Here’s How Hyundai Would Design a Future City

• Hyundai Motor Group reveals HMG Smart City Vision, previewing a hexagonal urban concept with a large park in the center.

• The city concept features a function-centered underground layer, and human-centered surface layer.

• Hyundai envisions cities of the future to be powered by hydrogen, distributed through grid pipelines to buildings.

Automakers don't enter the field of urban planning very often, but when they do the results are either very incremental, or wildly utopian. Just think of all the midcentury GM Motorama concepts, which, to be fair, previewed things like autonomous driving.

Hyundai's effort perhaps looks as far into the future as some Motorama city concepts did, imagining a new type of hexagonal city structure that promises sustainable and smart mobility, while also helping revitalize urban communities.

Dubbed HMG Smart City Vision, the concept is being presented this week at the 2022 World Cities Summit.

The hexagonal shaped city features a function-centered underground layer, and human-centered surface layer that it grouped into three sections by population density. Closer to forests and parks in the city center, population density decreases, allowing residents an unobstructed view of wooded areas. The high density areas, meanwhile, feature city landmarks and tall buildings, while the medium density areas feature security infrastructure. Most of the roads run underground—quite similar in this respect to Elon Musk's Boring Co. tunnels—while deliveries of parcels and other cargo are handled autonomously, traveling between automated logistics hubs.

In effect, the city is a giant ring spanning tens of miles, albeit with a hexagonal shape, and features a giant park inside it.