Cities must innovate to make them fit for the future

By Sara Smith at BROXAP

By 2050 nearly 90% of the UK population will live in urban areas – a staggering 64 million people. Currently around 49 million people live in towns and cities meaning that over the next forty years there will be a serious influx of people.

At the same time they must also contend with a changing energy model that will re-focus how towns and cities move their citizens around. Each area will be different, meaning that the challenges each faces may be very different. However, I believe there are commonalities across the country.

How for instance do you move refuse and what do you do with it once you have it?

At the moment we have smart bins that monitor when they need to be emptied allowing councils to spend less cash and emit lower amounts of CO2 by optimising routes for dustbin lorries. In South Korea they have gone one better and have the rubbish “sucked” out into a central system that then creates compost.

Changes in how citizens move around towns and cities will also change what people need in our urban areas. If you have more cyclists going to work, they need safe, secure and dry places to keep their bikes. If pedestrians are brought back into the city centres en masse, they must have places to shelter from the sun and rain that are both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

That idea of beauty is one that should rank highly alongside a number of others to create a street space that will be usable and liked by those who interact with it. Citizens will want to live in and take care of areas that look nice. We are visual creatures after all, so making sure that new buildings are created with care is of utmost importance.

I believe there are also two other key elements to making the future urban environment a success.

Technology

The pavements that will be pounded in the next century will be made up of far more than just concrete and asphalt.

Sensors embedded in street furniture can map movements of pedestrians and allow the city to adapt as people flow in and out of areas. Think of football crowds heading home from a game in the depths of winter. Networked LED street lamps could be increased in brightness to help guide them to the their destinations.

Or at the approach of an emergency vehicle they could blink, alerting drivers to make way for the ambulance that is rushing to the hospital. Data, however, is only one part of the process that will decide how urban areas move forward.

People

Arguably the most important component are those who are going to use the spaces that are being designed.

Governments – at both a local and national level – designers and companies must speak to citizens and make them part of the process. An engaged populace will feel like they own the city and in turn they will come to the decision makers with ideas. It is they who will, in many cases, pay for these infrastructure projects out of their taxes and also have to use them on a daily basis.

Back in 1989 the makers of ‘Back to the Future 2’ had a go at imagining what the world would look like on October 21, 2015.

Some things they got spectacularly wrong (dust proof paper anyone?) but others proved eerily prescient. Take for instance the neon pavements that Marty flew over in his hovering Delorian. They seemed like fantasy at the time but in Cambridge a street is paved with a coating that, as the sun sets, begins to glow in a beautiful blue hue.

The product absorbs light during the day and emits it at night to give a carbon neutral way of lighting paths. That’s tech that even Doc Brown could get behind.

While the future of urban areas may not be crystal clear at this moment, businesses have a huge opportunity to take advantage of when they look to revenue streams in the future. Not only will it help them grow and thrive; it will also benefit our whole country.

 

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