Today’s world is saturated by our excesses: unsustainable economic growth, unprecedented widening of inequalities, explosion in migration, saturation of urban environments, desertion of rural environments, and so on. Let's look at how architects deal with these challenges. Are cities capable of adopting a new, more sustainable method of development? This dissertation brings together two stories: the development of Les Halles in Paris, building a city within a city, and developing some abandoned land in Alabama, to create a new city. In reality, they are the symptom of the same development model: the globalisation of cities. Bringing them together allows us to take a critical look at contemporary town planning, to prepare for the town planning of the future.
