About this item
Highlights
- Together, we must design more resilient cities where future generations can thrive.What makes a city smart?
- About the Author: Douglas Stuart McDaniel is an author, filmmaker, and innovation veteran working at the frontier of future cities.
- 560 Pages
- Social Science, General
Description
About the Book
Together, we must design more resilient cities where future generations can thrive.
What makes a city smart? Many think it's just sensors or AI-powered tech. But tomorrow's cities must offer more than infrastructure and innovation--they must make space for people to live fully, show up as themselves, shape the city's evolving soul, and provide equitable spaces that adapt to climate change. To fulfill this vision, we must all become citizens "one"--not as one person, but as a movement for collective transformation in an uncertain, extraordinary future.
Citizen One is Douglas Stuart McDaniel's bold dispatch from the edge of that future: a raw account of four years inside NEOM, Saudi Arabia's ambitious and controversial vision for urban living.
Drawing on McDaniel's journey through ancient ruins, high-tech labs, and think tanks, this book weaves personal narrative with hard-won insight into urban innovation, digital infrastructure, AI, climate resilience, and the ethics of city-making. Through interviews with architects, city scientists, futurists, and storytellers, Citizen One explores the radical--and risky--choices shaping the cities of tomorrow.
Book Synopsis
Together, we must design more resilient cities where future generations can thrive.
What makes a city smart? Many think it's just sensors or AI-powered tech. But tomorrow's cities must offer more than infrastructure and innovation--they must make space for people to live fully, show up as themselves, shape the city's evolving soul, and provide equitable spaces that adapt to climate change. To fulfill this vision, we must all become citizens "one"--not as one person, but as a movement for collective transformation in an uncertain, extraordinary future.
Citizen One is Douglas Stuart McDaniel's bold dispatch from the edge of that future: a raw account of four years inside NEOM, Saudi Arabia's ambitious and controversial vision for urban living.
Drawing on McDaniel's journey through ancient ruins, high-tech labs, and think tanks, this book weaves personal narrative with hard-won insight into urban innovation, digital infrastructure, AI, climate resilience, and the ethics of city-making. Through interviews with architects, city scientists, futurists, and storytellers, Citizen One explores the radical--and risky--choices shaping the cities of tomorrow.
About the Author
Douglas Stuart McDaniel is an author, filmmaker, and innovation veteran working at the frontier of future cities. With a career spanning more than three decades, Doug has helped shape urban environments and global megaprojects across the globe--blending architectural storytelling, digital twin technologies, and deep systems thinking to challenge how we live, build, and imagine the future of cities.
As Senior Manager of Communications, Research, and Innovation in Urban Planning at NEOM, Doug spent over four years embedded in one of the most ambitious smart city experiments of the 21st century. There, he pioneered new approaches to urban research, integrating human-centered design, worldbuilding, immersive technology, and socio-spatial data into a unified planning language. He was one of the producers of the NEOM exhibition during the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale and facilitated conversations with leading visionaries including Sir Peter Cook, Jean Nouvel, Thom Mayne, Ben van Berkel, Dr. Kent Larson, and Alex McDowell.
Before NEOM, Doug spent 17 years at Bechtel, leading projects across nuclear, space, and civil infrastructure sectors. He was part of the core team behind the landmark proposal for the NEOM Spine, which earned Bechtel's top global business development honor in 2020.
Now based in Barcelona, Doug leads consulting work in digital twin innovation, metaverse applications, and digital infrastructure ecosystems, building bridges between physical and virtual worlds. His current efforts span architectural design visualization, construction, and industrial systems--redefining what it means to worldbuild at scale.
Doug's work sits at the intersection of storytelling and system design. Citizen One: Our Cities, Ourselves, and Our Uncertain Yet Extraordinary Future is his most personal project to date--an unflinching urban pilgrimage and a call to action for those who still believe in the transformative potential of cities.
He is currently available for keynote presentations, workshops, and global speaking engagements.
Website: www.multiversethinking.com
