Tech+ities

— Ideal City or Ghost-town?

Broad boulevard as in Paris, a park that recalls Central Park and a network of romantic urban canals as if we were in Venice. Take all the characteristic ingredients of the most beautiful cities in the world, put them together and add a good pinch of technology and a double ration of sustainability. Here is the ideal city. Maybe too much.

Songdo International Business District (Ibd) is the city of technological utopia, built in record time, 65 kilometers from Seoul. There are no garbage trucks because the waste is sucked by pneumatic pipes installed in the houses and everything, from electrical systems to pipelines, is regulated by sensors that constantly monitor the consumption of the inhabitants.

Inhabitants? That’s it, they are the only problem. It seems that few people would be happy to live in a city so “engineeringly perfect”. Perhaps because even in 2019, and even in Korea, the soul of a city remains made by men. And not by optic fiber.

— By Elon Musk

Before being launched into space, will we travel around the world underground?

It would seem science-fiction if it were not for a project by Elon Musk. The realization of a totally eco-friendly underground city, moving inside capsules launched in low-pressure pipes, has been presented and approved by the town council of Hawthrone, a city in the county of Los Angeles, which has already begun to excavate the first “hyperloop” signed the Boring Company. “Boring” as incredible, that futuristic technology able to definitively solve the problem of city traffic.

But Musk’s visionary project does not stop there.

Thanks to the network of underground high-speed tunnels, New York and Washington will turn into one huge city with a connection of only 30 minutes between the White House and Central Park. And so also Toronto and Monttréal, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Edinburgh and London. A new geography of countries/metropolia where the border between the different cities will be lost?

— A Race for Sustainability

Will there be a counter-migration to the countryside to cope with urban pollution? Not at all. By 2050 two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. 

And since the building sector alone accounts for 32% of global energy consumption, urban projects will have to become increasingly green, in terms of both economic and environmental sustainability. Today everyone talks about it and everyone seems ready for great transformations. But what cities are the candidates to become the most sustainable in the world over the next 20 years?

Unexpectedly, Bogotà with its 18,000 Colombians seems to be the first in line, with its urban redevelopment programme (BEA) whose goal is to reduce the emission of gas by 32% thanks to the newly developed buildings. Boston, Oslo, Cape Town, Melbourne, Seattle, and London, with innovative and forward-looking urban projects, currently appear to be the other 6 cities competing to win the primacy of sustainability in the coming decades. And we obviously support them.