Climate change
- What changes
- The ground is shrinking and shifting.
- The question
- When the ground disappears or changes, where — and how — do we go on living?
- Signals
- Sea level, floods and extreme heat, drought, wildfire.
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The Sim Eternal City Framework is how we read any city's future — and design the life inside it.
It is not a blueprint with the answer drawn in. It is a map of questions that helps each city find its own answer. New York's floating city was one answer. The framework is how we find the next one.
The four forces shaking every city.
The systems a city is made of.
A question wherever a force meets a system.
One city's own answer to those questions.
All of it stands on a set of principles, moves along a time axis, and is tested against shared criteria.
The same four forces, wherever a city sits — coast, mountain, inland or continent.
As lives grow longer, the very idea of "life after retirement" changes. The longevity generation does not stop working at retirement; it works across a lifetime. But that work is not wage labor — selling time to make a living. It is work that earns a fair income while creating value from experience, wisdom and relationships.
AI and robotics change what work is. Longer lives change the shape and span of work. Where they meet — work and economy — is the framework's most important intersection.
Across a lifetime — not as wage labor, but in ways that earn a fair income — it creates new value.
We design memory, records and connection with the same care as roads and buildings.
People and robots, life and death, past and future live together.
We reuse and reconnect the resources and technologies already here.
Every city holds a different future — as different as its land, its history and its way of life.
Water, air, plants, land
Housing, energy, food, data
Mobility, transport, logistics
Education, work, leisure, health & care
Death care, memorials, memory, legacy
Economy, citizenship, decisions, public space, city alliances
Giving Death a layer of its own is what sets this framework apart. The longer we live, the more a city must also design how it holds death and memory.
Put the four forces across the top and the elements of the System Map down the side, and a table appears. Every cell asks: how does this force reshape this part of the city — and what must we design in response?
| Climate | AI & robotics | Longer lives | City-states | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Water | How do we protect and share water through floods and drought? | Who — or what — manages the water? | What water and health does a hundred-year body need? | Can the city decide on its own water? |
| Work & economy | What new work does the climate create? | When machines take the work, what can only people do? | How do we work for a lifetime, not as wage labor, and earn a fair income? | What new economic rules and income sharing at the scale of the city? |
| Mobility | How do waterways and land routes connect? | How does autonomous movement reshape the city? | Can we go anywhere, even as our bodies slow? | How do we move — and belong — between cities? |
| Death & memory | When the ground disappears, where do graves and memory go? | How can robots and data keep memory safe? | How does a city meet the end of a longer life? | Who decides the spaces and rights of remembrance? |
Not every cell weighs the same. For each city we choose the three or four heaviest cells — the Weighted Cells — and put them at the heart of the story.
The future is already here. Our time begins with discovering it.
Find the signals of change already under way in the city, and show them as a story.
PreparednessDesign new economic structures and citizenship, and make the first projects real with cities and partners.
Design · Build-upThe projects we have built connect into a first city where life and death coexist — standing for real.
Build-upFrom what the prototype teaches, other cities rebuild it in their own way, and the next generation defines it anew.
HopeFor each city we choose its two heaviest forces and cross them to build four possible futures — then read each one along the same time axis. For a coastal city, for example: the speed of climate change against the autonomy of the city.
In some cities, the infrastructure of memory must come before physical infrastructure. Even the order is the city's to decide.
| Step | What we do | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Reading | Read the city's history and people, and the signals of the four forces. | City Reading Canvas |
| 2. Mapping | Fill in the Design Table and choose the Weighted Cells. | Design Table template, Weighted Cells checklist |
| 3. Storytelling | Show the city's future first — through story, visuals and video. (Preparedness) | Future City Storytelling workshop |
| 4. Concept design | Design scenarios and maps, economic structures and citizenship. (Design) | 2×2 scenario board, time-axis map |
| 5. Build-up | Make it real with cities and partners, starting small. (Build-up) | Partner matching, pilot projects |
| 6. Feedback & spread | Return what we found to the base map. (Hope) | Chapter Report standard format |
Every chapter leaves a Chapter Report in the same format — so the futures of different cities can be set side by side and read against the same criteria.
Does it protect the irreplaceable memory, care and community of people?
Can the longevity generation work for a lifetime, earning a fair income, not as wage labor?
Does the city hold death and memory with respect?
Can it endure climate change while living with nature?
Can other cities rebuild this answer in their own way?
Can the next generation inherit this city, its memory and wisdom — and redefine it to carry it forward?
Replicability asks whether it carries from city to city. Continuity asks whether it carries from generation to generation.
As climate, technology, population and governance change, we revise each force's definition and questions.
With every city we meet, one more Design Table is filled in.
New elements and questions found in each city are added back to the System Map.
New York's chapter is a story and a concept. These were its heaviest cells — and the answers New York gave.
| Where the question sits | New York's answer |
|---|---|
| Climate × land & water | A floating city linking four decommissioned cruise ships — a Dual City connected to the land city. |
| Longer lives × daily life & care | The 18-Minute City: 15 minutes of daily life, plus 3 minutes for memory and record. |
| Longer lives × AI & robotics × work & economy | A Dual Economy and knowledge dividend: the longevity generation turns experience and wisdom into content and teaching for income, while robot citizens share the physical labor. |
| AI & robotics × citizenship | Robot Citizens who live alongside people. |
| Longer lives × death & memory | No Stone Tombstone, and the Life Tree Nexus as a hub of memory. |
These answers belong to New York. Other cities will begin from the same questions and arrive at entirely different answers.
The same four forces. The same map. The same questions. But an answer that belongs only to your city. We are looking for cities and partners to write the next chapter with us.