Portugal is the latest country to create a development based entirely on the ideas of city 2.0.
Will these new cities–purposefully designed to avoid the urban planning mistakes of the past–be the model for the future?
Projections suggest there will be more than 136 new cities containing over 1 million people by 2025. While most of the cities will be in China, they will spring up all over the world. It is one thing to explore how existing cities can gradually (or relatively rapidly in the case in Singapore) get smarter. But what about when you have a blank canvas?
Given today’s technology (and keeping an eye toward the future), how might governments collaborate with the private sector to plan and build cities of the future in a way that eliminates all the dumb things we did in the 20th century, like designing cities around the car and designing buildings around the air conditioner?
Last week, I learned of a new planned city in Portugal called PlanIT Valley. PlanIT will be located near Porto and, by 2015, will house up to 225,000 inhabitants. One of the most interesting aspects of the city is that planners are expecting to install more than 100 million sensors. If you are doing the math, that is equivalent to nearly 450 sensors per capita.
The sensors will be used for a whole range of services, including smart transit and parking; emergency services dispatching; energy monitoring and management in smart buildings; and monitoring infrastructure condition and performance. Sensors in homes will be set up to identify water leaks and will be capable of autonomously notifying a plumber.
While most smart-city experts recognize the central role that sensor and ICT technology will play in making cities smarter, not all smart cities have made major investments in sensors. Buenos Aires, for instance, is on a trajectory towards being a smart city, yet they have a relative lack of sensors and real-time date utilization.
via FastCoExist – Boyd Cohen
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