Fall 2025

By 2030, 125 billion connected devices are expected to be part of our daily lives. By 2050, more than 60% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers. Around the globe, hundreds of new cities are being proposed and built from the ground up to meet these changing demands. Rapidly, city planners, technologists, and stakeholders are examining how to gather and use data and technology to improve infrastructure, liveability, and sustainability in our rapidly growing and changing urban centers—our future cities.

With this evolution comes many questions: What are our future cities’ greatest needs and challenges? How can we use new technologies, open-source data, and artificial intelligence to shape “smart” city innovation? What kind of data and technology is most helpful to the city and its citizens? And how can we ensure data privacy, security, and equity for all citizens?

Drawing on applied statistics, data science, English, history, and human-centered design, we will explore these and other questions related to city planning and design, and the theory and ethics around future city visioning. Learning from case studies, city officials and other guest speakers, history, literature, and more, we will gain a deeper understanding of both the wonder and complex interplay between humans and technology, government and its citizens. As a final project, you will apply your skills and knowledge in a “smart city challenge” to design, iterate, and eventually present a proposal and prototype that responds to real-world needs and challenges facing our cities of the future.

Synchronous meeting requirements: 

• Weekly virtual classes: to be scheduled on a weekday evening, likely on Tuesdays or Wednesdays from 6:30-7:30pm or 7-8 pm.
• In-person/F2Fs: there will be 3-4 sessions scheduled most likely on weekends (late mornings to afternoons) at locations around the Bay Area such as San Francisco City Hall, Designing Justice in Oakland and Smart City Start-Up Incubators.

  UC Approved: (Interdisciplinary)

[No Honors Designation at LWHS]

About the Instructor

James Hughes  – Marin Academy

James has been an English and Humanities teacher at Marin Academy for the past seven years, where he has also served as the Director of Community Action, English and Humanities teacher, and a co-teacher in the MA Transdisciplinary Leadership Program. He completed his BA degree in English from the University of San Diego and MA degrees in both English and Education from Stanford University.

James originally taught the Future Cities course as part of the Transdisciplinary Leadership Program and is passionate about the way it connects his expertise is community engagement with his academic pursuits to address important real-world issues. In the summer of 2023 he received an EE Ford Grant to visit and explore Europe’s top ranked “smart cities”—London, Amsterdam and Barcelona—and is excited to share his learnings and experiences with students.

A fifth-generation Californian, James is equally passionate about Bay Area and California history, and sees community engagement and experiential learning as essential components of his teaching. He is also a published poet, writer and musician and brings together his various interests and expertise in the design of The Golden Gate course.