Future Visioning Workshop TransporT and uTiliTy secTor

summary report

2.

This event is run in collaboration with the Future Cities Catapult and is led by a research team from Liveable Cities (Lancaster, Southampton, Birmingham Universities and UCL) a six year research programme for transforming the engineering of Cities for Global and Societal Wellbeing.

Liveable Cities and Future City Catapult team, wish to express our appreciation for their contribution to all the participants.

3.

The Future Visioning Workshop brings together and leading expert in transport and utilities to explore visions of sus-tainable, liveable future cities. Through a combination of hands-on activities and open discussion, this 2-hour workshop enables deep, creating thinking in a short time.

This is one of a number of sector specific events to estab-lish visions of the city that will inform design and engi-neering recommendations and visions for future cites.

Wednesday 2nd July. The Work Foundation Palmer Street London

Future Visioning Workshop TransporT and uTiliTies secTor

summary report

Integrated planning

Decline of the car Popularity of bikes

Design with people in mind

Re-birth of the railway

Energy issues

Movement of goods

Lenght of travel

4.

WhaT are The mosT significanT changes ThaT happened in ciTies in The lasT 50 years?

The participants were asked to think about things that, from their own professional or personal perspective, significantly changed in the city over the past 50 years. Each participant provided a unique response, as there was a rule: no answer could be repeated. Here is what they said:

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01{ 10 Minutes }

“what changed in the sec-tor is the belief that car is the answer.”

“the amount of long distance journey has doubled over the past 15 years in the UK, that means that we need to think about transport in a different way: people will need to travel further and more frequently”

“the assumption that the railway industry was in terminal decline”

“the role of stations has changed: from big, celebrated places where people would meet, to something that, as cities get denser, people don’t pay attention to. Now peo-ple are back thinking more about the stations, which are being upgraded and made more open. Stations now are thought of more from the people point of view, and are becoming something more than places where you go to get somewhere else.”

“not just in London, but in a lot of the ma-jor towns, what has changed is how people are moving using the bicycle and the decline of the car. Other than fashion and accesso-ries for the middle age men who like to buy stuff, it is also about taking the street back, and making car drivers think twice about driving at speed (because there are more bikes).”

“internal combustion engine is really not the future. The view now is that there must be alternative ways to produce energy for vehicles, which is something that 10, 15 years ago people wouldn’t really consider”

“the change is that I heard this morning an engineer say-ing ‘cities are about people’”

“the containerization of freight, that has made the world as a whole in the way things move around”

“if we imagine a chicken and egg scenario of planning, which comes first: transport or land-use? In this country, as in many other coun-tries in the world, we plan for the land use, and then we retrospectively fit the transport system around it. I think that this is the wrong way to do it, and historically strong networks were what gave shape to the society that we want.”

“the thing that strikes me now is that renewable energy is here, and it is very visible; you see the infrastructure, people talk about it, it is even part of pub conversations”

“the idea of a green infra-structure. We can use the landscape to link different elements together, for example through cycle ways, transport corridors, water, energy, climate control. This holistic use of landscape makes it much more pleasurable to move around. Landscape design can become one of the key discipline to improve the way we live in cities”

“we started to make more efficient the use of roads that are already in place. We started to implement a multimodal approach, in which we look at all the steps of getting from A to B in an integrated way, to maximize journey time and economic impact”

5.

negaTive scenarios

This exercise was done in groups of three, with each group asked to respond to the following question: What is the worst thing that could happen to transport and utilities in the next 50 years? The groups wrote down their responses on sticky notes, read them out, and then deposit-ed the sticky notes in The Box of Negative Scenarios. Here is what they said:

• All the computers break down, and the satellites stop working; with terrorist implications Pollution and increased death and bad health • Quality in transport: people and even regions get left behind economically and culturally. It is the hunger games effect. • Gridlock • Because of overconsumption we run out of water and energy • All the natural environment is lost; everything gets tarmacked over. • Less physical connectivity, technology makes us stay where we are. • Noise pollution: too many planes over trains, and no-body walks.

• Natural disasters damage the infrastructure, such as pipes and pipelines • Affordable fossil fuels run out • Energy becomes even more politicised than it is today, so you there is no public debate over energy choices. • Still relying on national grid, and all the problems re-lated to building more power stations, and how do we get more energy about.

• Lack of investment in infrastructure. At the moment we need to spend 60 billion, but we only have the skills to

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02{ 15 Minutes }

spend 30 billion. So who is actually going to build these infrastructure? • The combustion engine is still going to be used for public transport. Oxford street is at the moment a big bus park full of diesel fumes, when is this going to change? • Lack of resilience in response to climate change. What happens to water as we tarmac all our patios. • The public not being able to respond to the need of cyclists. If we are not even able to fill our potholes, how do we make our streets better for cyclists and pedestrians?

• Planning inertia, allowing short term policy • Lack of technology foresight: planning for what people want, without a long-term vision • Social exclusion • Poor built quality in fast growing cities. In some of these new cities the biggest industry will be building maintenance. • Densification: chuck everybody into cities • Deterministic in trend forecast. In this case I pick up on Nick’s point about the danger of just looking at one point in the future, when there is a million possible things that might happen

• Wasting heat and energy; not using energy efficiently • A materialistic world leading to more waste, with de-mand greater than supply

6.

• We don’t do anything to reduce CO2 emission, and climate change leads to weather extremes, that makes transport (as well as everything else) not work. • Bigger deal than it sounds: cars continuing to symbolize status. You also might want to generalize that into “people keep wanting to symbolize their status through material means” • Inequality related to access to resources continues unabated. Inequality and personal power: with 8 billion people we are going to have a lot less resources to go around, so more interest in gaining personal power and control over these resources. • All policy continues to be driven by the economic growth agenda, which is not sustainable, even in the middle term. • No material change happens until it is too late and there is a crisis.

• People can’t afford houses and we end up with favelas all across the city. There is a problem of social inequality and social unrest. This might lead to higher crime rate, unsafety of cities and shorter life expectancy. • While some cities keep growing, there are also other cities that, like Detroit, lose their purpose. • No people interaction because of technology. Jobs and unemployment is going to get worse because of technol-ogy. • No green because of the higher density. Also, everything is going to be higher. • Climate issues will have an impact on life expectancy • The biggest thing is that people are going to be scared of changes, and how to make these necessary changes acceptable.

• Gridlock • Pollution and irreversible impact on the ecosystem • War over water and resources. • Risk of failure of infrastructure • Political indecision, and not making enough change • Social inequality • Role of technology, and how we will live in a robotic world with no choice at all. In addition, if all the ma-chines will do all the jobs, what will we do?

7.

imagine a fuTure liveable ciTy

This exercise was designed to stretch the participants’ imagination and push their time hori¬-zon. Like the previous one, it was also done in pairs, with each pair given two ‘Thinking cards’ to help them imagine what a future liveable city could be in terms of what that city would look like and where people would live fifty years from now. After several minutes, the pairs were given another “Thinking card”, followed by a fourth card a few minutes after that. Silly ideas were encouraged and pairs could use different materials to visualise or explain their ideas (e.g., sticky notes, marker pens). Here is what they said:

We were wondering about how to create a better community, either through the use of house or interactive spaces around it, such as streets and neighbourhoods. You might turn that space into green space that can be used for agriculture (to produce local food), or as a green gym to make the community more active. A stronger community will also be more caring about the aging population, and more interaction will be promoted.

The other theme has to do with equity and access to political use, whether you use tech-nology in a way that allows you to access decision makers. How does that work out?

Digital manufacturing means that you can have something printed, and at the end of the day you can return it and get it recycled, so you don’t need to keep it. You will be living in smaller places, so you won’t have enough space to keep as much stuff as you do now.

Both digital communities and physical communities thrive towards quality, as least as an aspiration.

group 1

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03{ 20 Minutes }

Ageing society Smaller homes, bigger shared space

Digital manufacturing

Mobile governance

thinking cards

8.

People would feel fundamentally equal and would treat other people equally. The cloud puts us easily in touch with people that have skills that can help us. If we need some-thing, the cloud tells us how to do that, and who can help us with that. Everyone would feel valued and empowered.

Nobody rushes around. Save time is much less important to physical travel.

Adults would now know how to parent well, so children would be securely attached, and grow up able to fulfil healthy relationships. This doesn’t happen at the moment and it is the ultimate cause of all unhappiness.

Everybody signals their identity through social media, rather than material goods.

Working less feels accepted and valued

Managing the impact of climate change to me is about privileging more localized and slower ways to travel: using bicycle and public transport. Public transport also enables us to talk to people. There are therefore more opportunities to talk with our neighbours and the members of our communities. There is going to be communication at the local level as well as at the global level. Slower travel, again, helps us build more relationships and gives us the opportunities for more work-hubs. You may be working from home, but you can also work in a place where you can meet other people, to create both social interac-tions and professional interactions.

This system for work makes us more resilient for climate change, if our travels are more localised, if our knowledge is more cloud-based.

About the “working with Asia” card… the rest of the world learns from Asia’s sense of community before Asia forgets it

group 2

Wisdom of the Cloud

Slow mobility + virtual mobility

Climate change / global warming

Working with Asia

9.

One of our cards was “smart homes”, so we had words like: ‘controllable’, ‘flexible’, ‘effi-cient’, ‘warm’ and ‘comfortable’, and the freedom to act.

Building upon that, we then had freedom of information to let people build communi-ties, and educate people so that they then get to do the “right thing” rather than trying to force people to use energy more efficiently. Using technology to inform, rather than enforce.

Thinking of communities we thought about shared spaces, and soft green architecture: make people want to linger in spaces rather than rush through them. There is going to be outside spaces that are clean, light and pollution free, with a sense of connectedness to a wider network.

Stop thinking at roads as spaces that divide communities, but transform them into spaces for communities to gather and interact.

Moving on from that, and thinking of ecological regeneration, instead of accumulating stuff that we then throw away, try to have things that have a longer life and that have more value, so that we keep them and reuse them. Reducing use, rather than permanent-ly recycling and disposing.

We had a bit of a thought around shared energy and community energy, to help build communities and make energy use more equitable. And using the right thing for the right purpose is also important: a particular example was using potable water to flush toilet…I think we can do better than that.

Design for longer life and rethinking distribution, so that we are not producing things and shipping them away and then back just to be used briefly. By producing things that last longer and reducing the amount of stuff that we throw away.

Changing attitude through engaging in information and education rather than setting targets and have punitive taxes to enforce change.

group 3

Smart homes Increased energy price

Ecological regenerative cities

Community life

10.

We started with a similar discussion on how people experience the city, and we had a bit of a debate on where do people go for social interaction. One of our cards was about real time news spread, so everyone is constantly connected with everything everywhere. Does this mean that people want more or less human interaction? And where do they go for this interaction? And what are the spaces like, where that interaction takes place?

We had this card about “high density” too, and whether that would mean that policies will be put in place to force people to live in the certain areas (this is strongly connected to the “London favelas” mentioned in the negative scenarios)

Too much information could lead to social cohesion - in one sense everyone knows everything - but also to social exclusion: some people might want to uptight; how would they do that, and is that even possible?

We talked about “New economic metrics”: the pursuit of growth rather than GDP. We are already using Happiness index in some cities: what would that mean? Would people want to migrate towards cities that will make them feel happier? And that, rather than economic wealth, becomes a driver for population shift.

We talked about the idea that increased energy prices could lead to more unconsump-tion, more efficiency, more sharing, and people thinking more about the way they use their energy. Does that mean that people that can afford it will use energy more conspic-uously than people who can’t?

group 4

Real time news spread

High density Increased energy prices

New economic metricx

11.

We talked about neighbourhoods and the potential for people to stay local, and have ev-erything locally available for them, in terms of jobs, interactions, food, water and energy. We have to rebuild the skills of repair and reuse elements, rather than get new elements from other places. And using technology for us, rather than having technology leading us. All of this also allows for some shared resources as well: people can communally use cars, vans, that sort of things, and don’t feel pressured to own things to show social status.

One of the key issues was time: people slowing down again, and enjoying their time, rather than racing through life.

And this lead to another thing that we discussed, which is this idea of responsibility and ownership. People have an awareness of their impact on others through what they do (and also on the environment as well). They have an understanding of the impact of overconsumption and intense use of resources, and the impacts on the wider community and the future.

Space is important: we want to make places more inviting and greener, and less claustro-phobic, so that people would enjoy living where they live.

We talked about this idea of the city becoming a living organism. We are actually dealing with issues within the city: if there is an issue of energy overconsumption we will deal with that within the city, we will produce energy in the city. We will recycle and purify water properly, and we will find ways to do that within the city rather than impacting on the hinterland around the city.

The future city looks pretty much like a Swedish city

group 5

More access, less ownership

Air quality monitoring

Flexible infrastructure

Unconventional office space

12.

We are going to live in a multicultural city that strives to grow through a fusion of cul-tures, not only around cuisine, but especially around innovation. Equal opportunity is enable by public transport.

We talked quite a lot about the topic of “urban agriculture”. New technologies will improve food growth per cubic meter. The opportunity to me is around green roofs and green open spaces that improve the general environment and social interaction of people farming at the community level. We did wonder whether it will lead to a rise of vegetari-anism… because we are not quite sure about how we will deal with animal welfare.

We also talked about two technology facets: digital security and smart environment, which are in many ways quite closely linked. In both of them there is a trade to be made: how do you make things attractive, so that people have access to the service that they want (for example through the use of sensors that improve public transport), so that peo-ple accept the fact that their data are collected and their movements are being tracked? How do you deal with privacy issues? In a just society, that should end up with a scenar-io where you have less fear of crime, and you feel safer and more comfortable working and living in the city. Ubiquitous computing and technological infrastructure will be as important as water, and people will not want to live in a place that does not provide these services.

There is potential for technology in few years’ time to free us some time and reduce the time of business related travel. We can have perfectly efficient human interactions with-out travelling. That should free some space for better quality leisure travel.

I think all the elements of this scenario are linked to each other: it is all about how things will flow more smoothly giving people more freedom, a better life, and some more time.

group 6

Smart environment

Multiculturalism Digital security Urban agriculture

13.

14.

design The environmenT in The ciTy of The fuTure

All activities lead to this part of the workshop, in which we wanted to focus on heritage and culture in future cities, fifty years from now. Participants were split into two groups, provided with an array of materials (e.g., coloured blocks to represent buildings, small people, tissue pa-per) and asked to design a future city from their own professional perspective, bearing in mind the scenarios that they created and heard about in Activity 3. Specifically, the groups needed to consider consumption and production practices—how, where and when people would consume, produce, live—what infrastructures would need to be in-place and what the general vision of the city would be.

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04{ 30 Minutes }

group 1

15.

Our city has got loads of green patches; people live around those. These patches are in fact green corridors that you can use to get around by walking or by slow means of transports (symbolized by this boat).

It is powered by – and, again, this is symbolic – a gigantic tidal plant that powers the whole place with some massive energy storage (to make it stable).

It doesn’t have in-flows of finished products coming from all over around the world. It has in-flows of raw materials from nearby, and networks of distributed 3D printers that transform materials in finished products, on the rare occasion in which people want new things (because they are going to spend a lot of time repairing their old ones, instead).

Pace of life is really slow.

This place doesn’t get flooded, because climate change has been stopped in its tracks by the development of this city, so all of that is history. So much so that the place has got loads of open-air theatre where people can chill out. You don’t need roofs on theatre because the weather is all gone nice again.

We put in place a network of channels and lakes on which you can skate on when they freeze. (And also help with drainage issues)

There are clusters of artisanal producers by neighbour-hood (cobblers, bakers, cloths makers, candle-stick makers...).

We had some issues: - Do we want TV to be made in Japan, and then disposed in our farmland? - Do we need walls to keep poor people out of the city?

- How much can we realistically manufacture locally?

We then asked ourselves how do we survive economically? Will we generate enough income...or are we just lazing around, making the odd shoe every now and then?

One unresolved debate we had was: what about banan-as? We can grow loads of food here, but if people want bananas they are going to have to import them from banana-growing places.

Another question is: will there be a culture that encourage people to spend in cultural activities, theatres, stadium, cinema those money they would otherwise have spent in overconsumption? This demand for experiences would also create economic opportunities for the artists.

16.

group 2

17.

We started by building a bridge for connectivity, that lead to the building of a station and the building of these cor-ridors, that are meant to be for transport. Some of these corridors will be underground, but effectively, this is a city that is built around these major infrastructures. After that we started building *here* and on the waterfront.

We purposely didn’t made separate offices and residen-tial neighbourhoods, thinking that people may live and work in the same neighbourhood, and then move around occasionally whenever they have training or other com-mitments. You can find most of the facilities you need in your own neighbourhood.

There is a tidal barrier to allow water drainage and prevent flooding. We provided power supply, and this is an idea of how the grid will look like in the future.

We then moved to the outskirts of the city and built another transport corridor that connected the city with a marina, or a place where you can chill and have a nice day, spending your day out by the seaside. There is also anoth-er area for recreational purpose and outdoor activities.

18.

This is one of a number of sector specific events to establish visions of the city that will inform design and engineering recommenda-tions and visions for future cites. Please contact Dr Claire Coulton, Liveable Cities Coordinator c.coulton2@lancaster.ac.uk or @livcitylancs for further information