The 21st-century city - defined by the duality of mass migrations to cities and continued sprawl - provides innumerable challenges and opportunities for architects, designers and planners today. Rapid environmental changes require scientific monitoring as forests and farmlands depopulate further; vast informal, self-organised urban settlements develop in the absence of master planning; and hyper-nodes monitor and influence everything through networked communications, media images, foreign aid and military might. Remote sensing and hand-held devices combine to create just-in-time delivery of design and planning services. These have the potential to shape and manage, as never before, vast interconnected ecosystems at local, regional and global scales. Close collaborations with scientists, decision makers and communities incite architects to realise new communication and networking skills. As the architect's role is transformed into that of a designer of the form of information, flows and processes rather than master planner, they will become the critical actor shaping the cities of this millennium. Presenting specially commissioned features on Dubai, Cochin, New York, London, Washington, DC and Barcelona, this issue of AD platforms emerging voices in architecture, science and planning. It also presents penetrating treatments of important aspects of the topic by specialists, such as geophysicist Christopher Small and US Forest Service social ecologist Erika Svendsen, and contributions by established urban designers and architects.

Brian McGrath is an architect and co-founder of urban-interface, a collaborative group exploring the relation between multimedia and urban design. His project Manhattan Timeformations (2000) has received many awards from international arts, architecture and science organizations. He teaches at Columbia and New School Universities, New York and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Grahame Shane trained as an architect at the AA School in London in the 1960s and completed an M. Arch in Urban Design and a PhD in Architectural and Urban History at Cornell University in the early 1970s. Since 1985, he has taught at Columbia, where in the 1990s he was part of a team that reformulated the Urban Design approach of the university. In April 2004, John Wiley are publishing his book, Recombinant Urbanism; Conceptual Modelling in Architecture, Urban Design and City Design.

4 Editorial Helen Castle. 5 Introduction Brian McGrath & Grahame Shane. 6 Centrally Located/Worldwide: Johannesburg Emmanuel Pratt. 8 Korean Cyber-Bangs: Seoul Rodrigo Guardia. 12 Million-Dollar Blocks: Wichita, Kansas Laura Kurgan & Eric Cadora. 16 Intense Multiplicity: Bangkok Mark Isarangkun na Ayuthaya. 18 Urban Remote Sensing: Global Comparisons Christopher Small. 24 Before Satellites: Favelas as Self-Organising Systems: Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo Elizabeth Blum & Peter Neitzke. 26 Urban Field Guide, Baltimore, Maryland: Applying Social Forestry Observation Techniques to the East Coast Megalopolis Erika Svendsen, Victoria Marshall & Manolo F Ufer. 32 Beyond Great Walls: Inner Mongolia Jan Leeknegt. 34 Surfactant Systems: A Survey of the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline from Houston to New Jersey Petia Morozov. 40 Technopoles & Biotopes: Upstate New York Alessandro Cimini & Ignacio Lamar. 42 Urban Simulacra: London Michael Batty & Andrew Hudson-Smith. 48 Info-Forum-The Dreaming Wall: Milan Antonio Scarponi. 50 The 21st-Century Welfare City: Aalborg & Copenhagen, Denmark Hans Kiib & Gitte Marling. 56 City of Wilderness - Rethinking the European Citta Diffusa: French/Belgian Border Els Verbakel & Elie Derman. 58 Squatting Geometries - Guerilla Barcelona Jose Luis Echeverria Manau. 64 With Satellites: Dubai & India Keller Easterling. 70 Shrines & Satellites: Doshi's Aranya District, Indore Krystina Kaza. 72 Cochin, India: Notes from a Nerve of the World May Joseph. 76 Circling Around the Multi-National City: Sillicon Valley, New York & New Delhi Kadambari Baxi. 80 National Security Sprawl: Washington DC Deborah Natsios. 86 The Ecology of the Artificial - Parkways, GPS & the Internet: Washington DC Eugina Vidal. 88 Just-in-Time Planning: New York & Houston Michael Kwartler. 94 The Future of Long Island: New York Michele Bertomen. 98+ Interior Eye: The Boutique Apartment Craig Kellogg. 102+ Building Profile: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005 Jeremy Melvin. 107+ Home Run: Albion Wharf Stephen Archer. 112+ Practice Profile: Piercy Connor Lucy Bullivant. 120+ McLean's Nuggets: Will McLean. 124+ Site Lines: The Peace Hotel Edward Denison. 127+ Book Review: The Book That Would Be a City Colin Fournier.