8 / 24
Advocates hail centrally planned
smart cities as the future, but others,
including Ratti, insist a bottom-up ap-
proach is more sustainable. Amsterdam,
Singapore, and Portland are frequently
held up as good examples of existing
cities getting smarter. The Dutch capital
has set up the Amsterdam Smart City
initiative, essentially a platform whereby
companies, authorities, research institu-
tions, and ordinary citizens can come
together to test and develop innovative
products and services.
Changing behavior
Ratti and his team at MIT have
conducted a number of studies aimed
at mapping the pulse of a city in order
to gain unique information about
how a city behaves. “We can then
use this information to change the
city – through planning or through
the response of citizens to this infor-
mation,” he explains. In one project,
Ratti’s team tagged 3,000 items of
garbage thrown out by 500 residents
in Seattle and tracked each item to its
final resting place. At the end of the
project, one of the participants said
seeing where the items he threw out
ended up had had a profound impact
on his behavior, convincing him to cut
down on the amount of solid waste his
household produced.
As far afield as Edinburgh, New York,
and Winnipeg, smart information
boards at bus and subway stops give
travelers real-time updates on when
the next bus or train is due. Research
shows these boards encourage
people to use public transport,
cutting down on congestion and air
pollution. Other innovations include
a device which integrates with your
smartphone so that you can switch
on the heating or air conditioning
in your home as you begin your
commute, thereby reducing energy
wastage and ensuring your home
is just the right temperature for
your return. In Portland, Oregon,
developers are working on a simple
sensor that would send data to a
command center and then update
an application on your smartphone,
directing drivers to the nearest
available parking space which would
have been saved for them.
Smart picks from around the world
Too smart
Few people would object to innovations
which save them time and money, but
is there a danger that our cities become
too smart, relying too heavily on tech-
nology? The 2012 Olympics brought
huge fears for Londoners of the possibili-
ty of a cyber-terrorist attack which could
have brought the whole city to a halt.
Meanwhile in New York City, in Pollalis’s
view America’s most efficient city due to
its density, large swathes of the urban
metropolis were left without power for
weeks and in some cases months after
Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012.
Pollalis believes that none of the
risks are insurmountable, provided the
technology is “used prudently, has been
extensively tested, and is well designed,
with a proper back-up system.”
Visions of tomorrow
So what will the future look like? “From
the physical point of view it will not
be too different from today. As at the
time of Romans 2000 years ago, we
still need and will need horizontal
planes for living, facades to protect us
from the outdoor environment, and so
on,” says Ratti. “But the activities that
humans will carry out in those cities –
the way of navigating the city, meeting,
working, accessing knowledge – will be
tremendously different.”
■
Composite map of
the recorded traces of
trash type presented by
Professor Carlo Ratti and
his Trash Track team from
the SENSEable City Lab
at MIT.
| PEOPLE FLOW
8