Insfrastruktur world

Concrete is out and canopy is in: five brand-new cities are being grown out of forests, from the Mexican jungle to the deserts of the Middle East.

The cities of the future will drink their own wastewater, purified beyond anything from a tap, and these are the five megaplants making it happen.

Beneath the world's biggest cities, engineers are building underground rivers to swallow the storms of the future, and these are the largest of them all.

New railways are about to erase some of the world's most stubborn borders, from the Sahel to the Baltic Sea, and these are the cross-border links opening by twenty twenty nine.

From the Mediterranean to the far south, Africa's great highway corridors are finally being stitched together, and the trade map of an entire continent is about to change.

The ice is retreating and a new ocean is opening at the top of the world. We count down the five Arctic deep-water ports rising by 2032, the harbors that will anchor the trade routes of the Arctic century.

Fall asleep in one country, wake up in another. We count down the five night train revival corridors of 2028, from the sold-out Stockholm to Berlin sleeper to the eastern routes that will turn the night train into a continent-wide system.

The diamond mine had a good run, but the future is grown, not dug. We count down the five synthetic diamond megafactories of 2030, from chip-grade diamond wafer plants to an entire industrial city built around lab-grown stones.

Eight million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, but a fleet is finally fighting back. We count down the five ocean plastic cleanup fleets of 2027, from solar river interceptors to autonomous drone swarms hunting trash with machine vision.

The roar of jet engines is about to go silent. We count down the five scheduled electric flight corridors taking off by 2032, from whisper-quiet fjord hops in Norway to the busiest electric skyway on Earth in southern China.

Driverless trains hauling freight around the clock. We count down the five corridors leading the autonomous rail revolution.

Water on the Moon is rocket fuel waiting to happen. The five projects racing to mine it by 2032.

Beneath deserts and cities, engineers are banking water underground against drought. We count down the five largest underground reservoirs on Earth.

Burying the grid to beat storms, wildfires, and sabotage. The five underground power highway megaprojects being built by 2030.

Rising seas and superstorms are forcing cities to rebuild. The five most ambitious flood-proof city megaprojects rising by 2032.

Storing electricity as liquid air at minus 196 degrees. We count down the five largest liquid air energy storage plants heading for 2030.

Feeding billions takes rivers of water. We count down the five largest irrigation megaprojects on the planet.

Why cool servers with air conditioning when space is freezing? The five boldest plans to move data centers into orbit by 2030.

Artificial islands in the North Sea built to harvest offshore wind at a scale never seen before. The five energy islands that could power tens of millions of homes by 2032.

From AI fire-spotting satellites to fireproof power grids, we count down the megaprojects fighting the world's fiercest wildfires.

Cold War fortresses built for nuclear war, now museums, hotels, and data centers. We count down the strangest second lives.

The world's highest viewpoints. From Paris to Jeddah to Tokyo's mile-high dreams, we count down the towers touching the sky.

Mile-high towers, pyramids in Tokyo Bay, a skyscraper hanging from an asteroid. Architecture's wildest dreams, counted down.

The Earth makes clean fuel underground. We count down the countries racing to find it, from Mali to France to Australia.

Storing energy as squeezed air in underground caverns. The fifty-year-old technology becoming the grid's savings account.