BBC Technology 22/02/13 How will our future cities look?
The article is supposed to be about the “look” of future cities but all these various experts can obsess about is “sensors” for traffic-control, implying that traffic congestion is a permanent and inevitable part of the future which, if DP is implemented, it won’t.
FIDDLING WHILST ROME BURNS
“Traffic jams are getting worse, queues longer and transport networks more prone to delays” Many cities want to make traffic systems smarter.
A genuine smart-city will have neither traffic nor congestion
The time is ripe, say experts, to start designing smarter urban environments, both new cities needed to sustain an ever-growing population, and retro-fits on the ones that we have lived in for centuries.
Sustainability experts predict carbon-neutral cities full of electric vehicles and bike-sharing schemes, with air quality so much improved that office workers can actually open their windows for the first time.
“full of electric vehicles” is not much better than what we have now, somewhat quieter maybe but, since silent vehicles are dangerous, they will have to emit some kind of sound which en masse will sound awful.
“bike-sharing schemes” – the bicycle is great exercise machine but a terrible mode of transportation since, unless your workplace is just a short level ride, you will arrive at work all hot and sweaty. And bikes are impractical for shopping too except maybe for just a few small items.
Visions of a green city often include skyscrapers where living and office space vie with floating greenhouses or high-rise vegetable patches and green roofs,
Futuristic claptrap worthy only of old sci-fi mags.
The answer may lie with big data and the so-called internet of things, where objects previously dumb are made smart by being connected to each other.
A network of sensors will provide a host of data about how a city is performing. This will allow systems to be joined up and ultimately work more efficiently.
when households were offered access to information about their water consumption, they used less….
“If I were to build a city from scratch, I would build in the digital infrastructure of sensors, networks and data analytics as meticulously as the physical infrastructure of buildings, roads, and utilities.” Guru Banavar is IBM’s chief technology officer and was the chief architect behind Rio de Janeiro’s control centre.
This obsession with sensors is mind-numbing – sure they might be useful to have but focussing on such trivialities is not going to solve the big issues