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Hey urbanists! Did you see the news this week about Bill Gates investing in a smart city project in A
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| November 26 · Issue #10 · View online |
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Hey urbanists! Did you see the news this week about Bill Gates investing in a smart city project in Arizona that seemed to be plastered across every news outlet? As you may have expected, it was too good to be true, which, honestly, is probably for the better. While smart cities may sound attractive on paper, the smart city projects that have so far been pursued have been underwhelming at best and troubling at worst. If you want a critical assessment of smart cities, I would recommend Adam Greenfield’s Against the smart city.
Driverless cars play a big role in the smart city dream, and Uber’s $1 billion purchase of 24,000 self-driving vehicles from Volvo this week pushes us further in that direction. However, there’s good reason to be wary about the seemingly inevitable self-driving future. Issue 9 has more on the problems with Uber, issue 7 looks at how the company is trying to replace public transit, and issue 2 has a number of articles looking at the move away from personal vehicles toward alternative modes of transportation. One of these modes of transit is the subway, and one of the subway systems that has clearly been struggling for a long time is that of New York City. Given it seems to have reached a crisis point this year, the New York Times published an investigation into how the network got this way, and points the finger at political interference, funding cuts, and prioritization of vanity projects by state and city governments instead of focusing on basic maintenance and network improvements. If there’s one article in this issue that’s a must-read, it’s that one. However, while New York City is having some major transit problems, a low-cost transit pilot in Toronto is making a major difference to the streetcar network running along one of the main downtown streets. Some more good news on the transit front! — Paris
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Bill Gates’ smart city in Arizona is not smart, not a city, and has almost nothing to do with Bill Gates.
A fantastic breakdown of the recent Gates investment that the press is calling a smart city, but will really be nothing more than another typical subdivision — and only if a highway to Las Vegas gets built first. Do solar power and broadband internet a “smart city” make? Is there something “smart” about data centers? Is there anything unusual anymore about autonomous vehicle testing, which is underway in a handful of cities and states already, including throughout the Phoenix area? Popular Mechanics writes that “the community will integrate technology and high speed data into its infrastructure.” Technology in its infrastructure! The future has arrived.
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Smart cities might not be such a bright idea
The idea of smart cities sound incredibly attractive, but the reality we’ve thus far experienced has been profoundly underwhelming, if not quite worrying for what technology may do to our cities. Smart cities are being rolled out across the globe, particularly where populations are rising quickly, in countries such as India, China and parts of Africa. On paper at least, these urban fantasies share the same Fritz Lang aesthetic: metallic skyscrapers, pleasingly empty highways, attractive landscaping, lighting schemes to make eco-warriors weep — and very few people.
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Uber is buying $1 billion worth of self-driving XC90 cars from Volvo
This past week Uber took its next step down the path toward automating its drivers by purchasing 24,000 SUVs from Volvo which will be delivered between 2019 and 2021 and fitted out with self-driving technology. Uber hopes removing drivers will finally make its operations break even, if not profitable, but not all analysts are so convinced.
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Driverless Cars Are Not a Panacea
Uber and the car companies are also banking on driverless cars as the future of transit, even in urban centres, but as Richard Florida argues, it will likely make traffic congestion and spatial inequality even worse. A driverless car is still a car. […] Although you won’t be driving them yourself, driverless cars won’t be able to overcome the reality of congested roads, occasional accidents, and unpredictable commutes. Higher-income people who want to avoid such commutes will continue to use their money to avoid them by living closer to the urban center. […] Rather than being used by a re-suburbanizing rich headed to far-flung luxury developments, driverless cars—or more likely, driverless busses—will extend the commuting range of blue-collar workers, service workers, and the poor. America’s metropolitan geography will come to look more like that of Europe or the developing world, with the rich clustered on the increasingly valuable land in and around the city center, and the low-income warehoused in the much cheaper land at the suburban and exurban fringe.
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🚨 How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
This NYTimes investigation into the issues with the New York subway system is a must-read to understand how underinvestment and political interference on the state and city level over the past several decades has created a crisis for the MTA and is causing an incredible amount of stress for residents who rely on the subway to get around.
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Not By Money Alone: Rethinking the MTA's Infrastructure
This report by the Manhattan Institute also looks at current spending by the MTA to show that, despite these persistent problems, the agency still isn’t spending its money on the most pressing issues.
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A little transit miracle grows on King Street
Toronto recently began a 12-month pilot project to significantly reduce car traffic on King Street and give priority to streetcars. It’s a project with a small cost of about $1.5 million, but with huge reward. The streetcar lines that run along King Street see around 65,000 riders every weekday, while 20,000 cars would use the street. Those streetcar riders are now saving about 10 minutes per trip, and the city is expecting delivering of 15 new streetcars by the end of the year to increase capacity.
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