The Scratch City Defined
What is the difference between a large real estate development, planned communities, and scratch cities?
At its very core, scratch cities are an idea. An idea that by deploying modern technology and best planning practices entire new cities can be created that overcome the pitfalls of existing urbanization. Ideas are difficult to concretely define, especially an idea that is constantly evolving and that has yet to gain much academic attention (lets change that). My goal is to come up with a basic working definition that can be used to get to the heart of what makes scratch cities unique. To start, lets look at how any cities are currently defined.
Existing City Definitions
To coordinate consistent urban data collection around the world, the United Nations created a “method to delineate cities, urban and rural areas”. 1 This method factors in population density, land size, and population clustering to classify any settlement as: a city, town & semi-dense area, or rural area. It is a technical approach (to do a deep dive check out footnote #1) that is effective at achieving the UNs stated goal of creating a statistical standard, however it is not as easily applied to rapidly evolving scratch cities. As research and scratch city projects progress, the need for a similarly technical definition will arise, however for now it may prove more useful to adopt a qualitative definition. This qualitative definition will aim to capture the essence of the scratch city movement and what makes it distinct from planned communities and other large developments.
Differentiators
One such key differentiator is that scratch cities are designed to be largely self sustaining by being able to support an entire economic system in of itself. While they may be situated close to existing urban centers that they seek to cooperate with, a scratch city should not be dependent on an existing development entirely for any of the main land uses. In addition, most scratch cities are built on land that was either minimally developed, completely uninhabited, or not even existing yet (for land reclamation projects). This is important because it ensures that the scratch city is not merely an upgrade or retrofit to the existing urban fabric, but is instead an attempt at thinking of a city from the ground up. Because of this ground up thinking scratch cities often reflect whatever the leading planning and architectural practices and technologies are at the time of design. In addition, scratch cities often have a unique approach to financing and governance with the two often interlinking (such as scratch cities sponsored by government investment funds, or fortune 500 companies). However because this is not always the case we have kept this point out of the summarized definition below for now.
Summary
In summary a scratch city is a development that:
Is self sufficient from nearby existing urban centers (not merely a large suburb)
Hosts all forms of land use such as: residential, commercial, recreation, transport, and agricultural 2
Is designed from a blank slate mindset rather than within the design constraints of the existing urban fabric
As mentioned this definition will continue to evolve as we investigate scratch cities around the world.
Sources
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/51st-session/documents/BG-Item3j-Recommendation-E.pdf
https://www.land.com/buying/guide-to-land-use-definitions/#:~:text=Types%20of%20land%20uses,planning%20on%20investing%20in%20property.