Economic shifts

One fundamental change in society over the past couple of hundred years has been the migration, not just of people, but of economic power from rural areas to urban areas. For much of human history, trade within and between groups and small villages was the main engine of economic activity. As each empire emerged, its governing centers (Athens, Rome, Istanbul, Paris, London) prospered and grew as money flowed back from new markets. But they were the exceptions. Much of the world remained rural.

In time, empires collapsed and wars wrought destruction that ultimately resulted in new states and centers of power being formed. The industrial revolutions ushered in increasing rates of urban migration. Many industrializing cities across Europe, North America, and Japan in particular began to see strong productivity and economic growth. After World War II, the rebuilding of cities in Europe and Asia and the attendant economic activity resulted in strong financial positions for many developed regions throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, many developed cities that competed in areas such as coal mining, electronics, automobile assembly, steel production, and manufacturing in general were battered by recessions and lost economic value from globalization.

The rapid emergence of a developing Southeast Asia further expanded urban growth and wealth distribution. In the 21st century, this trend is continuing. For example, in the next decade, India will contain the top ten fastest-growing cities in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP).

Despite many ups and down, the trajectory of many cities — always with exceptions — has continued upward. Today, cities are the dominant economic force on the planet, generating 80 percent of all GDP.

Globalization is forcing cities to redefine themselves as their legacy industries decline because of irrelevancy or competition from lower-cost regions. Service industries are beginning to dominate in many places.

In the 21st century, cities paradoxically find themselves positioned for economic success but nevertheless face significant challenges imposed by global competition, endangered relevancy, and increasing operating costs.

Increasingly complex city requirements

Operating a city efficiently in the 21st century is complicated. The services, as well as the channels that are served, have grown considerably over the past 50 years. In addition to the built environment (all the physical aspects, such as buildings and roads), there’s an expectation that cities must support the entire stack of digital services. Take, for example, the need to attain a permit for constructing a home extension. In many cities, this is a hands-on experience that requires multiple visits by a requestor to a physical permit center. Many years ago, this whole experience would have been exclusively a person-to-person interaction. Today, all or parts of the permitting process can be delivered online. Now a city has to integrate both the analog and digital worlds of permits. Both the requestor and the provider gain great advantages but also higher complexity in ensuring that everything works smoothly, including, for example, that data is secure and available when needed.

In the years ahead, you’ll see a greater use of technology — such as digitalization, robotic process automation (RPA), real robots, and artificial intelligence — used in city services. Paradoxically, the same innovative technologies that will be used to streamline processes and create efficiencies will enable less complexity on the front-end but likely increase the complexity on the back-end.

To ensure consistent quality, keep costs down, reduce errors, and support the needs and expectations of all constituents, complexity is headed higher.

Prepare for complexity because it will define the world’s urban future.

Interdependencies between systems

When I started my career as a technologist in the 1990s, not many systems were connected. In 1990, the Internet wasn’t yet available to the general population. Only the geekiest people had dialup modems that used their home landlines to connect them with remote systems.

When I say “the geekiest people,” I mean me.

Today, everyone’s devices are connected, and millions more devices are coming online every few days. The need to send and receive data between computer systems is now a requirement. People connect to internal networks that can span one building or hundreds of facilities, and people are connecting to many public networks as well. Most business requirements necessitate sophisticated architectures — digital infrastructure (which I discuss in Chapter 2) — to function and cybersecurity solutions to protect them.

Imagine something as straightforward today as a cloud-based-payroll-and-expense-reimbursement solution. Yes, cities need them too. A system like this one must support data entry from staff, using their computers and apps on their smartphones. The system must connect to numerous banks. It may connect to credit card companies to automatically pull in credit card purchase information. All of this must be done securely, ensuring that only the appropriate people have access to the right capabilities. Folks are only concerned that they get paid and reimbursed, and any deviation from that expectation can spell trouble. Many interdependent systems need to play nicely with one another for it all to work smoothly.

The interdependencies of systems isn’t limited to technology systems. Cities comprise a system of systems. Complex networks of connected city resources include first responders, transportation, buildings, energy supply and demand, waste management, public works, street festivals, governance, water distribution, sustainability initiatives, safety, and much more.

The more the complexity of cities increases, the greater the number of system interdependencies. Additionally, when an increasing number of systems interact with each other, their connections — also known as nexus points — increase the risk of cybersecurity breaches. In security parlance it is said that the attack surface has increased. Increased complexity is commensurate with greater cybersecurity risks.

Smarter cities must use intelligent digital and physical infrastructures that are capable of carrying out a variety of tasks, including

• Sharing and acting on data
• Utilizing sustainable materials
• Optimizing water and energy use
• Efficiently using and connecting transportation options
• Connecting people and things by using high-speed telecommunications

If a city continues to be poorly architected or underinvested in, interdependencies can break down and create significant, frustrating inefficiencies — inefficiencies that can even result in outright havoc.

Smart cities optimize for complexity and the interdependency of systems.

Population changes

It’s intuitive that population and demography are core defining dimensions of a city. After all, a city is about people. Understanding these dimensions will help you better make sense of the direction of a community. For example, a city where the majority of people are younger than 35 years old will function differently than one where most people are older than 40. It will influence areas such as health needs, purchasing patterns, job opportunities, and tax income for the city. Let’s take a look at urban population and demography in more detail.

Urbanization

The United Nations states that as many as 3 million people per week are migrating into cities. It’s a staggering number, and it will continue for several more decades. The primary reason for this movement is that people are seeking a better quality of life. For example, in the United States, a city worker earns, on average, 30 percent more than a worker in a rural area.

In the years ahead, the world will likely also see city migrants because of climate change. Deteriorating agricultural opportunities and extreme weather events will be contributors. This will create an increasing class of displaced people called climate refugees.

However, not every city is impacted by migration. People are moving into a small number of large cities in just a few regions of the world. (Remember that most cities in the world are small.) In Figure 3-2, you can see the top 10 cities with the highest rate of migrant population growth. Delhi ranks as number one, and several other Indian cities are in the top 20. To help you gain a sense of the rate of change, an estimated 30 people per minute move from a rural area to an urban area in India. By 2030, 600 million Indians will live in a city. Other dominant areas are China and several African nations.

Aging infrastructure

Potholes! It’s probably the factor most often cited when people complain about their city’s infrastructure. It’s those holes in the pavement, typically caused by overuse and weather damage. The complex network of roads in every city means there’s no shortage of these nasty bumps when you hit them with a car or bike.

If the only problem cities needed to worry about were fixing potholes, the world probably wouldn’t have a pothole problem. However, a pothole is symbolic of the challenge of every city to maintain its aging infrastructure. I’m talking about the myriad of assets in the built environment, such as these and more:

• Public buildings
• Bridges
• Parks
• Paths and sidewalks
• Water systems
• Power lines
• Tunnels
• Walls
• Dams

If you live in a new, glistening city in China or the Middle East, this probably isn’t a top-of-mind issue. (Eventually, it will be.) But for the vast majority of modern cities built over the course of the past 150 years, stuff is either breaking outright or not being well-maintained. After all, upkeep is expensive, budgets are limited, and city leaders are forced to navigate competing priorities demanded by their constituents. Communities also want to build new facilities and infrastructure. Only the most affluent, smaller cities have a good handle on keeping their infrastructure in order.

In the years ahead, infrastructure maintenance projects will no longer be able to be delayed or ignored. Infrastructure is already a crisis, and the dangers of ignoring it are real. Just in the past few years, several bridges have collapsed while people and cars have been crossing. In August 2018, the Ponte Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa, Italy, collapsed and killed 43 people. Sadly, I could name plenty of other examples of these types of tragedies.

Though there are many reasons that aging infrastructure is difficult to address, costs dominate — how will cities afford the significant price tag of upgrading their aging infrastructure? (I discuss the important topic of funding in Chapter 6.)

Lifestyle choices

People no longer think of cities as being just convenient places to live and work — they now expect them to offer a wide range of choices of things to do in their free time. Among many options, great cities are full of exciting and exotic places to eat, to be entertained, to watch and play sports, to learn, and to escape. People want choices in their housing — perhaps an apartment, a small house, a canal boat (for the adventurous), or, if you can afford it, a much grander residence.

What we know is that the choices people make in their lifestyles continue to evolve. We’ve come a long way from working to exhaustion during the day and then spending the evening telling stories around the fire or gathering in front of the radio to listen to the latest sci-fi serial.

Cities understand that lifestyle choices continue to evolve and that communities are increasingly demanding more options. For some communities, offering desirable amenities is necessary to attract the talent required for the industries of the future. A city without good Internet access and a range of connectivity choices can immediately be a turn-off to a prospective employee who is considering moving there.

Newer generations are demanding some basic requirements from their cities, including clean environments, streets with parks and quiet areas, places to walk a pet or allow a pet to run around with others, activities for all age groups, diversity in employment, quality schools, and safe and well-lit areas. It's a tall order to fill, but expectations have certainly risen over the past few decades.

The most successful and attractive cities in the world are playgrounds for all manner of activities.

Environment

It’s possible that no other topic will be as important or as defining in the next few decades as the health of the planet. It’s potentially an existential issue. Sure, the planet will survive in the long run, but will we humans? More pointedly, how humans behave in cities will ultimately determine the trajectory of the current climate emergency.

In other words, the future of humanity depends on the environment of cities.

As megacities grow, more resources are consumed and more energy is required. Cities now consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy.

Although large cities are the biggest contributors of carbon emissions, every person is an independent and responsible participant. In other words, a smaller city where carbon use is high per person, can elevate that city's impact beyond its size.

People are managing waste better, but cities can’t help it: They create massive volumes of it every day. Powering and processing complex city operations produces a catastrophic level of carbon exhaust — over 70 percent of global carbon emissions, to be precise. Transportation is a big chunk of that number. (Figure 3-3 illustrates the carbon producing congestion from cars in cities.)

The countries and their respective cities with the highest carbon footprint include these:

• China: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai
• United States: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago
• South Korea: Seoul, Busan, and Taegu
• Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk

Surprisingly, there’s research that suggests that large urbanization has a positive impact on the environment. Based on condensed living space, reduced energy-use per capita, and the preservation of the countryside and nature, these factors can contribute to a more environmentally friendly organization of human settlement.

Can people’s behaviors, models, and approaches to contemporary living evolve in time to save the environment? Changes appear to be underway, but the scientific consensus is that we’re not yet doing enough. City dwellers, the future of the planet is up to you.

Health

There’s one topic that every person in the world cares about: their health. It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the relationship between city life and health is inextricably linked. It wasn’t always a good relationship. The first big cities were breeding grounds for disease. The vast numbers of rodents, the lack of sanitation, and the close proximity of humans provided some of the context for the most devastating epidemics the world has ever seen. Plague, for example, is said to have killed one in four Athenians in 430 B.C. This disease became a regular in Europe and decimated communities periodically up until the 18th century. With plague largely vanquished, it was replaced by cholera and yellow fever. Cholera was particularly catastrophic in cities, until it was determined that dirty water was to blame.

One motivation for the design of the grid system in Manhattan was to provide better air flow around the city. (This was because some diseases were thought to be caused by still air!) The real reasons for disease, such as bad bacteria entering water and food and mosquito bites, had yet to be discovered. Thank goodness for modern medicine.

Though humans have generally avoided major epidemics in cities over the past few decades (SARS, in the early 2000s, was an exception), cities are still major determinants of human health.

Unfortunately, after I wrote the first draft of this chapter, the world was hit with a pandemic. A new virus, named Covid-19, turned out to be highly contagious and was spreading from person-to-person. Where there was density of people — cities! — the virus was infecting the most amount of humans. Cities lend themselves to close human proximity, including public transportation, sports stadiums, offices, and theaters, which were all contexts for rapid spread. Major cities began imposing stay-at-home orders and requiring people to stand six feet apart from each other when out and about. While the rate of infection eventually began to decline, this story remains open. There will be a lot to be learned from it, as it’s certain that nobody wants to be faced with such a disaster again. While the solution appears to lie in the discovery of therapeutics and a vaccine, there’s little doubt that other changes in how people live, work, and play, and in the design of cities will soon be underway as well.

Here are just a few of the ways city life can negatively impact health:

• Poor air and water quality
• Noise and inability to escape to quiet areas
• Lack of access to healthcare options
• High cost of healthcare
• Mental health problems caused by the stresses of urban life
• Loneliness
• A sedentary office lifestyle
• Lack of safe and beautiful areas in which to walk alone

Today, city dwellers want a great city experience and good health. It’s driving city leaders to explore the important ways that the urban environment can become healthier. The movement even has a name: healthy cities. The World Health Organization (WHO) specifies the following elements as the objectives of a healthy city:

• Creating a health-supportive environment where, for example, health factors are a priority in relevant city decisions
• Achieving a good quality of life
• Providing for basic sanitation and hygiene needs
• Supplying access to healthcare

More than anything, it will be a new generation of community members who will demand that health becomes one of the essential drivers of positive urban change. (For more on the healthy cities movement, see Chapter 11.)

Water management

The earth, the air, the land, and the water are not an inheritance from our forefathers but on loan from our children. So, we have to hand over to them at least as it was handed over to us.

—MAHATMA GANDHI

In 2018, the beautiful, modern city of Cape Town in South Africa suffered a water crisis. With a dry climate, rapid urbanization, high per capita water consumption, and three years of little rainfall, the city was in trouble. If drastic action weren’t taken, the city would run out of water.

The most important step was to reduce demand. The city implemented a wide range of water-saving initiatives. People were instructed to take only 2-minute showers. A campaign slogan was created — “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” — to promote the reduction of toilet flushing. Residents were restricted to a maximum of 50 liters a day. To put that amount in context, a shower typically uses 15 liters per minute. Filling swimming pools, washing cars, and running fountains were all banned. Failure to observe the long list of water limitations was punished with a large fine. Enforcement included the deployment of water management devices that could record and limit the water supply to properties. Social media was widely used to communicate with residents and for people to offer advice and support.

Fortunately, with these strict rules in place and an effective use of technology — in addition to some welcome rain — the city of Cape Town averted the worst-case scenario of running out of water. It came perilously close, though. As the city continues to grow and water demand increases, the risk of future shortages remain.

Unfortunately, Cape Town’s situation isn’t unique in the world. Today, water stress — defined as a situation where the water resources available are insufficient for needs — affects almost 2 billion people. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. It’s anticipated that by 2030, 700 million people could be displaced by intense water scarcity. Water scarcity is being driven by two converging phenomena: growing freshwater use and depletion of usable freshwater resources.

The sixth goal of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, see Chapter 2 for more) is, “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

I discuss a smart city technology solution for improved water management in Chapter 8 in a section called “Smart water.”

Water is life. It’s necessary for the survival of all living things on Planet Earth.

Housing crisis

The number of buildings in the world is going to double by 2060. We’re going to build the equivalent of a new New York City every month for the next 40 years.”

BILL GATES, cofounder of Microsoft and co-chair and cofounder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

As city populations continue to grow in the years ahead, so too does the need for more housing. However, though the demands for new housing will be substantial in the future, the world is already in the midst of a housing crisis — a crisis that’s largely about housing availability, affordability, and acceptable conditions. Affordable housing, a central challenge, is defined in this context as the ability to afford a home (rent or mortgage) with 30 percent or less of your income.

Despite the common misconception, this housing crisis isn’t restricted to big cities such as New York, London, and Sydney. All types of cities, big and small, are impacted. The worst is being experienced in rapidly urbanizing cities of the developing world. Continued high levels of poverty, government debt, and weak economies results in many residents of these cities being forced to live in substandard housing lacking electricity, running water, and basic sanitation.

In the developed world, there are many reasons for this housing crisis. At the most basic level, cities simply haven’t built enough homes. Over several administrations, many leaders have poorly estimated capacity needs. In addition to this poor planning, however, there are also restrictive land use issues, geographic limitations, and a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment.

Housing has also been turned into a popular investment mechanism, which has resulted in an oversupply of luxury housing and an undersupply of affordable housing. Though difficult for cities to manage and regulate in a free market, local governments can develop plans that accommodate the appetite for housing investment with the need to incentivize lower-cost homes.

Those individuals who are part of what are now known as the knowledge, professional, and creative classes may be able to afford expensive homes and have some money left over, but members of the working-and-service classes are being pushed out to the periphery of cities.

The housing crisis may be largely defined by affordability and availability, but these issues contain subtle complexities that are reflected in the lifestyles of today’s society. For example, young knowledge workers may be happy to share rental properties in convenient locations, whereas other demographics, including older adults, may prioritize homes near schools and parks. More people in cities are living alone. In many cities, households without children outnumber those with children. Because urban living is more expensive, home ownership is decreasing while renting is increasing. Renting is also becoming more of a popular choice for those who enjoy the freedom it provides. The common types of available housing — apartments, row houses, and single-family homes, for example — have all been resistant to change. Innovation in housing has been slow.

A city’s housing crisis has no simple set of answers. The dynamics of each city — its unique economic situation and politics, for example — play a role. (See Figure 3-4.) Solutions require multiple approaches, including rethinking and redefining the standard notion of housing.

Despite the enormity of the problem, you can use some proven methods to at least address some aspects of your city's housing problems. I recommend considering the ones described in this list:

• Build for density. This one includes lifting restrictions on the heights of buildings and the proximity of properties to each other. It can include constructing smaller homes.
• Relax zoning laws. Look at other restrictions that limit housing projects and lessen or remove the rules.
• Reduce red tape. Low-income housing builders will benefit from simpler development processes and legal requirements.
• Revitalize neighborhoods. Take action to make less attractive areas more compelling for developers. Clean the streets, plant trees, convert buildings (for example, a school or industrial building transformed into apartments), and put in place tax incentives to attract amenities and businesses.

  

• Institute rent caps. Enforce a limit on what a landlord can charge for certain types of properties by area.
• Provide more public and nonprofit housing. Despite more homes, many still can’t afford those available. Government can have a role in owning or subsidizing homes for low-income residents.
• Encourage housing innovation. The blueprint for homes needs to evolve, as in these examples:
  • Tiny house movement: Also known as the small house movement, participants advocate for simple living in small homes that are 400 square feet or smaller. A subset of tiny houses is called microhomes. These small homes fit between buildings, under bridges, and on rooftops.
  • Co-housing: This is when homes are clustered around a shared space that includes a common house, large kitchen and dining areas, and gardens. Residents also share parking spaces and resources such as handy household items.
  • Partial home rental: A homeowner rents a garage, a basement, or an outside unit as living quarters.
  • Conversion of shipping containers: Done either as do-it-yourself (DIY) or by purchase, shipping containers are being used for homes. They can be stand-alone or even stacked to enable a larger home or multiple homes.
  • Sky cities: These proposed skyscrapers house thousands of people but also include stores, indoor farms, hospitals, gyms, and police stations.
  • 3D-printed homes: Custom-designed and -produced homes with additive manufacturing, the process of building by successively adding material layer by layer. These can use a variety of materials and have the potential to be low-cost.
  • Mixed-use buildings: Rather than restrict a tall office building to just commercial use, a mixed-use building combines multiple uses into one structure, such as residential, hotel, retail, parking, cultural, and entertainment.

Changing community behaviors and expectations

In the early days of the Internet — you know, back in the old days of the late 1990s, when it became clear that this new platform would allow anyone to be a publisher — the belief of many was that, though they would have many options when it came to writing, there would not be enough topics to write about. This sentiment seems so quaint now. Now it seems that everyone is writing about anything possible. The Internet has enabled everyone to become a publisher so that they can spin up some thought and beam it unhindered across the globe to anyone who’s prepared to listen. It has been empowering while also presenting people with a range of new challenges.

New digital tools and the power they give to people and groups are representative of a world that is changing in terms of who has a voice and how that voice is heard. Coupled with new expectations, people can hear more points of view loudly and clearly, for better or for worse.

The new community activist is armed with a digital megaphone and data.

It’s a whole new day, and many would argue that, for the most part, it’s been a positive development for democracy.

Digital has opened up a new world of options for constituents. It has made it easier to communicate (assuming that it’s possible to rise above the noise) and to connect with those in power. (In Chapter 8, I discuss many of these new communications tools in detail.) It means being able to build solutions when others don’t or can’t build them, or having access to data to defend an argument or build a case. These tools are quickly changing behaviors and raising expectations.

But it’s not just about tools. It’s worth making the point over and over: Smart cities don’t happen because humans throw technology at them. They happen because of the choices people make, the behaviors they assume, and, yes, the manner in which technologies are deployed to enable new outcomes.

A smarter city is enabled by the collective decisions that people make to change how they choose to live.

From building safer cities to fostering sustainable communities to tackling climate change and more, community groups are partnering with city officials to lead positive change. Increasingly, too, when they don’t find available partners at city hall, they’re taking matters into their own hands. To magnify the potential impact, the levers of digitalization provide many more tools to enable change.

You’ll never succeed in building a smart city if you don’t account for changing community behaviors and expectations. To do this means understanding your community. It means having an open, two-way dialogue. It’s about listening. Then it’s about delivering.

Expanding community engagement

It is said that democracy isn’t a spectator sport. Participation means being part of decision-making, holding others and yourself accountable, and being an agent of change. Voting is the most obvious tool of engagement, but its infrequency and the choices it enables are limited.

Town hall meetings — despite being neither restricted to towns nor necessarily held in town halls —are a favorite of cities the world over. They are an essential part of how cities function and how individuals can participate in their city’s operations.

Typically held in person, a town hall meeting has these main functions:

• Providing a meeting place for elected officials and community
• Acting as a forum for community members to raise and discuss issues
• Serving as a space where legislation, regulations, projects, and budgets are discussed, considered, and acted on
• Offering a place to share information of relevance to elected officials and community

Though town hall meetings are still mostly held at physical locations, increasingly it’s possible to attend remotely. Meetings are often available to watch on a television channel and streamed over the Internet. More sophisticated cities enable remote participants to talk or interact electronically with the meeting.

Historically, voting, town hall meetings, and committees have been the dominant mechanisms of community engagement. But times have changed and in the digital age a much broader set of channels and forums is available.

Here are a few new ways that technology is supporting increased community engagement:

• Social media channels (see Chapter 8)
• Online discussion platforms (see Chapter 8)
• Civic apps
• Open data portals (see Chapter 9)
• Events such as a hackathon or urban challenge (see Chapter 7)
• Texting
• Survey and polling tools

Though traditional analog forum methods are able to capture the participation of those who are prepared to show up in person (a diminishing number), they provide a narrow option for broader engagement. Digital tools, though not typically synchronous — they don’t necessary support decision-making in progress — have the ability to cast a much larger net. In addition to convenience, these tools have become a 21st century expectation of city democracy. That expectation must be met by city leaders who embrace these channels, provide support for them, ensure that posted content is shared with the right people, and educate the community on options and use.

To be considered an inclusive city, all residents need to have a channel open to them.

Expanded community engagement is a good news story. More voices mean a stronger, more informed, more engaged, and more vibrant democracy. A smart city demands increasing community engagement.

Engaging in participatory design

An increasingly popular form of community engagement is the process of participatory design, an approach to urban design that involves engaging a broad range of stakeholders in the design process, including members of the community. Its goal is to ensure that the results of a design effort reflect participant needs and preferences. Popular applications include public art projects, new housing, bridges, park improvements, public spaces, and even smart city initiatives.

At the outset of an effort, stakeholders are invited to work with the core project team of experts. Together, everyone helps to define the problem to be solved, explores solutions, and then assists with making the decisions about what direction to take. Evidence indicates that engaging many perspectives in the design process results in more innovative outcomes than when a designer creates alone. Participatory design also empowers residents and increases democratization.

A related concept, participatory budgeting, invites members of the community to a democratic process of deciding how to spend part of a public budget.

Transportation

Moving people and goods in, out, and around a city is a vital and complicated function. It’s an area that has seen dramatic change over the past 100 years, and it continues to evolve. In fact, the next 50 years may see more change in this area than at any time in history, and it will dramatically shape the planning and design of cities.

In addition to new innovation opening up new possibilities for transportation options, new community demands and behaviors are shaping this future as well. For example, early data evidence shows a declining interest in car ownership and increasing demand for more non-carbon-based and accessible public transportation options. This serves the public, but also the local government. City leaders are particularly keen on less car usage as it solves a number of large challenges, from meeting climate change goals to reducing congestion. For example, in a game-changing decision made back in March 2020, Luxembourg made all public transport — trains, trams, and buses — free.

Recognizing that our transportation networks are a horrific source of fatal accidents and injuries is motivating smart city programs to set ambitious safety goals. For example, one particular program, Vision Zero, is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries. You can learn more about it at https://visionzeronetwork.org/.

The world is entering an urban transportation revolution. Drivers of change (see what I did there?) for this revolution include the elements described in this list:

• Vehicle electrification: Many countries have already set deadlines for when the last gasoline-powered vehicle will be sold. Norway, ahead of the pack where 52 percent of new car sales were electric in 2017, has set the ambitious goal of 2025. Other examples include India and China, sometime around the 2030s, and France, which is targeting 2040. Better battery technology is extending trips and making electric vehicles more attractive to more people. The transition to electric vehicles and the end of the gasoline-powered engine seems possible, but despite human ambition, it doesn’t seem like it will be quick or easy. Producing electric vehicles means significant investment in new infrastructure for charging stations, although the promise of fully solar-powered vehicles seems possible at some point. (Check out https://lightyear.one for more info on solar-powered cars.)
• Autonomous vehicles: Perhaps the most game-changing of all transportation shifts will be the transition to cars that drive themselves. In this future world, humans truly can change some of the fundamentals of city design. As examples, will people still need traditional grid systems, traffic signals, lanes, and parking spaces? In addition, in the best-case scenario, autonomous vehicles (AV) could significantly reduce accidents, eliminate car ownership, and radically lessen congestion. (It’s a big topic, and I discuss it in more detail in Chapter 8.)
• On-demand transport: Requesting a ride via an app, sometimes called e-hailing, and part of the sharing or gig economy, has become popular across the world. Some cities have embraced it while others have struggled, particularly with managing the concerns of incumbent services. Though providing a popular service, e-hailing has put more cars on the road, and it still remains expensive relative to other options. The likely arrival of autonomous on-demand vehicles in the medium term may change the economics and accelerate the decline of car ownership.

• Increased use of bicycles: Perhaps no city better exemplifies the embrace of bicycles as a popular form of urban transportation than Amsterdam. This city has more bikes than people, and cycling is used in around 30 percent of all journeys. Its popularity is a mix of the investment made in cycling infrastructure, convenience, low cost, positive environmental impact, and flat terrain. Cycling is gaining popularity in cities across the world. Upgrades are required in order to support large numbers of users, including bike lanes and storage facilities.

  The safety of cyclists and all road users must be a priority in any city cycling strategy.

• New forms of personal transport, including e-bikes and scooters: A new generation of city dwellers is seeking the convenience and low cost of innovative personal transportation options called micromobility. With prolific smartphone use and cloud-based payment systems, users can easily find and pay for bikes, scooters, e-bikes, electric mopeds, per-hour rental cars, and other transporters. The long-term sustainability of the business model for many of these options is still to be determined. Cities also need to determine their comfort level and the rules for placement of the vehicles across the city.
• Light rail systems: These systems were popular from the late 1880s through the 1900s. In many cities they continued to thrive, but in others their demise was the result of the introduction of the automobile. Entire rail systems were shut down and paved over. However, the benefits of their low-carbon footprint, lower costs, and the demand in recent years for more public transport has resulted in a light rail system renaissance. (See Figure 3-5.) The initial costs are high, but the long-term operating costs are relatively low. Installing a new system may require significant city disruption and street redesign.
• Ground- and air-based delivery drones: In Redwood City, California, a small, autonomous, ground-based drone that looks a little like R2-D2 from Star Wars delivers a meal to a home in a neighborhood. In Africa, an experimental air-based drone delivers essential medical supplies to a remote location. Transportation and delivery drones aren’t yet part of the urban landscape, but they appear to be coming. From rapid delivery times to lower-cost operations for the package delivery companies, the benefits seem clear. Passenger drones, too, could be on their way. (I discuss flying cars in Chapter 11). In a few years from now, the skies and streets of cities may be replete with a myriad of drones. Safety and noise issues are just two of the many issues to be worked out. (I discuss drones in greater detail in Chapter 8.)

  

• Transportation innovations, such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and Hyperloop: The pressing issues of urban transportation are creating an intense focus on innovation. Barely a month passes without a new idea making the news. Mayors and other city leaders desperately want new solutions, and they are willing to invest. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and Hyperloop best illustrate the diversity of emergent ideas. The MaaS Alliance (https://maas-alliance.eu) describes MaaS as the integration of various forms of transport services into a single mobility service that is accessible on demand. It facilitates a diverse menu of transport options, whether they’re public transport; ride-, car- or bike-sharing; taxi or car rental/lease; or a combination thereof. Data produced by MaaS solutions can help cities and transportation agencies look for opportunities to optimize the interconnectedness of different transport modalities. MaaS is being used in a few cities — Berlin’s Jelbi service is just one example — but the solution remains in its infancy with many considerations yet to be determined, such as governance, regulations, and the viable economics of the vendor ecosystem.

  Hyperloop, still in the concept stage but gaining traction, is a passenger vehicle that moves through a tube (underground and aboveground) via electric propulsion. The vehicle floats above the track using magnetic levitation and moves at airline speed for long distances. The infrastructure additions and changes needed to support Hyperloop and similar transport innovations are significant. (For more on Hyperloop, see Chapter 11.)

Energy

Beginning with the first industrial revolution, the introduction of mechanically produced energy began a global transformation that continues to this day. The introduction of electricity in the second industrial revolution further accelerated societal progress, ushering in mass production, telecommunications, and rapid urbanization. Electricity transformed cities by lighting up the streets, office buildings, sports arenas, and homes at night, powering the telephone and television and keeping food fresh in refrigerators and ice cream frozen in freezers.

Complex electrical grids and their attendant poles and wires began to paint a new urban tapestry from street to street, and industry hummed and innovated through its seemingly magical powers. In the mid-20th century, a third industrial revolution ushered in the computer, a device born out of the science of electricity.

Electrical energy now powers the world economic system. Of all of humankind’s achievements, leveraging this electricity stands among the greatest.

Surprisingly, the project to electrify the world, which began in the 1800s, isn’t yet complete — some 1 billion people still have no access. (A billion!) Cities have been the biggest benefactor, so the remaining areas are almost all rural.

Cities continue to have an unquenchable thirst for power. Today, they consume over two-thirds of all the world’s energy. Megacities, in particular, are continuing to demand more as they prosper and grow.

Where does city power come from? Here are the ten main sources:

• Fossil fuels: Created by burning coal, natural gas, and oil
• Nuclear: The result of a nuclear reaction that creates heat
• Solar: Harvesting the energy of the sun
• Wind: Using the wind to turn large turbines
• Biomass: Involves burning crops, plants, and trees
• Hydroelectric: Typically uses water passing through a dam to turn turbines
• Waves: Produced by the motion of waves in the ocean
• Tidal: Utilizes the rise and fall of the daily tides
• Hydrogen: An abundant element that can be used to produce energy
• Geothermal: Tapping into the heat deep beneath the ground

The mix of sources that each city uses is varied. For much of their history, cities have used fossil fuels. However, in the past few years, there has been a notable shift toward the renewables in this list. Already, over 100 major cities worldwide obtain 70 percent of their energy from non-carbon sources — hydroelectric being the most common, followed by wind and solar. Though renewable energy innovation over the last 10 years has made it increasingly viable, a mix of sources, including fossil fuel, is still required to power most of our cities. Rapid progress in research and development suggests a fully renewable future may be closer than we think. There’s an urgency to transition as much energy to renewables as possible because the damage from burning fossil fuels has already caused the world’s temperature to rise, on average, by more than 1 degree in the past 100 years, and this has created a climate crisis. One degree may not sound like much, but it may take only a 1- or 2-degree additional change to destabilize the living ecosystem on the planet.

The race is on to change the energy sources of cities. An energy revolution is under way. From solar rooftops, wind turbines, microgrids, and smart grids (see Chapter 8) to homes and buildings relying less on the electrical grid, urban landscapes are evolving in response to everyone’s changing energy profiles.

Buildings

Buildings often define the skyline and brand of a city. Some are so iconic that their silhouette alone is enough to identify the city. The Empire State Building in New York City, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and the CN Tower in Toronto are just some that come to mind.

Skyscrapers have come to represent the dense, urban centers of many modern cities. Today, mixed-use towering buildings combine offices with housing and shopping areas. They are the pride of many communities and are often a symbol of economic success.

Tall buildings are the result of one important innovation: the elevator and its safety brake. Before the availability of an elevator that could reliably travel many floors and protect its occupants in the event that the cable snapped, buildings could be built up to only a few stories. This single building innovation changed the urban landscape across the planet.

Building innovation continues to shape cities.

City buildings have an impact on the health and well-being of communities. These buildings use resources and produce waste and are expensive to maintain and operate. Buildings consume 70 percent of the electricity within cities and produce 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Better energy management can help stabilize and reduce their carbon footprints.

Architects and city planners are now increasingly focused on what are known as green buildings, which are built to improve the health of occupants and to lower operating costs and reduce their negative environmental impact. Given the positive urban outcomes of constructing or retrofitting buildings to be environmentally responsible, green buildings can be considered a substantial sustainability baseline and an important incremental step toward a smarter city.

One global standard to drive the adoption of green buildings is LEED — Leadership in Energy and Environment Design. This globally recognized certification for building sustainability achievement focuses on nine areas of green buildings:

• Integrative processes
• Location and transportation
• Sustainable sites
• Water efficiency
• Energy and atmosphere
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Regional priority
• Innovation

More information on LEED can be found at www.usgbc.org/leed.

Buildings, much like the areas of transportation, energy, sustainability, and other dimensions of the urban environment, must be considered as part of an interconnected and interdependent infrastructure. Smart planning and design of these dependent components is essential for the greatest positive impact. For example, a green building should offer charging stations to support and incentivize occupants who park their electric cars there. Waste management behaviors and systems must work together across city functions to enable the highest level of recycling and lower levels of resource consumption. Transportation networks must be designed to seamlessly connect people to their work and home areas in a sustainable manner.

Telecommunications

The first telephone call was placed by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, on March 10, 1876, to his assistant, Thomas Watson. With his first words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” the world was changed forever.

Imagine the world before the telegraph and telephone. The only way to get a message to someone was to have it brought to them by a person. Depending on the distance, this could take days or weeks. Sure, carrier pigeons were an option, but as you can imagine, they weren’t commonly available. There was no quick way to communicate between parties in battles or long journeys or between towns and cities or to tell a date that you’d be late. A world where it was impossible to quickly contact and communicate with someone was quite a different world, indeed.

Fast-forward to today, where most people are overwhelmed by ways to communicate. The popularity of mobile phones (4.7 billion users in 2020) means that every human who has one is technically contactable, assuming it’s within reach and powered on. Even then, you can leave a message to be accessed later.

Innovation has squeezed the cost of calls and data communications to make it low-cost or, in some instances, effectively free. Today, everyone and everything is being quickly connected in the pursuit of a hyperconnected planet.

Telecommunications are typically a visible part of the urban infrastructure. The wires that carry calls and data hang between poles and buildings — often, in an unsightly fashion. (See Figure 3-6.) The towers that send and receive wireless data are dotted all over the landscape. Even more is hidden in subterranean cavities and tunnels.

In the past few years, the high rate of adoption of wireless devices has increased the number of towers and other supporting technology being deployed. With the number of additional wireless devices, including sensors and the Internet of Things (see Chapter 8), anticipated to skyrocket in the years ahead, and with the deployment of new wireless technologies such as 5G (again, see Chapter 8), telecommunications infrastructure will further shape the urban canvas.

A smarter city with intelligent physical and digital infrastructure requires a reliable and sophisticated telecommunications network of providers and options. Significant investment will be required by cities and the vendor community in cities all over the planet. (For more on digital infrastructures, see Chapter 2).

Sustainability

By midcentury, 70 percent of all humans will live in an urban environment. If trends continue, the percentage will be even greater by the end of the century.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: The future belongs to cities.

Human behavior in these urban environments is determining their present and their future. It is also determining the fate of all life on the pale blue dot.

Sustainability is about meeting the needs of the present while preserving the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Humans have hopelessly failed in the goal of achieving sustainability ever since the onset of the first industrial revolution. For much of the past 200 years, it was barely a consideration. Instead, humans have recklessly overconsumed and hurt the planet, leaving the forests, oceans, air, water, food supply, climate, and more all in damaged and diminished states. Today, for example, 70 percent of all carbon emissions are the operating exhaust of cities.

Recovery is possible but not guaranteed. People have been living better by permanently borrowing from the future, living as though they have multiple copies of Planet Earth’s beautiful and limited resources. Today, despite humans’ progress and prosperity, they have created what appears to be an intractable set of sustainability challenges. If humans are going to solve them at all, most of the work will have to take place within cities.

Sustainability is typically characterized by these three pillars:

• Economic sustainability
• Social sustainability
• Environmental sustainability

Making cities sustainable will require long-term structural changes to economic models, social systems, and daily behaviors. These changes will be required in order to reduce environmental damage and excessive resource consumption.

Cities have broken the planet, and cities are the only hope to fix the planet.