Transurbanism: Smart Cities for Transhumans

The current trends related to ‘smart cities’ are bringing the cityscapes of movies such as Blade Runner and games such as Cyberpunk 2077 closer to our immediate reality. The question of what will the cities of the future look like is at the heart of urban studies. In parallel, a similar question is posed by (trans)humanists about the future of humanity and its possible technological enhancements. However, (trans)humanity and future cities are defined in a bi-directional dependency. Therefore, we have to answer the questions of future humans and cities simultaneously. This paper maps several ways of interacting
between transhuman communities and smart cities to understand their possible effects on governing, design and society at large resulting in a framework and a series of speculative pastiche scenarios that will work as a cautionary tale and an inspirational blueprint for imagining future urbanity.