What should we be thinking about now for then?Whilst studying International relations and security at university I attended a lecture on ‘the city’. It was one I found fascinating, and a year on, I am revisiting it, from a construction angle to see I if can take a guess at just where we are heading.
Our ever increasing urbanisation is an area we increasingly need to seriously consider. Cities are only so big, they can only hold so many people, and more importantly they can only grow at a certain rate. So what happens when they reach capacity? Here in the United Kingdom we have an estimated annual rate of urbanisation at 0.7% between 2010 and 2015. But with smarter living this is something that can be manageable, and as technology develops so does our ability to handle it. However in the in our ever increasingly globalised world we need to look outside ourselves. Take for example Uganda with an expected annual urbanisation rate of 5.74%[1], is that really a sustainable growth for the city? It is in scenarios like this that we see slums developing, and Uganda is certainly not alone, or even an unreliable prediction. Look at Sao Paulo which saw its favela’s grow by a rate of 19% per year throughout the 1990’s[2]. This may not be an accurate precedent for every city globally, but it is clear that we need to start looking at ways to manage the future of the city. There are technologies being used today in the construction industry designed to vastly increase the time and money it takes to build homes and office buildings alike that could hopefully one day be used to house displaced people and help to put an end the ‘state of nature’ like slums. For example SkyCity, the next tallest building in the world will be constructed in just 90 days at a rate of 5 story’s a day by using pre-assembled pieces, although the building has had its fair share of difficulties and delays. Or the Contour Crafting 3-D printer that can build a house in under 24 hours. However we must be aware of the dangers this brings to the construction industry itself, yes there will be more affordable housing for those in need, but more people will become in need by robot-asising a heavily human workforce.
With increasing technology to construct building and infrastructure alike at unprecedented rates, does this mean we are then heading for the era of the mega-city? Could we see more like China’s plans for the Pearl River Delta, a mega-city twice the size of Wales merging 9 cities, with 42 million inhabitants?
But it’s not just the population increase that we need to look at. We need to seriously consider how climate change and an oncoming resource and energy crisis is going to play out in the city. As they say prevention is the best cure, so why aren’t we looking at more sustainable urban environments now? The answer is that we are, but this, like everything, is going to take time.
It is clear then that we need to fight slums, and non-slums alike with a good dose of innovation. With smart phones in everyone’s pocket what is there to stop the smart bubble growing out of our pockets and into our city’s? Only our ability to develop the technology to make that giant leap from our pocket to our urban environment. But there is progress from apps like foursquare designed to tailor your trip to town around you, to the ‘smart city’s’ out there currently, but it is my notion that they don’t quite deserve the title ‘smart’ yet. Take for example IBM’s smarter cities challenge. This is less about making cities ‘smart’ right now, and more about making them smarter and more efficient, something they are succeeding in. This can be done by developing technology to better handle infrastructure as in the case of Ho Chi Minh City[3] or working to reduce fuel poverty as in the case of Glasgow[4]. Important yes, and definitely making cities smarter, but this does not necessarily make them smart, well not yet anyway. To look at truly smart cities, we need to enter the world of sci-fi, here things think and act for themselves, inanimate objects are now intuitive and have information at the ready before you ask for it. Welcome to the Sentient City.
So alarm clocks that change the time they go off depending on what the traffic looks like may not be on everyone’s bedside tables tomorrow, but we can see sentient objects beginning to emerge in the city today. You have most probably heard of intelligent bins that texts it owner when it needs emptying, but I would imagine less have heard of the ingenious crime-fighting lampposts, (and you can get that image of a movable, walking talking robot out of your head right now, they look like normal lampposts I promise). Something that seems so futuristic, and yet is soon to be piloted across Glasgow. The lamps it turns out can do everything from monitoring footfall and noise levels, to adjusting the brightness for users, as well as being able to detect disturbances and consequentially alert emergency services, CCTV monitors and being programmed to flash to divert and attract attention. All this and they are of course energy efficient. It is undoubtable that we are moving towards a smart city, where data informs action without the need of human interaction, or informs human intervention where it cannot act itself. It is through technologies like this that we can build more sustainable cities. Even little adaptations like solar powered speed signs may not be what you imagine from the world of Sci-Fi, but are the first step on the stair case to a ‘smart city’.
The smart city essentially uses data to make itself more efficient, an efficiency that is very much needed. With the increasing intersection of Metcalfe’s law and Moore’s law it is an efficiency of which technology and the city is capable. In the space of flows we currently live in, a second electrification could bring unimaginable transformations to our cities and to our way of life. The future is coming, we just need to allow it some old fashioned patience.
“The evolution toward smart cities will likely take quite a bit longer than we anticipate, but the eventual impact will probably be more transformative than we can currently envision.”[5]
[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2212.html
[2] Mike Davies, Planet of Slums
[3] http://smartercitieschallenge.org/city_ho_chi_minh.html
[4] http://smartercitieschallenge.org/city_glasgow_unitedkingdom.html
[5] http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2013/12/are-smart-cities-empty-hype.html
[2] Mike Davies, Planet of Slums
[3] http://smartercitieschallenge.org/city_ho_chi_minh.html
[4] http://smartercitieschallenge.org/city_glasgow_unitedkingdom.html
[5] http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2013/12/are-smart-cities-empty-hype.html
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