Figure 3 presents the top 60 most frequent words divided in seven categories: ‘general’, ‘processes’ or each of the
cities of the 5-cities model. Within the group categorized as ‘general’ the word ‘being’ has the highest frequency
after people and city. This suggests that the dialogue about the city’s components is expressed in terms of their effect
on people being in a certain way or place. The most frequent words categorized as ‘process’ are design, different,
other, new, way, thing, which suggest the topic of change. Words with relative frequency of more than 80% are:
space, time, public, green, energy, thinking and community; and with more than 70%: are data, local, technology,
food, good, infrastructure, building, stuff, transport, working, school, social and water. This shows the relevance
within the dialogue about the future city of common sustainability topics related with resources, the natural
environment or public services but also the appearance of more current topics such as technology and data and an
important representation of social related aspects like community, space, local, schools and social.
3.2. Emerging Topics
The second part of the analysis presents the results of the qualitative analysis of the data for conceptualizing it
and identifying emerging urban principles. This analysis is divided into two sections. The first section, presented in
Figure 3, is a summary of the comments that were explicitly expressed by participants as characteristics of a vision
of a future city. The second section presents the results of a qualitative analysis conceptualization process. In both
cases the emerging concepts are mapped to the existing categories of the 5-cities model.
The main objective of this analysis is to capture the topics discussed during the cross-sectorial hypothetical
conversation synthetizing the vision but keeping as much as possible the specific details of the topics discussed.
Based on the data presented in Figure 4 the general vision of a future city describes a city in which life is better, the pace is slow, easier, relaxed, where things flow smoothly, and there is a better work-life balance with more time
and more freedom. The city has contrasts, is beautiful but messy, formal and informal, centralized and decentralized,
local and global. With chaos in the skyline that brings surprise and creative qualities. The city is like a Swedish city
or a Mayan city in the Jungle, a sustainable, living organism. In this city the energy issues are solved (in 200 years)
moving away from dystopian scenarios. The city has evolved planning mind-sets, co-produced and mixed bottom-up
and top-down spaces, places and policies. This is a collective and civic city, affordable and accessible to all and with
digital technologies that create value for all; with multiple dimensions and multiple new geographies based on new
data.
For the second part of the analysis of emerging urban principles, the following tables highlight the importance of
the concepts of the Evolving city, the Courteous city and the City as Public space. This might be related to the fact
that these categories cover more innovative concepts not directly related with more traditional sustainability
concepts associated with environmental or economic sustainability. The most relevant urban principles based on the
mentions within the workshop and cross-impact in the 5-cities model are: