After she recently likened the growth of modern cities to a monster devouring traditional neighbourhoods, we challenged Saskia Sassen and her son, artist Hilary Koob-Sassen, to turn this nightmarish vision into an urban fairytale ...

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, a settlement was born by a river, and they called it something unpronounceable. When the Romans came, they called it Londinium. Kings and queens and dukes and other powerhouses flocked to this city by the river.

Across the decades and the centuries, all these powerful kings and queens and dukes – and ever-bigger companies and banks and funds – rose and fell. They are all dead now. But the city where they lived is still alive, after 2,000 years of moving through history; looking forward with the will to live.

And a legend arose that what kept the city alive through good times and bad was not the palaces but the neighbourhoods or the boroughs, as the old name has it. Most of the people in the city were not rich or powerful but they were good at making neighbourhoods – with lots of small shops, churches, theatres, and craftspeople working in metal and wood and many other materials.

‘And one day, a grand visitor arrived.’ Illustration: Hilary Koob-Sassen

There was also a high street in each of these neighbourhoods. They weren’t high really, but they gave you a high – all those little shops and pubs; all those people going in and out. Each neighbourhood was different, but together they made a sort of urban tissue, a bit like coral reef.



One day, a visitor arrived from a faraway city in China – Shanghai, on the Yangtze River. He spent a lot of time answering questions about how to pronounce Yangtze. He looked very grand.

And in a very grave voice, he told the people of London a tale of strange happenings in Shanghai. At first these happenings sounded enchanting, magical. Shanghai had exploded into what looked like fireworks of buildings: all different, but all tall and grand.

Then, however, it became a little scary: “We had lived for a very long time in dense, lively neighbourhoods. They were mostly poor, but still, life was not too bad in Shanghai.”

The visitor continued: “It all changed when the destructions began. Some of our neighbourhoods were flattened with huge machines. ‘Why?’ we asked. We found out the hard way. It was to make room for more and more very tall buildings. As this went on, it meant that many of us had to leave our homes and neighbourhoods: millions of us were pushed to the faraway edges of the city.

“From a distance,” said the man, “if you did not know that this had happened to so many of us, Shanghai looked beautiful and very impressive, with all those tall towers. But we, the people of Shanghai’s neighbourhoods, knew the other side of the story.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It was as if a monster had crawled into the city.’ Illustration: Hilary Koob-Sassen

The visitor’s tale had familiar elements for the people of London, too. It had been fun to see some tall buildings go up, even if it meant destroying a few neighbourhoods. But the destructions had escalated, and the city began to feel very alien.

In time, the people heard that the same thing was happening in other cities too. They were all beginning to look the same with their tall, identikit buildings. It was as if a monster had crawled into each city and was chomping away at it. Chomp, chomp, chomp.



“You cannot have a city without neighbourhoods,” the people said. “That is where most of us live and shop and go to school.” Yet the monster carried on eating neighbourhoods to make room for its tall towers, making a weird kind of tissue for which the people did not quite have a name. The monster called it “urban”.

This tissue wasn’t at all like the tissue of the neighbourhoods or even the old city centre. It was killing the people’s houses and small shops and little streets and squares. This was a bad time – there were not enough places to live any more. And as the monster kept coughing out tall towers everywhere, everywhere became nowhere.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘And the city was dragged down by all those tall towers.’ Video: Hilary Koob-Sassen

The people understood that the monster’s power was fed by liquid gold. It could go anywhere and set up a tower, even in the middle of an old neighbourhood where nobody had asked it to come. They were always anxious about where the hungry monster would appear next.



The city, however, was not about to go down without a fight. After all, it had survived many a bad period across the centuries, and was still alive – unlike those kings and queens and powerful companies of old. The neighbourhoods could see they had to get together and fight this monster. After all, they were the city ...

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A dome of solar energy cells.’ Illustration: Hilary Koob-Sassen

Then, one night, a child whose family had been thrown out of their little house in the neighbourhood had a dream. Perhaps it was a vision, or maybe it had been on the television news.

The child, who was called Copernica, saw that what the monster had done in London was happening in many other cities – including some the child only knew from schoolbooks: New York, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, San Francisco.

Her dream was turning into a nightmare. There was the monster, with its teeth wrapped around the child’s own bedroom window. But what happened next was almost funny. A little, unhappy voice came out of the monster, saying: “I’ve got nowhere else to go with my liquid gold, but it is still growing and growing. It is meant to shine in the sun, not just sit there in dark pools inside towers.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The monster’s plans? Illustration: Hilary Koob-Sassen

Now the child was no longer scared: she knew from the school playground that complainers were rarely fighters.



What happened next was strange. “Do you have any advice for me?” asked the voice. “I am really used to having advisers, but now nobody wants to touch me with a barge pole … they do not want to deal with me because I give them a bad name.”

The child did not understand all these words, especially “adviser”, but sensed this was an opening, a chance for something to change. But it had to be now, as the monster might snap out of this mood and become dangerous again at any moment. But no ideas were coming into the child’s mind.

Then she remembered a recent geography lesson at school – on deserts, and how we have the technologies to gather solar power in vast quantities.

“I can show you how to flow your liquid gold into the Sahara!” she told the monster. “You are rich enough to cover thousands of miles of desert with a dome of solar-energy cells. And below them could be garden cities containing many houses for people in need.”

The child got very excited at the possibilities, even if it did mean using the nasty monster’s liquid gold. For its part, the monster looked a bit puzzled. “Wait!” it cried. “How will I grow if I spread myself thin on the desert?” But the child reassured it: “Every solar cell you lay down will produce a golden coin that you can use to build more.”

And so the monster poured down from its towering dark pools, heading straight for the Sahara. And the people were delighted at the prospect of a solar lifeline spreading out across the desert, forming a new generation of “oasis cities” that could welcome people from every background – not merely tourists, businessmen and multi-millionaires.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Happy new year! Illustration: Hilary Koob-Sassen

Suddenly, the child woke with a start. A feeling of dread spread over her like the monster’s tissue. Of course it was not going to use its liquid gold for the good of the people; it could only think of itself. “This monster is simply going to build another jungle of tall towers in the Sahara,” she cried, “and call it a smart city ...”

Saskia Sassen is Robert S Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and co-chairs its Committee on Global Thought. Her latest book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy.

Hilary Koob-Sassen is a filmmaker and sculptor. He is currently finishing an illustrated guide called How to Conquer Infrastructure Space and Colonise the Scalar Niche, linking financial technology and the realisation of climate/development goals