“The dramatic shift of the world’s population into urban areas is encouraging citizens, city planners, businesses and governments to start looking at visions of ‘smart’ cities.”
Since the rise of the smart phone and the idea that we’ll be living mainly in an urban world from now on, urban network applications have mushroomed increasingly. Not only can we plan our mobility patterns with transit and route planning apps, also can we monitor our energy consumption, municipal services and proximity of friends and relevant places.
A few examples:
> The Mobile City has organized various events on mobile applications of social networks and public engagement in urban systems, such as Social Cities of Tomorrow (2012).
> The municipality of Amsterdam launched a google maps application that lists vacant spaces and buildings. Each object has a list of information for possible new (temporary) users, explaining what kind of activities the municipality would like to have there, who is the contact person, area and pavement type etc.
The Japanese website Geigermaps has bundled information on radioactivity, measurements with Geiger counters and map applications providing information of radioactivity to the population. Shortly after the Fukushima accident the initiative was widely adopted.
Postscapes collects new ways to make our cities smarter, using sensors, networks and engagement.
In the last couple of years, project Nova Luz has begun to transform one of the liveliest and most central parts of São Paulo. Low income groups fear they will have to leave the area soon, due to expropriation, demolition and gentrification. Questions are raised regarding the inclusion of these social groups in the urban plan. Spanish media collective Left Hand Rotation recently launched a documentary on this topic (Portuguese/Spanish).
Nos últimos anos, o projeto Nova Luz começou a transformar um dos bairros mais centrais e movimentados de São Paulo. Moradores de baixa renda são expostas á desapropriação, demolição e gentrificação, processos que acabam expulsando-0s da região central. A inclusão desses grupos no projeto, na forma de zoneamento ZEIS, está sendo debatido no momento. Coletivo Espanhol Left Hand Rotation recentemente lancou um documentário sobre essa situação (Português/Espanhol).
Urbanized is a documentary film by Gary Hustwit.
Cities are physical representations of existing forces, such as economic and environmental ones. Furthermore, they are the result of urban design: what we see while we’re walking through the streets, has previously been designed by someone.
A couple of times per year my inbox gets spammed by the International Monorail Association, asking me to register for one of their conferences on monorails for mass transit. As the invitation always looks rather tacky, I never go, but it made me wonder: Is monorail a mode of transport to be taken seriously, or is it some futurist gadget that politicians buy or promise their citizens in order to win elections?
A glance at a list of monorails around the world shows that:
– most monorails have been built in theme parks or for temporary events such as world exhibitions and soccer world cups
– most monorails have been built in Asia (Tokyo has the most successful monorail line, transporting over 100 million passengers per year; Osaka has the longest line, measuring 22 km)
– Germany is the European hot spot for monorails (the Maglev – ‘magnetic levitation’ – train is the world fastest monorail; a prototype was built in Germany and a final implementation was built by a German consortium in Shanghai)
– a number of monorail projects have already been torn down or canceled, most of them in North America
Tokyo monorail
Despite of this reality of implemented monorails, some more successful than others, I have the impression that there still is an air of utopia, fantasy and even humor around the topic of monorails. Perhaps it has something to do with the Springfield monorail episode of The Simpsons (featuring the Monorail Song), or the fact that corrupt or weird politicians are often related with futuristic monorail plans.
Springfield monorail – The Simpsons
In São Paulo alone, there are enough examples. A monorail project was started by mayor Pitta in 1997, called Fura Fila, but just some concrete pillars were built during his time. Only three mayors later, the project continued as an elevated bus rapid transit project under the name of Expresso Tiradentes. The last decade, politician Levy Fidelix – a fairly bizarre but harmless character with a big moustache – has been promoting his so-called Aerotrem.
And for the 2014 world cup, the city wants to inaugurate a monorail to the Morumbi soccer stadium. However, it is said that the capacity of the system would be insufficient to bring all spectators to the match in a short time. Apparently, until 2010 not a single construction company was interested in building the monorail for the proposed amount of money, but now Bombardier and Scomi are building one line each. Let’s wait and see.
Shenzhen monorail near ‘Window of the World’ attraction park
The new gadget, by the way, is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). Monorails seem old fashioned compared to this. There was a race to build the first PRT in the world, between Masdar City (Emirates) and the airport of London Heathrow. Individual electric pods with rubber tires bring up to 6 people from a certain spot, for example a parking lot, to the flight terminal, and vice versa. They move automatically, without driver, within a guiding system in the asphalt. New PRT plans are popping up everywhere, including the town of Breda, the Netherlands. The futuristic transportation pods would bring people from the railway station to a hospital and an education campus.
Lagos is the fastest growing megacity in the world. In the process of attracting millions of new people, its inhabitants have found resourceful ways of making a living, building homes, recycling materials and trading goods. This creative attitude of the Nigerians are at the center of this BCC documentary.
Part 1 focuses on recycling and making money from waste in one of the city’s major land fills.
Part 2 tells the story of a shantytown built on poles in the lagoon (a type of settlement that would be called Palafitas in South America)
Part 3 describes the ambition of Lagos to become a succesfull megacity through implementing infrastructure and regulations. Both elements obviously clash with the existing informal settlements and commercial activities.
(all parts available on youtube, by clicking through the different sub chapters)
