human passion breaks through the cracks of technological mediation and reminds us what connection feels like.
In the end, the real risk of the coming technological wave is not that it will eradicate our humanity, but that it will make us forget to value it. And that is precisely why it must be remembered, nurtured, and protected—not in opposition to technology, but as its necessary complement.
Because even in the fastest, brightest, most optimised future, there will remain an enduring need for the subtle, the imperfect, the wabi-sabi beauty of simply being human.