Audi Works on the City of the Future

Throughout these past few years, we've seen a fair share of auto makers going past their regular area of expertise and trying to envision a city of the future. Most of the times, the cities they created were just meant to support an idea for a vehicle of another innovative way of personal transportation.

The guys from Audi, however, seem to have turned their efforts to outline the city of the future into an all-out company-wide endeavor. The Germans announced today the creation of the Audi Urban Future Initiative, a series of events and projects which will lead, eventually and hopefully, to some real life applications.

Audi will try, over the following period, to tap into the crazy and brilliant ideas of urban development and urban mobility experts (architects, urban planners, sociologists, economists and natural scientists) and try to incorporate whatever results from their brains into the work of the company.

Three major events will form the basis for what Audi plans to become in the future as far as its involvement with the evolution of the world's cities is concerned: the Audi Urban Future Summit (which will take place before the Frankfurt Auto Show), the Festival of Ideas for a New City in New York (at the New Museum in the Big Apple) and the Audi Inside series of workshops.

“The courage to change ways of thinking and to question what exists is a decisive prerequisite for permanent progress and is the core of the Audi corporate culture,” said Audi Rupert Stadler, chairman of the board.

“This is why we have set up the Audi Urban Future Initiative, in order to draw attention to and press ahead along routes to a sustainable and responsible future.”