Slated to be constructed in just 7 years and cost $300 billion (more than the GDP of Egypt), this ambitious design for a brand new capital city of 5 million people is unprecedented – if completed, it will be a record-setting endeavor. And it is not just a conceptual vision, or at least not entirely- the site has been selected and a 100-square-kilometer test section has already been approved by the Egyptian government.

The new capital-replacing city is described by its proponents as “the catalyst for an Egyptian renaissance” and “a momentous endeavour to build national spirit, foster consensus and provide for the country’s sustainable long-term growth.” Inspired in part by Silicon Valley, buzzwords about in the promotional materials related to the project, tentatively titled “The Capital.” It is intended to be a “smart city” and “hub of innovation” to carry its country into the future of technology and sustainability.

Transportation is to be a big component of the design, both within and beyond the city – it is meant to become both a hub as well as a walkable metropolis. Lessons are being taken from extant clogged and congested urban centers, particularly Cairo. However, it is not clear through the gloss and glamour just how these innovations will manifest themselves – there are some statistics, though, that are at least superficially impressive.

Environmental friendliness is also high on the list, with plans to sustainable local food, use eco-friendly modes of power generation (wind and solar) and, of course, deal with waste and recycling in a green and efficient manner, avoiding a repeat of Cairo’s infamous “Garbage City.”

Some might question whether the futuristic renderings are really representative of what is planned or if they are simply designed to impress. Critics note that the scheme seems too good to be true, and may be intentionally positioned as a Utopian project in order to draw outside investors. Building a new city from the ground up may result in that space being more efficient, but it leaves one wondering what the country has planned for its former capital. Perhaps there is room for generosity in expectations, however – lessons learned and developers deployed in this massive construction project could be turned around afterward and reassigned to fix existing cities.

Imagine a future where driverless vehicles transcend their expected role in transit, becoming modular hubs that can link up for meetings, gatherings and everyday socializing beyond just getting commuters from Point A to Point B.

There is a great deal of talk about how car-sharing will save space (we only use 4% of roadway surfaces even during peak transit times), reduce waste (less pollution and fewer idle vehicles) and cost (by up to $100 billion a year in fuel) and reshape the urban experience, but what if platooning cars could also help reconnect us with other people?

That is part of the premise behind IDEO’s Automobility project, which extrapolates current trends and modes of transportation to predict how we might use vehicles in the not-so-distant future. We may use empty vehicles during the day, for instance, to drop off packages, or to pick up things from stores-on-wheels.

Beyond that, though, we might come together in new and different ways, too, at portable parklets, coworking spaces and open-ended offices that migrate, congregate into hive-like platoons and then dissolve on demand as quickly as they formed.

“It opens up ideas about what the communal experience is in a vehicle, versus a single person in a car,” says Danny Stillion. “We’re definitely thinking about vehicles as a much more social space, where you could have face to face conversation and socialize in a much richer way while you’re in transit.”

Imagine, too, destination events – a sort of next-generation tailgating – in which the spaces of the vehicles used to take you to and from a place become temporary spaces inhabited or otherwise utilized by those same attendees, rather than dead loads to be dropped off.

With legislation in place to keep wheels in cars for the foreseeable future, there may be intermediate steps. Still, none of these ideas are a particularly radical departure from the present, just a natural extension of how we already socialize, carpool and use public transit. “How different will tomorrow be from today? Both a lot and very little. More of us will live to be 100. Our resources will diminish while our technological capacity grows. Stuff will get faster and cheaper. But our basic needs? We’re betting those stay the same—that humans will still need to sleep, to eat, to work, and to move from place to place. That last part is what we’re interested in here. What happens to mobility in the next 15 years? Let’s go for a ride and find out.”

Taking advantage of air rights above existing an transportation nexus, this design integrates elevated train lines, apartments, offices and shops to create a nodal point within NYC.

Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles of AMLGM clad the building in a distinctive metal-and-glass skin, intended to be iconic as well as functionally flexible, adaptive and responsive.

The connective steel structural elements morph according to an algorithm to allow for larger openings or shaded sections as needed.

The vertical extrusions shoot upward using the same language as the horizontal connectors, entries and extensions that tie the building into the urban fabric.

The design is both oriented toward human occupation and contextually related to landscape of the surrounding city, operating effectively at multiple scales.

While similarly audacious large-scale, mixed-use projects have failed in the past, the density of NYC lends itself to such a compact, all-in-one approach.

From the designers: “A wide range of living conditions are offered within the one development. The programmatic options are set within a blend of floor plate geometries, transitioning from cylindrical to triangular from the base to the top of each tower. A composite or alloy of multiple flexible systems optimizes the skin so that each point has unique exposure, and is deployed on a grid that follows the direction of the surface.”

Imagine heading out from San Francisco to a bustling technology hub closer than Silicon Valley … yet an entire country away. Set only a dozen miles from the coast, this incredible incubator is planned for international waters and could be the world’s most high-tech floating city.

Blueseed is currently seeking investors to back this audacious play and let them set up shop a proverbial stone’s throw away from the heart of West Coast innovation. The company has founders familiar with the immigration issues of the United States – two are, respectively, from Serbia and Romania, and a third is the child of Cuban immigrants.

Via ArcticStartup: “they plan to start accommodation prices off at around $1500 a month, and transportation will be provided to the mainland by a daily ferry. Internet connectivity will be provided via a point-to-point 40Gbps laser link with satellite link backup. They are also looking at additional backup solutions using submarine cable and potentially a series of WiMAX relay buoys. A visa is not required to earn a paycheck on Blueseed, and most residents will be able to travel back and forth to the mainland with a business/pleasure B1 Visa.”

Like other incubators, Blueseed plans to take a stake in startups that start on its shores (or rather: ships and floating platforms), something that startup schools like YCombinator and TechStars have found to be a successful business model in the past. Its fleet would include living and working vessels, daily ferries and potentially (eventually) desalination plants and other means of creating full self-sufficiency on the open seas. Who knows – perhaps it would even be mobile in the long run.