Simulating future societies in Isobenefit Cities: Social isobenefit scenarios

•Isotropic cities as utopian futuristic habitats.•Spatial Equilibrium from City Centralities and urban quality.•Underground Hedonic Theory and isotropic urban theory.•The Ring City, Homogeneous City, Annulus City and Punctiform City.•Social isobenefit scenarios and property values.

Environment, history and chance, shape people and cultures, which shape cities, which shape people and cultures, and so forth, in a Systemic Retroactive Game. The quintessential essence of Isotropic (or Isobenefit) Urbanism is to solve Systemic Retroactive Game problems downstream rather than upstream and, also, to give a beautiful city to everyone, rather than just to the richer. Spatial Equilibrium assumptions, Underground Hedonic Theory and Isobenefit Lines, are shortly reminded in order to have a better vision of the Isotropic approach. The Isotropic City is the habitat of a virtual future society that aspires to live in a city where each individual can enjoy an equal level of wellbeing and advantage from the urban quality, services and job location. It is shown by a few visionary examples of virtual future societies habitats such as the Ring City (a city without the ‘city centre’, where the ‘city centre’ is all around the peripherical ring, or in a series of rings), the Homogeneous City (a city where the ‘city centre’ is everywhere), the Annulus City (a city without any geometrical centre in the city) and the Punctiform City (an interconnected net of urban hyperdense ‘points’ throughout nature, parks and lands). Finally I will show some simulations on more realistic cases which could be of interest as support to urban and public policies in respect to a social well-being point of view as well as to urban theory such as urban economy (i.e., by the relation between an Isobenefit scenario and Property value), urban morphology (influence of different urban forms), urban sociology (how a different location of centralities and amenities gives advantage for social life and wellbeing of citizens).