smart cities: what urban life will be like in 2050 ... - solar panel traffic lights

If you work for a young internet company, you may find your office cool.
There may be a pool table and even a rooftop terrace. Pah!
According to Arup, an engineering company, our office building will contain work farms, produce its own energy, and be connected together by hanging green sidewalks, the sections of each layer will be removable, upgradeable and replaceable.
This is the building of the future, as imagined in a report released earlier this month by Arup's "forward-looking innovation" department.
This is just an example of the elements that make up the "smart city" of our next era.
"Smart City" is a popular word for the moment.
It refers to energy.
We will live in the city world of high efficiency and space economy in the next few years --
Thanks to technology.
Smart cities are now the focus of big businesses such as Shell and IBM, as well as small businesses and scientists such as Dutch microbiology.
Healing Concrete.
Cracks in future buildings will be filled with calcium carbonate produced by a nutrient-based bacteria, both of which are incorporated into cement.
Bacteria are activated only when the rain enters the crack.
"By 2050, the global population will grow to 9 billion," said Rick Robinson, executive architect at IBM smart city.
"In the West, we have become accustomed to building cities around cars.
If more people fall into this way of life, we will run out of world resources very, very quickly.
Adam Newton is the project manager for the Shell strategy and scenario team.
"By 2050, 70 to 80 of the world's population will live in cities.
It will be very important how and where people consume energy, "he said.
Tonight, both Newton and Robinson participated in the smart city panel debate at the Royal Society of Architects.
For IBM, smart cities mean cities that use data.
It has created space on the cloud to share information such as water flow and distribution.
"By managing the pressure of the water supply network, you can serve other houses without the need to extend the system --
"Allow you to support the growing population without spending hundreds of millions of pounds of infrastructure," Robinson explained . ".
Intelligent traffic lights are also on the agenda.
"In Singapore and California, we use technologies that can accurately predict the development of traffic in the next hour," he said . ".
In the future, optical sorting may change automatically.
This is all about energy efficiency for Shell.
"Low energy prices that drive urban expansion may not exist in 20 years.
Fewer roads and better integrated public transport may be the way forward, "said Newton.
There is no doubt that Shell will be interested in a project by US energy data analytics company Intelen, which uses smart meters to monitor energy usage in office areas and creates a social gaming appenergy scores.
While these developments don't seem strange, is Arup's future architecture just a science fiction novel?
"This is an idea burger," says Josef Hargrave, author of the Arup report . ".
"What's more unrealistic is the flying robot [
Which remove and re
Insert the building part]
The integration of smart grid is the most realistic purpose.
However, all ideas are based on the current prototype and Development --
In fact, Zurich, Switzerland is developing flying robots that can make six
Tower built with foam bricks.
Considering the exponential speed of technological progress, it is not difficult to understand that skyscrapers coated with photovoltaic coatings will indeed pass --
Faster than you think.
In fact, the Arup building is occupied by algae.
Pods full of biofuels are no different from the current project of Pierre Callia, a French biochemist.
He is building algae street lamps that absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Combine it with another algae lamp that uses the energy generated by photosynthesis to produce its own light, and you will get the selfpowered, anti-
Pollution street lights.
Researchers at the University of California, Los AngelesUCLA)
Just announced their graphene super capacitor.
It is basically a battery, but the charging speed is 1,000 times faster than the normal battery and can be charged.
The promise of the future is an instant mobile phone charger with plug and a gas station that can charge faster than the current lead-free car.
At the TED conference in Los Angeles last week, architects and computer scientists Skylar Tibbets showed 4D printing --
Is essentially the object of self.
Assembled by absorbing water.
For tibbet, it is better for this material to be used for the installation of groundwater pipes.
Robinson is reluctant to point out the smartest city in the world (
He mentioned Birmingham as a candidate)
But Newton says new cities in emerging markets have the potential to "surpass the rest of the world.
"The true wisdom may not lie in the technology we know, but in our vision and will for change.
"There must be a new mode of cooperation between enterprises and decision-making --
"We know that this technology can support manufacturers in cities and governments to have a positive impact," Newton said . ".
Leading cities in this department may be the smartest in the class.