(dramatic music)
Our world
is undergoing profound change.
Science and technology are transforming
our lives with dizzying speed.
Astonishing innovations are ushering in
a new era of opportunity.
The high tech revolution is fueling creativity
around the globe,
inspiring visionary solutions.
So open your eyes and get ready
for an amazing journey to 2050,
to dream the future.
(dramatic music)
What will tomorrow's cities look like?
We've been fantasizing about the city
of the future for quite a while now.
This is what it looked like in 1920.
(classical music)
By the 21st century,
the dream had evolved.
I'm sorry to disappoint you here,
but I think the cities of the future
will not look terribly different
than it is from the past.
As humans we will always need horizontal floors,
we will need facades in our buildings
to protect from the outside,
windows to look outside
so all those elements will still be there
and so the city in the physical form,
will not be that different.
But what will change
is that by 2050, six billion of us
will be living in cities,
70 percent of humanity.
And that means not only do we have
to densify existing cities and expand them,
but we really have to find new cities.
How will these cities shelter us all
without stress, pollution and poverty?
How will they continue to grow
without destroying the planet?
To meet these challenges,
we need an urban revolution.
Visionary's dream of city 2.0,
a smarter, more communal and greener city.
You can actually create high density in nature,
maybe more nature than there was before
the city was there.
I'm interested in predicting how a design for a city
or a district in the city will function.
If I can go to my destination in a guaranteed
arrival time, would I still want to own a car?
Because I think it's a waste of time driving vehicle.
To me, cities and buildings
are a living breathing organism.
These dreamers are walking
in the footsteps of those who planned cities before them.
12,000 years ago, our ancestors
began to settle down in small groups,
farming and rearing livestock.
By 6,000 BC, a technological revolution
was underway.
Agricultural innovations, efficient irrigation systems,
ceramic and brick production.
These inventions transformed villages into cities.
When the first cities arose in Mesopotamia,
civilization was transformed,
empires flourished, each centered on city states.
In 5th century BC Athens,
Hippodamus of Miletus planned a more functional
and geometrical city.
Rome soon became the world's largest city
with close to one million inhabitants.
Later, even more souls crowded into ancient
Chinese metropolises.
In the Middle Ages, we crammed inside
the ramparts of fortified cities,
we were tightly packed, but safe.
Renaissance designers imagined
a more open and harmonious city.
In the 19th century, towns sprang up around mines,
ports and factories.
Large cities continued to expand
and had to ration available space.
In the 1850s, visionary planners
created the Paris and Barcelona we know today.
London opened its first underground in 1863.
The invention revolutionized our relationship
with distance.
It meant the city could spread out in all directions.
As populations rose, we dreamt of building upwards
to house everyone.
Urban density skyrocketed.
In the 1920s, New York boasted more citizens than London.
By 1955, Tokyo dethroned the Big Apple.
Today, the number of mega cities
is approaching 30, with no end in sight.
The majority, more than 90 percent
of the new cities and people moving into the cities
will happen in the area around the equator,
in the tropics in the sub-tropics.
(speaking in foreign language)
Theoretically, people moving
to cities is good news.
All indicators of literacy, access to care
and child mortality are better inside cities
than outside.
The problem is, the scale, the speed
and the scarcity of resources
with which we much respond to this migration to cities
is unmatched in the history of humanity.
(slow guitar music)
The cities of 2050
will be home to six billion of us.
How will they shelter so many?
Some embrace skyscrapers as a solution,
others see them as an urban nightmare,
a futuristic dystopia.
(dramatic classical music)
In our eyes, verticality often rhymes with inhumanity
and absence of life.
Yet the vertical city of tomorrow
may well surprise us
and nature may even find its place.
In Singapore, a small island of six million people,
two remarkable architects
are combining nature, density and quality of life.
You can actually create high density in nature
maybe more nature before the city was there.
One thing I love about Singapore is that nature
just appears everywhere and no matter how much
you try to control it, it always fights back.
Fig trees sprout into very large trees
that can, you can suddenly be surprise to find one
growing on your roof.
Us we found is a really beautiful and romantic vision,
the idea that nature so easily could take
back the city and in our projects,
we've tried to do that.
A vibrant, beautiful city,
covered with nature.
Verticality is the only solution.
We think that the ground level can be duplicated
in the sky and we can actually bring nature
along with us.
I think the only solution for cities
is not to grow more horizontal
and to take up more land
but it's actually to get more compact
and the only way it can go is really upwards.
We have a vision mixing verticality
with really dense beautiful landscaping
and we think one thing you can do with density
and high rise and verticality,
you can replicate gardens and parks
and even forests and wild nature,
up high in the buildings.
Our very first project, we put
a few palm trees on the roof of it
and that was really the start of something
that some people say we've gone a little
bit out of control on.
(soothing music)
We then PARKROYAL on Pickering,
managed to create 200 percent of the site area
as greenery within the building.
And in fact, there's the entire area
of the park that the building faces,
that area of garden we have created
within the building next to the park as well.
I think when you do 200 percent
you start to notice that this building
is really, really different.
It's no longer made of glass,
made of steel or concrete
but you've got nature there.
One of the nicest compliments that we got
from one people living there
was when he woke up in the morning,
he looked out of windows he saw
a whole sea of red, just red dragonflies,
we have brought that biodiversity into the city
and to the buildings, it was a confirmation
that what we're doing was a good direction.
After we achieved 200 percent
we then really wondered how far we could push that
and our Oasia project in Singapore,
we have over 1000 percent,
so over 10 times the site area
as gardens within the project.
For us this is a really kind of amazing number
because it means potentially in the built-up,
dense, highly technological city,
you can have 10 times more nature
than if the city hadn't been built there are all.
Our idea is really a complete change
in the concept of the city,
Singapore 2050 is a vision for a very positive future,
although we were dealing with 40 meter sea level rise,
the concept would be that all new development
would only occur around the coast
as a kind of a protective barrier to the sea.
For our self-sufficient city,
we really, we reconceived the city
rather than trying to adapt to 20th century city.
The city becomes a net positive generator
of food, in terms of energy and of water.
Solar panels need a lot of sunlight
so they form the top layer,
we can grow vegetables below that,
it's no longer city and farm, but the city is a farm.
Singapore is a land limited country
and I think it's an excellent research space
for major cities, particularly in Asia,
that how we could actually increase our density
and create a more livable environment for us.
Skyview is really important for me
because it is social, public housing.
It is for every Singaporean,
it is really a look into the future.
When you are at the ground and there is a very
wonderful park in front,
it is what we are used to
in European cities, in American cities
but when you take a lift
and you go to a higher floor,
you arrive again onto another ground level,
onto another park and you see children
running around and playing around,
you see old folk there sitting,
looking out into the distance
and you can go into the same lift
and go, yep, another higher level again
to another park.
You can almost do that four times.
If you go right to the top,
there is a park for everyone,
if it's a private condominia for the rich people
it would be penthouses for private individuals,
this is for the public.
You can go up there and you can enjoy
the fantastic view of Singapore, you know,
you can view the entire city of Singapore from there
and you can even have a barbecue with the family there.
And this is what the future is I think,
it is about high density, skyscrapers
that are interconnected and create these areas
that allow people together.
If we are to live in harmony
in the cities of 2050, our concept of urban planning
must change radically.
For too long we've been at the mercy of isolated experts.
The 20th centurion cities created massive bureaucracies,
in very discrete and separate kind of fields.
Transportation didn't know what housing
was doing, housing didn't know what parks was doing.
Yes, yes, yes, you'll like it up here.
Stand right back,
we've got a crack team of, are they kidding?
Decision makers.
No induplicate.
I'm expecting big things,
to publish to finance.
We know the result,
cities for each neighborhood has but one function,
dwellings, offices, industries.
To link these we've relied upon never ending networks
of roads, packed with motionless cars.
Today we live in polluted, congested cities,
stress is high, quality of life often low.
(somber music)
To find a better way,
designers must understand daily life
and no one knows a city better,
than the people who live there.
The firemen, a school teacher,
a poet have a ton of things to say about cities
and it's all relevant.
At the Massachusets Institute of Technology,
Kent Larson and his team are bringing a new
urbanism to life.
Their tools give us a global vision
of the city in all its complexity.
They let us see how tomorrow's city
will work, before it's actually built.
I think good urban planners
would like to have better tools, to think about
all of the issues that are critical for the city.
Much of our work is focused on
finding better alternatives to the traditional
process of urban planning.
So we're using simulation,
algorithms that can predict human behavior
or traffic congestion, et cetera.
The three areas that I think are key
are the right mix of density, diversity, proximity.
If you look at the master plans
that are developed for cities,
there's almost no way to understand
how they will function.
We're beginning to develop tools
that can allow us to look at the various
assets of a city.
CityScope is a physical model
with modular pieces that can be rearranged
that makes use of augmented reality.
(inspiring music)
But we can look at movement of traffic
or consumption of energy
or many, many different issues.
Frankly I'm a little bored
with data visualization, I'm much more interested in
(laughing)
in predicting how a design for a city or a district
in a city will function.
Moving the different elements of a city around,
updating the simulation in real time
so we can predict how vehicles might move,
how people might interact,
how energy might be consumed, et cetera.
(fast uplifting music)
So we have a number of different CityScope platforms,
at its simplest is a simulation of walkable access
to parks, for example.
This is bad because it's all red
so you don't have walkable access to parks,
you guys fix it, why don't you both go at it?
Sure.
So the green are the parks?
The greens are parks, yeah.
Put one there maybe.
See that helps it a lot.
(woman mumbling)
right.
Maybe one over here?
Yep.
Sure.
Sure, go for it.
That helps a lot better,
now you can move this
and you should have it pretty much all green,
so that's walkable access to walk.
Now, to have walkable access to jobs
and all the jobs would have walkable access to housing.
Right.
And then you get a community
that is more or less in balance.
We use legos because they're non-threatening.
Everybody knows they can play with legos.
We don't want to have a fragile,
complex piece of technology.
I don't care whether you're a mayor of a city
or a child, everybody knows they can just walk up
and begin to play.
It's magical.
(electronic music)
Well we have CityScopes in a number of cities,
we have one in Beijing,
we have a project in Hamburg which I think is actually
our most interesting use of CityScope to date,
which is to help the communities identify appropriate sites
for the 20,000 refugees.
When we bring groups of 30 people together
from the community and they're face to face
and they're working with the physical model
and they're moving things and trying ideas,
I believe that this will totally transform
the dynamics from something that is
very problematic and contentious to something
that is hopefully very positive.
There are all kinds of new possibilities
that collectively will allow us to increase density
and to minimize the negative impact.
We have to look backwards,
prior to the automobile
where most of what people needed in life
were within a five or ten minute walk
and at the same time, we have to look forward.
I believe that the city of the future
will be a network of compact districts
that are networked together by good mass transit.
We will see an increase in the interaction
and the creative activity
and much more livable places.
(inspiring music)
Kent Larson's tools will allow us
to create new neighborhoods that are dense
and multifunctional, where work, entertainment
and housing are easily accessible.
In 2050, quality of life will depend
on public spaces where we can walk and cycle.
We will rediscover the pleasures of strolling
without hurrying.
One city foreshadows this idea,
Copenhagen has made the wellbeing
of its inhabitants a priority.
It has banished pollution from its harbor
and transformed it into a summer bathing area.
But how can more crowded cities
make their inhabitants happier?
And just how do you measure a city dweller's happiness?
And architect and researcher
at University College, London
has invented a system for recording our reactions
to urban life.
It's not just about the most efficient way
of going from A to B, it's also about
the preferences people create,
the streets they like and they take over and over again.
We all have this effective and emotional
experience of the city.
How do we turn this into a tool that we can use
to design better cities?
The key question for me
is to understand the impact,
what am I creating as an architect or as a designer?
If you have millions of people
walking down streets that are making
them tired and frustrated, then we have the evidence
that we should be doing something different.
In my experiments, we try to measure
how people feel in the city.
How do they feel in this street,
how do they feel in that street?
And by feeling we mean, their emotional state
so they could be feeling happy
or they could feel unhappy or frustrated.
They might be very excited, or they might be serene.
To capture people's emotions,
we are using this headset which is a mobile EEG,
or mobile electroencephalography so basically
measuring the electrical activity of the brain.
We are measuring where they are, with a GPS device.
I will be following you at close distance,
Three or ten meters behind you.
If there is anything you want to ask
or if you are lost, you can ask me.
Otherwise we will not have any contact
for the duration of the experiment.
We're trying to create an environment
that is very close to the everyday experience.
So you're in the middle of the street
and you receive a message from a friend
that says I will meet you there in 15 minutes.
And then you walk there in 15 minutes
and most of us never really think about
which streets we will take, or why we take these streets,
it's almost an automatic unconscious process
and by using these sensors, we can have a window
into this unconscious process that everyone does
everyday, and it's so hard to get data for.
We can start looking, which streets
of all certain states.
You are crossing a junction and you have a stress response
because you have to look around,
you have to pay attention.
Some other times, you don't have to pay attention
because it's an easy crossing.
So you start having this association
between having a busy street, a polluted street,
a noisy street.
(cars beeping)
And the emotions of someone who is actually
walking there in real life.
So one of the experiments we did
was working with visually impaired people.
So our question was, if we measure the emotional
experience of someone who is blind
and is walking in the city
or someone who is sighted and walking in the city,
can we see differences?
What we can do now is make maps of those emotions.
You can put together two maps,
someone from sighted people
and a map from the emotions of a blind person
and you can start compare,
you can start relating with someone else's experience
and maybe develop some kind of empathy
through own visualization.
We saw a different to what we were expecting
to what makes a good public space.
We commonly assume that a pedestrian street
is good for everyone, but is it really?
What we saw is for people who were visually impaired,
the experience of that street was different,
you have more pedestrians who are coming,
the pavement is different so you don't get
as many queues, so our assumptions of what makes
a city good or not need to be refined.
You can start having these discussions,
trying to make cities more inclusive,
trying to design for everyone.
My dream for the city of 2050,
would be a city that makes sure no one feels excluded,
whether they're, it's a child or whether it's an old person,
or has cultural diversity, different ethnicities
living together.
The future of the city
is trying to get the best
of what our cities have now,
get the best examples.
We have cities that are walkable,
we have cities that are cyclable,
how do we scale this up?
How do we spread this around the globe?
(slow somber music)
In the future,
will livable cities be reserved
for the affluent?
Today almost 900 million humans
live in shanty towns,
the 2050 nightmare is a world divided
into luxury and poverty.
(speaking in foreign language)
The best places
to enjoy life should be in
the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
There's a capacity to redistribute public space
that should inspire us in building a road
to equity in all cities.
Scott Lloyd dreams of transforming
the ghettos of South Africa into pleasant homes.
His project Empower Shack relies
on citizen participation.
The slums or all the informal settlements,
they are a failure,
they're a failure of governance, of policy,
of integrating populations into the functioning economy.
That's exactly why we look at them,
we look at the problems, we are problem solvers.
The global south right now is where all the growth
will happen, by 2050 more than half
of the urban global population
will be living in informal setting conditions.
It will shape how people habitate cities in the future.
(dramatic music)
As designers and urbanists,
that's our job to try and find ways
in which we can bring elements of the city back together.
Khayelitsha is the second biggest township
in South Africa and the residents
had built those houses themselves,
it's generally made from zinc,
from timber, cardboard.
The first experience of Khayelitsha
coming from Cape Town is very much like a whiplash.
People living under constant threat
of flash fires.
There's a constant threat of flooding.
There's a constant threat of physical violence.
The spaces between the units are only enough
to allow for thoroughfares so 40, 50 centimeters or so.
Navigating those pathways to get to the toilet blocks
or to get to the water points
is an incredibly risky affair.
Abuse and rape are a daily occurrences.
We are reshaping cities in this particular area.
The residents are active participators
in the whole project and from the very start
we solicit ideas of visions for how they
would like to see the upgrade of their community.
Every three or four months, we run a project
workshop with the community and with the community leaders.
And who is this person here?
You want to live with this person,
you want to live with this person.
Then you know, who is your in your courtyard.
Who are you sharing the space with?
(crowd overtalking)
We pick up their feedback,
their discontent, their ideas
and we try to then integrate them into that whole
process of design.
There are certain uses of public space
which is not, we're not familiar with in Europe.
We are constantly learning, relearning
how to be architects, how to be urbanists.
We make sure we're very transparent with how we work,
in the hope that those who are participating
in this long term engagement with us
will then be able to be ambassadors of the project
when it goes to a different scale,
or to a different site.
So what we are offering is a house
which allows people to buy into a very base structure
which they can afford, and then over time
they can then start to upgrade that house.
We designed a two story house in prototype.
Quite simple we say, if we can move to two story,
we actually have 50 percent of the land
that we can actually use to manage the streets,
the infrastructures, the public spaces
and to allow far more of a convivial environment.
Designing a street network
with accessible public spaces and parks,
I think this is one of the most important
decisions you can make as an urban planner.
People are going to come to those public spaces,
it raises a level of tolerance,
there is diversity in the public space
and I think that is where we have to be quite precise,
everything else can be adjusted.
Currently there are 66 houses occupying the site.
The upgrade procedure takes down the initial shacks
and replaces them with a two story housing prototype.
The prototype we developed was lightweight,
it was made of a timber frame
and it was clad in a roofing sheeting,
which is generally used in warehouses
and the reason we did this was because we had to build
very very quickly because we didn't have
the legal status to build on that site.
(slow inspiring music)
The prototype was built very very simply,
we wanted to make a very clear statement
about how easy such an upgrade could be.
In the meantime, the house has been colored
all sorts of striped colors shapes and sizes.
And this is really embedded the house
into the community, it's become really an icon.
It's become a built icon for the potential
of development.
(group laughing)
(guitar playing and singing)
What we're most interested in doing is saying,
can we create clusters with identity,
then multiply those?
We're now working on a pilot site,
parallel to this project where we have 16,000 units,
it's a very large section of the city.
Our methodology is opensource and we do hope
that there are initiatives which can apply
some of our learnings and that for us
will be the success of the project,
if it can be then copied and can be replicated
in different locations and different environments.
(speaking in foreign language)
The key lies in seeing
that people are part of the solution,
not part of the problem.
And in 2050,
we will be connected to our smart cities.
Networks of sensors omnipresent
like billions of neurons, will enable
the city to react, to adapt to our needs
in real time.
If you think about smart lighting,
basically as you're moving lighting can go
on and off, very simple and very effective.
But what about all the personal data
that's collected?
Will we lose control of our lives?
When you collect data, there's always a privacy issue,
and it's very important to look at them.
What is happening in cities however,
its just a little thing compared
to what's happening in our lives.
Every time we go on social media we post something,
we send an email, we use a credit card or a cell phone
you know all that is leaving digital traces.
It's a very important point,
it's a point we need to talk and discuss all together.
Connected cities
could improve our standard of living
but at MIT, one researcher dreams
of using the same technology to save lives.
As a scientist, I strive
to understand cities and how we use cities
so we can then design more sustainable,
efficient and livable cities for the future.
According to the World Health Organization,
approximately seven million people
die prematurely every year as a result
of exposure to pollution.
Every single day as we commute from our home
to work, to our schools and as we go about
our daily activities, we're being exposed
to toxic air pollution.
So I want to take advantage of new low-cost
sensor technologies, advances in data analytics
and I want to be creative and combine
all this information together
to help my friends and my family and people
living in cities to reduce their exposure
to pollution on a daily basic.
I lead a project called Air Escapes Singapore,
so in the project we collected air quality
and weather information using small and inexpensive sensors
and these were carried by people in a very busy
urban district in Singapore.
As people carry smartphones,
they're leaving digital traces of their movements
behind them, so when people move around
and carry these pollution sensors
along with their smart phones,
all this information that they are collecting
was mapped and displayed on a web application
and this is an interactive web application
where people can see how their personal profile
and how their commuting mode,
whether they're walking, cycling or jogging
and their route chosen,
how this impacts on their exposure
to pollution and their inhaled doses of pollution.
So I could choose any route from A to B
throughout a city and this application
will choose the shortest route
and it will choose the least polluted route for me.
(slow electronic music)
Our world is becoming an increasingly
connected place, we are now connected
to our digital objects which are connected
to each other and our objects are now connected
to our cities.
Our cities of tomorrow
are going to be able to sense lots
of different types of information,
what makes us well and what makes us ill.
We're working with the city of Cambridge
for putting sensors and sensor arrays
out on street lights because street lights are everywhere.
Using our sensor deployment, we wanted to look
at intersections and how we can make these
safer and how we can make these healthier,
less congested and less polluted for people.
So we deployed an air quality monitoring node
at the intersection of Vassar in Massachusets Avenue
right next to the MIT campus.
The idea behind this is that if the air pollution
levels are high, then our system will kick in.
Our system will change the traffic lights
at the intersections to reduce emissions
at times of the day where there are many people present.
So we've shifted the focus from cars
to humans, especially to cyclists
and to pedestrians.
Their cities are going to be able to
reduce the pollution concentration levels.
(inspiring music)
The city I dream of in the future
is a city that's extremely quiet and peaceful,
I also want to live somewhere that's not polluted
or congested, somewhere that's really safe
for me to walk around in at any time
during the day or, if I have kids in the future,
that they will be really safe.
I really want to live in cities where I can see
the stars at night time.
(slow piano music)
To achieve the dream
of a quiet, pollution free city,
we'll have to get rid of once vestige from the past.
Think about how different our cities would be
if we were to remove eight cars out of ten.
That's right, private vehicles.
Yesterday's technological marvel
has become one of our most pressing problems.
It's time to say goodbye.
In a connected city, we'll use a network
of smart vehicles to get around.
Our research shows that if you had
just a fleet of self-driving cars in cities,
theoretically you could satisfy the mobility demand
of Paris or New York or Singapore,
a big city or a small city,
with 20 percent of the cars we have today.
In Singapore, one researcher
is already testing his fleet of smart vehicles.
He aims to give us all more free time.
(oriental music)
We do so much things that you must not
have to do, I call this the five Ds,
dangerous, demanding, demeaning, degrading
and the fifth is driving vehicles
because I think it's a waste of time driving vehicle.
Singapore is a mega city,
population is growing and we want to,
believe it or not, grow it even more.
So we cannot keep increasing the number of roads,
we cannot keep increasing the number of cars,
we're moving towards a car light society
and to provide people a good mobility
without owning a car.
Singapore is quite unique
in using technology to improve the quality of life.
The government has put in a lot of resources
to allow technology to be used.
If I can provide a fleet of cars
that's within five minutes, can get to me
and I can go to my destination
in a guaranteed arrival time,
would I still want to own a car, right?
And perhaps that answer is no.
So yesterday when you tested,
you didn't collect data?
We're working on autonomous vehicles
to provide mobility for door to door.
We don't want to use very fancy expensive sensors.
Our computers are bought from the same bargain
computer shop you buy for gaming.
The cost is always very important to us.
It's called frugal engineering,
I grew up in the Philippines and the standard
of living is a bit harder
but I see it's a big opportunity
for autonomous vehicles.
Frugal engineering has a lot of applications
especially in the developing countries
so we compensate for the deficiency in lower
cost sensor through intelligence
to software program.
That's really the philosophy
that drives our work.
So next time we have the driverless car capability already,
in an urban environment.
I'm going to the nearest train station,
how do you call a car?
We developed a very simple web-based applications,
you say I am here, I want to go here, right?
Then it will say, there's this car
within five minutes away.
This is similar to applications where you book taxis
and it will give you a password,
because the car doesn't have a driver, right?
So when the car comes in,
you enter the car.
Then to enable it, you have to enter the password
that it has sent you.
Now it has in a password, accept
and then the car goes.
Once you're in there,
it's a connected car, you can do your internet,
you can enjoy live in the car,
you don't waste time driving the car right?
In the future, once we're confident
we can have no more steering wheel.
And that changes also the concept
of that vehicle
and imagine small limousine
with sofas around, you can relax you can do things,
you can watch movies.
(slow electronic music)
A computer doesn't get tired, right?
Doesn't get emotional.
Somebody overtakes a car, it doesn't care.
(laughing)
It has a very deterministic reaction time.
So no accident, at the same time
it will drive in the profile that maximizes
the fuel economy and it's good right?
(upbeat music)
For the pedestrian environment we have buggies,
let's have an example huh?
I'm, I finished my class,
I need to go to town.
You can get there using a buggy and a car.
(piano playing)
By the time you reach the driverless car,
it is there waiting for you already.
You get off the scooter,
you take this and it brings you to the train station.
So you have that choice, yeah?
If you have different types of vehicle,
you have a choice of which vehicle to use.
Autonomous car, buggy, personal mobility scooter
and wheelchair we have it already,
they are all autonomous, working.
I want to expand it even further to buses.
So you have a fleet of vehicles,
spread all over Singapore strategically,
based on user demand because of the connected city
you know where are the hot spots,
where people need more cars
to guarantee the five minute waiting time.
Doesn't mean everybody has to take it,
but if you want the most convenient,
door to door service,
you have this option at least cost.
But if you don't mind it,
maybe you could walk further,
gives you this options and at what cost
and gives you predictability.
If people agree to that and they do it,
the number of cars in the road will be much less.
So it will make traveling from A to B
much faster, because there's less number
of cars and more efficient use of the road
and infrastructure and the cars won't just
be sitting there doing nothing,
occupying space right?
One hour saving checking email right?
That means one hour more time with your family yeah?
With your loved ones and to do more enjoyable things.
Every technology can be used in different ways,
and the smarter sensible city technologies,
is no exception you could use it for control
or you could use it for empowerment.
You can use it top down, or bottom up.
We think the latter should always be the case.
Our cities constantly
draw upon the planet's resources.
To feed us and to grow.
By importing so much, we consume energy
and generate dangerous amounts of pollution,
it's a lose lose proposition.
The more people, the less the earth
can fulfill our needs.
It's a constant competition between the city
and the land that cities are taking over.
In the future,
cities will reduce their environmental footprint
by becoming more autonomous.
We will reinvent local production,
this is already true for food
with the growth of urban farms.
You certainly can, within 100 miles
of New York city, for instance,
provide all the farmland you would need
to keep everybody there fed.
Our cities will produce
their own energy by recycling waste,
the CO2 from a factory, will feed walls
of algae to heat our dwellings via photosynthesis.
In Hamburg, residents of a building
known as BIQ are already benefiting
from this free natural heating.
What about raw materials?
Could we one day make them on the spot?
And why not invent construction materials
more environmentally friendly
than concrete and steel?
I mean if we're making things
out of concrete, I don't think that's gonna help
deal with the climate issues that we have
and the resource extraction
and the speeds and the rates that we're doing it, today.
I think we have to look at radically new materials
that are alive, materials that are
actual components of biology
that are used in service for design, especially for cities.
In New York,
and architect dreams of making tomorrow's green city
by replacing concrete with living matter.
I think if we can imagine designing cities
and buildings as living systems,
then we can really expand our possibilities
and make some amazing things happen.
To me, cities and buildings
are living breathing organisms,
they always have been.
They grow, they consume things,
they produce waste, they change,
they adapt, they decay sometimes.
Cities consume a huge amount of resources.
A typical building made of steel, concrete and glass
basically starts with high-value raw materials,
extracted from the earth.
We had an idea, maybe we could start with low-value
raw materials, maybe we could convert the raw materials
into building blocks with almost no energy
instead of using a lot of energy
and maybe we could then still create a building.
Hy-Fi is a 13 meter tall branching tower
made out of 10,000 biodegradable bricks.
We imagine that bricks could be grown
with a living organism called mycelium
rather than manufactured.
Mycelium grows in the forest
and it binds together loose wood chips.
Recently, a factory of Ecovative
has been industrializing this natural organic process.
Something that normally happens out in the forest,
they do it in the controlled environment
of the factory to make packaging.
Our proposal to Ecovative was that we could
use the same material but divert it in the direction
of a construction material.
To make this new kind of brick,
we start with agricultural waste,
we combine it with mycelium,
we leave that alone for about five days
and without adding any energy
or even any sunlight, the mycelium grows
and fuses together and then we take that solid
object out of the mold and dry it out
which kills the mycelium.
Then we have a solid object,
but it's created with a much lower footprint
than a traditional brick.
This is something that hadn't been done before
for a huge four-story building.
(upbeat music)
We had to work with a number of collaborators
who test out this material and what was possible.
Hy-Fi was built in the courtyard
of Moma PS1 as part of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York city.
Not just on a lab bench,
and not just in the corner of a vacant lot
but out in the public.
People interacted with the structure,
they touched it, they smelled it,
they experienced space inside of it.
This was great for us because we were testing out
this new idea of living architecture,
this was a perfect test.
At the end of the summer,
we disassembled the structure,
brought the bricks down and brought them
to a composting facility,
that was the real proof of the idea for us
that we could start with nothing but earth
and return to nothing but earth
at the end of the project.
We could really start reinventing
what a building is, if we keep the living organism
mycelium alive, a wall of a building
could do some amazing things like heal itself
after damage.
The building itself could detect
certain pollutants and it could change color
or emit a film to help protect the inhabitants
of the building.
In the future, it will be possible
for buildings to communicate with one another.
By bringing in forces of the environment,
by bringing in living materials,
we can create better cities.
It's hard to imagine
what the cities of tomorrow will look like.
But we can envision how they'll work.
(inspiring music)
Once we've made our cities greener,
our transport more efficient,
once our neighborhoods can provide
everything we need,
our urban revolution will have succeeded
and we'll be able to give our children
the city of our dreams.
(inspiring music)