What will the city of the future look like? To get an idea, it might be best to start in India, exactly 30 km south of New Delhi, where the agricultural center of Gurgaon is rapidly transforming into the Millenium City. A private metropolis, constructed by multinational corporations to become the ideal city.
An urban utopia grown from the heart of the Indian subcontinent is made of soaring skyscrapers, luxury residence complexes and golf and shopping centers. It could, however, become a great broken dream, as the photos of Arthur Crestani show in the series Bad City Dreams.
Taking after the Indian tradition of fair photographer, an itinerant portraitist immortalized locals in front of painted backgrounds, telling the story of the private city of Gurgaon. Fixing on the faces of its inhabitants in the less glamorous areas, Crestani contrasts their portraits with the advertising photos along the street.
The result is a confrontation between dreams and reality, the instant of a city with two faces. In a modern, aspiring Global City that could become the most rich and influential of all, where few protected neighborhoods and new slums coexist, contemporary architecture and ruins of a rural past lay side by side.
At the foot of all this, the posters of dreamy visions offered by advertisements and real estate agencies.
If the future model of a private city growing near New Delhi is ever able to become a harmonious metropolis — providing for all of its inhabitants — only time will tell. But those who continue to hope and fight for their dreams have only ever had one true weapon: patience.
