How do you move around your city? Most of us
never think about the thousands of data points,
and the hundreds of interactions involved in criss-
crossing a typical urban landscape. Whether it’s
the changing of traffic signals, or the thousands
of lines of computer code controlling trains and
trams, keeping a city moving is a huge challenge.
You only notice the strings keeping everything
together when one snaps and causes traffic snags.
Yet the issues around urban mobility are certain
to become bigger and more urgent in the future.
Cities are expanding. Just over half of the world’s
population lives in a city, according to the UN – a
number expected to rise by 2.5 billion to 66 per cent
of us by 2050. “Villages have grown into towns,
and towns have grown into cities for thousands of
years,” says Tim Stonor of Space Syntax, an archi-Laying out the
plans for Ford’s
City of Tomorrow
The urban environment has never been so
smart – but our use of its data is dumb. What’s
needed is a fresh approach to the metropolistecture and urban planning company. With that
density of connection, we see plenty of benefits:
“cities are the crucibles of creativity,” he says.
“You get the creation of societies and cultures.”
But as already stretched services are pushed
even further, problems arise. Central among them:
how can cities ensure people and goods can still
get around efficiently – and sustainably?
“A city like London has a population growth
challenge,” explains Tim Schwanen, director of the
Transport Studies unit at the University of Oxford.
It has a rapidly expanding population hurtling
towards nine million, but still relies on outmoded
methods of planning, transport and bureaucracy.
“Google knows more about our high streets than
our planning departments do,” says Euan Mills
of Future Cities Catapult, a think tank focused
on reinventing the world’s cities, and a former
advisor to the Mayor of London. Policy makers,
city planners, transport companies and public
transport providers all collect data of some sort- but it’s often not good enough quality, and rarely
shared. It also regularly overlooks how populations
actually use their cities. It’s the perfect storm of
lack of time, awareness and resources.
Urban planners will promote people over vehicles