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New technologies and mobility

On Thursday, November 24, 2011 in Nice, The City Factory explored the following question: “Technologies designed to serve mobility or vice versa?”
To make transportation infrastructure more effective, Carlo Ratti, Director of the SENSEable City Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) presented, at The City Factory’s seminar, experiments currently under way in a number of large cities, notably, Venice, Copenhagen, and Singapore.

These experiments have shown that it is possible to capture abundant data in real time and use them to adjust transportation policy to citizens’ expectations. “Cities represent 50% of the world’s population and account for 80% of CO2 emissions. We can use these data to target and change behaviour, thereby significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions due to traffic.” Carlo Ratti believes it is possible to make urban infrastructure more efficient. In his view, it is possible to redesign transit itineraries in accordance with pedestrian traffic. On the evening of the 2006 World Cup final, the “Rome Real Time” project at MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory created a dynamic map in real time based on coordinates captured by various local media, notably, cell phones and GPS sensors on buses to determine if the presence of pedestrians matched mass transit itineraries. “Bus routes can be reconfigured. We can adjust the transportation offer to respond to demand. We can provide, in real time and taking into account traffic bottlenecks and commuter clusters, modifiable traffic routes.” According to this researcher, “what is also interesting is the interaction among origin-and-destination data and how these data can be used. As a result, we can change our interaction with the city, and citizens become more active.”

Carlo Ratti also cites Copenhagen, where bicycles account for 50% of urban traffic, as an example. These bicycles store energy and, through information-sharing, provide real-time data on local conditions, proving that “the city of the future will go beyond mere concrete: it will be a smart city.” The Laboratory has developed a prototype that includes a motor and battery can be added to a bicycle’s back wheel. Every time the cyclist hits the brakes, this dynamic action recharges the electrical battery. “The Copenhagen Wheel uses a technology that is similar to KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System). This system has had a tremendous impact on Formula 1 racing in the past two years,” states Carlo Ratti. The wheel is also able to connect to a Bluetooth device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) to transmit information in real time: distance covered, speed, position, and even level of air pollution. Cyclists can then share these data with the Copenhagen Wheel user-community. “We can call this concept Bikes 2.0.”

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