A team composed of ZHA, A&O TEC, Prior + Partners, Homa, Buro Happold, Systematica, and Fichtner recently unveiled its concept proposal for the "Next Generation City Plan" for Benghazi, Libya. The project aims to bring together the historic port city's identity-defining features with the planning technologies required to guide its development toward 2050, in a context of rapid urbanization. The proposal, developed for A&O TEC, includes a Vision and Spatial Strategy, which consists of an interpretation of the city's character and collective memory translated into an adaptable framework for development, and a Digital Planning Hub, an evidence-based model mapping the city to identify its potential and the phenomena shaping its growth.
Benghazi is a historic port city located on the Mediterranean coast, considered the historical and cultural capital of eastern Libya and an important economic and commercial hub of the eastern Cyrenaica region. As ZHA reports, the city is entering a period of rapid growth, expansion, and renewal, with significant investment in its infrastructure, neighborhoods, and local economy. To address this rapid growth, A&O TEC, an engineering, consulting, and trading firm headquartered in Germany, has proposed the need to establish a "coordinated urban framework" to protect and restore the connection between Benghazi and its waterfront, celebrate its heritage, and build "a more connected, livable, and resilient city."
The project is divided into two components: the Vision and Spatial Strategy and the Benghazi 2050: Digital Planning Hub. The first proposes a framework for transformation, connecting the city's historic center and shoreline with new residential neighborhoods and metropolitan areas via public transport systems and pedestrian routes, while also identifying new employment and knowledge districts. The framework, as a guide or matrix, is designed to enable managed urban expansion, integrating natural areas to support sustainable water management and ecological diversity within the city. The dynamism of the proposal comes from prioritizing connection, adaptability, and restoration, allowing the framework to evolve and coordinate individual projects and investments across the city toward 2050.
This spatial framework is supported by a shared evidence base to guide and monitor the city's growth and renewal: the Benghazi 2050: Digital Planning Hub. Drawing on evaluated available datasets and new digital information on existing urban, socio-economic, environmental, and infrastructural conditions across the metropolitan area, the platform maps the city to identify its directions for growth. It integrates datasets on the city's societal, natural, and built environment within a shared spatial interface, enabling engagement from different stakeholders and allowing new proposals to be understood within their wider urban context. The Digital Planning Hub was designed to provide a starting point for the Benghazi 2050: Next Generation City Plan and the foundation for a dynamic digital twin supporting long-term planning and delivery. These metrics include Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial datasets; three-dimensional urban models; population and land-use information; transport and infrastructure networks; environmental and resilience analysis; and ongoing development projects and future planning scenarios.
Other recent large-scale urban development projects worldwide include UNStudio's river-oriented masterplan for a former industrial site being transformed into a large-scale mixed-use district that reconnects Cluj-Napoca with its waterfront in Romania. MVRDV and OODA recently revealed a new masterplan for the regeneration of a vacant 28-hectare site between Marvila and Beato on Lisbon's riverfront, recently approved by the Lisbon City Council. A team led by French architecture practice Coldefy, comprising CITYFÖRSTER, Sporaarchitects, TREIBHAUS.LAND, and Marko & Placemakers, won a competition to design a masterplan for Rákosrendező in Budapest, outlining a 15-year scheme to transform a brownfield site long regarded as the city's "rust belt."
