Future smart and autonomous cities: an overview toward future trends

While the Smart City concept and associated urban planning models have invoked some positives in urban regeneration approaches especially in helping address the multiple challenges of rapidly increasing urban population, unprecedented urbanisation, climate change challenges and others, there is still more prospects in the future. The 15-Minute City concept for instance that started to gain substantial traction after the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic points to a future of cities that are technically and practically different from the conventional cities that have been dominant in the past decades. Advancement in technologies and the subsequent willingness by big tech companies, and the private sector to explore and finance even new models that could be adopted to transform urban cities in the future is anticipated to bring new changes on the morphology and performance of cities. This chapter look into the possible future trends that might become mainstay in the urban planning realm.