Archinect - News

XZero City is Kuwait's contribution to the smart city movement

2022-09-02T12:46:00-04:00

A Dubai-based developer named URB has entered the fray of futuristic community planning in the region after publishing plans for XZero City, a pedestrian-friendly, net-zero carbon community it says will eventually grow to accommodate up to 100,000 people.

Billed as a “new paradigm in green urban living,” the car-free city will spread out over a 16-square-kilometer (6-square-mile) swath in the southern Kuwaiti desert connected by a resilient landscape which serves as the “social glue” to self-sustaining homesteaders occupying one of its initial 30,000 modular residences.

Image courtesy URB

By separating the development into different Commercial, Medical, and Educational hubs, URB says it hopes to provide a high quality of life powered by advanced renewable energy technologies, fed by biosaline agricultural produce and vertical farms, and enhanced by an equestrian track, a nature conservation center, and other attractions marketed vaguely as “edutainment.”

Image courtesy URB

An ecotour...

Considering the Quayside failure as proof futuristic Smart Cities may be a thing of the past

2022-06-30T18:16:00-04:00

Smart city technology should do things like shorten commute times, speed the construction of affordable housing, improve the efficiency of public transit, and reduce carbon emissions by making building technology more efficient and providing less polluting transportation alternatives to the car. But often its proponents focus on what it can do rather than what it should. If Sidewalk’s Quayside failure taught us anything, it’s that these technologies need to respond better to human needs.

The MIT Technology Review took a dive into the abandoned pre-pandemic conversion of Toronto’s 12-acre Quayside waterfront plot into an elaborate “Smart City” development by the hands of Sidewalk Labs. The revitalization was recently repackaged as a mixed-use green corridor concept to be overseen by Adjaye Associates, Henning Larsen, and Alison Brooks Architects. Sidewalk Labs has said it was planning to redevelop the vacant brownfield site “from the internet up.”

Previously on Archinect: Sidewalk Labs' Quayside project in Toronto is cancelled

Author Karrie Jacobs considers the history of urban planning concepts such as the 15-Minute City and Ville Radieuse in relation to the rebuked concept, which has dominated the past two decades of planning, and will be felled, she predicts, by an “emphasis on the optimization of everything” and the contradictory desire to “eradicate the very thing that makes cities wonderful.”

Saudi Arabia adds Morphosis to project team for its NEOM smart city megaproject

2022-06-14T18:08:00-04:00

The Line, as the car-free linear city that will form the backbone of Neom is known, could cost up to $200 billion to build, the prince said last year, though that was before the plan changed to include gigantic horizontal buildings. The buildings would be “different heights as you go,” adapting to the landscape, with their final size determined by engineering considerations and the terrain, Al-Nasr said.

The OPEC nation has thus far been mum as to the new plan’s details but says it will be funded in part through an increase in surplus revenues overseen by the Public Investment Fund, which is managed by NEOM’s CEO Al-Nasr. It is yet unclear whether Bechtel, who previously signed on their servicesfor the then-estimated $500 billion venture’s light rail and utility systems, will remain on for the project’s updated version, wherein Morphosis and designer Thom Mayne will deliver two parallel 1,640-foot-tall structures said to stretch from the Red Sea into the desert ar lengths of up to half a mile.

Rendering of the proposed mega-city. Image courtesy of Neom. Previously on Archinect: Bechtel to lay groundwork for Saudi smart mega-city Neom

The mixed-use designs featured by the scheme could count as the world’s largest when all is said and done for the still highly-theoretical autonomous city, which may eventually be the same size as Massachusetts. Concerns over Al-Nasr’s toxic management s...

Barcelona is developing a digital twin within a 19th-century chapel

2022-05-20T11:47:00-04:00

Barcelona has become the latest city to begin construction on a digital twin of itself. Currently in a test phase, the data-driven replica of the city is expected to be operational by 2027, at which point it will be used as an urban planning tool to shape the city’s future development.

The digital twin will be housed within the MareNostrum supercomputer, one of the world’s most powerful data processors, located within the city’s Torre Girona chapel. Originally constructed in the 19th century, the chapel was rebuilt in the 1940s following the Spanish Civil War, and now sits on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The chapel has housed the supercomputer since 2005.

The MareNostrum supercomputer. Image courtesy of Barcelona Supercomputing Center

For city officials, the digital twin will offer urbanists, architects, and planners a means of testing urban theories and projects before implementation in order to understand their effects, without physically disrupting th...

Digital twin of downtown Las Vegas unveiled in effort to cut emissions

2022-01-20T13:39:00-05:00

Las Vegas has become the latest city to embark on constructing a digital twin, following the unveiling of a digital model at the city’s Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. Developed by Chicago-based Cityzenith and Las Vegas-based Terbine, the model encompasses a 2.7-square-mile portion of downtown Las Vegas and is intended to “help Las Vegas building owners transition to net-zero carbon emissions.”

As we noted in October 2021, the digital replica of the physical landscape was built using local city data. In the future, the developers see the model as an opportunity to accurately measure and design for the impacts of future plans on the city’s air quality, mobility, water management, and building emissions.

With the base model now completed, the next phase will involve input from stakeholders including real estate owners, government agencies, university researchers, data partners, architects, and casino operators, overlaying further detail on how the city is operated and u...

Toyota and BIG's 'Woven City' project breaks ground in Japan

2021-03-01T14:16:00-05:00

Early in 2020, Archinect reported on Toyota and BIG's collaborative project "Woven City." The 175-acre project aims to turn the former factory site located in the city of Susono in Shizuoka, Japan into a "revolutionary smart city." On February 24, 2021, Toyota announced that the "futuristic city" has broken ground and construction is underway.

Image of project site with iconic Mt. Fuji in the background. courtesy of Woven City Facebook page.

During the Woven City groundbreaking ceremony, Toyota President Aiko Toyoda shared, "The Woven City project officially starts today. Taking action as one has decided is never an easy task. I must express my deepest gratitude to all who have provided their whole-hearted support and cooperation to the project through today. The unwavering themes of the Woven City are 'human-centered,' 'a living laboratory' and 'ever-evolving.' Together with the support of our project partners, we will take on the challenge of creating a future where people of dive...

Today's Virtual Events cover issues of smart cities, design education, and the architecture of healthcare

2020-05-12T08:00:00-04:00

The online events happening today, as featured in Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, all address the challenges we're currently facing and how that will impact architects working in areas of new technology, education and healthcare.

Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation? Tour? Interview? Happy Hour? Submit it for consideration by clicking here.

Are you an expert in an arena that's especially important right now? Let us know if you would like to work with Archinect to host an online event.

Smart cities: Resiliency Strategies in a challenging world
Tuesday, May 12, 2020 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
This webinar explores how smart cities and its associated innovations can be leveraged to respond to and recover from crises, including pandemics.
Click here to attend and/or register

Creating a Bright Tomorrow: Design Education for a New Sustainable World
Tuesday, May 12, 2020 | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT
Join Cooper Hewitt for a riveting discussion with designers, educators, and students ...

Alphabet launches smart infrastructure investment company

2019-09-06T19:54:00-04:00

The technology giant is teaming up with its subsidiary, Sidewalk Labs LLC, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to launch an infrastructure holding company that is being spun out of Sidewalk. Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, as the new firm will be known, will focus on investing in what the group calls technology-enabled infrastructure, the partners said.

The firm, according to The Wall Street Journal, will target its investments on "advanced mobility, energy, water and waste, digital infrastructure, and social infrastructure" projects that require more than $100 million in equity.

Hong Kong protestors take aim at Chinese urban surveillance infrastructure

2019-08-26T13:00:00-04:00

Widespread protests focused on countering China's quasi-colonial reign over Hong Kong continued over the weekend, as demonstrators began to take aim at the city's widespread surveillance infrastructure, The Guardian reports.

Organizing in response to reports that Chinese authorities are using smart lampposts to collect personal information, including facial recognition data, on Hongkongers, protesters over the weekend trained their efforts on removing some the city's new smart city infrastructure as local police fired tear gas. Australian news outlet ABC News reports that 400 of the smart lampposts are due to be installed in four of the city's urban districts, including 50 lampposts in the Kwun Tong area, the site of this weekend's protests. During a march this weekend, protestors used electric saws to destroy several of the lampposts, while others topped the lights with ropes.

Protestors in Hong Kong are cutting down facial recognition towers. pic.twitter.com/bTvb8uis7V
— Jordan ...

"Digital Infrastructure City" in Las Vegas to be built with construction drones and a robot-augmented "super workforce"

2019-08-16T12:45:00-04:00

Bleutech Park Properties, a real-estate investment trust (REIT), and KME Architects have unveiled plans for a new "Digital Infrastructure City" in Las Vegas.

The digitally-focused, smart city-style development is set to feature "automated multi-functional designs," "supertrees," and self-healing concrete structures, according to a press release. The development, which will include offices and market-rate and affordable housing, will draw all of its energy from renewable sources. The buildings in the development are set to be wrapped with photovoltaic glass panels that will turn "entire building exteriors into single solar panels," according to a statement.

The project is also set to be constructed using union labor; Those workers will be aided by a bevy of automated and digital technologies, including aerial construction drones that will work on hard-to-reach and dangerous portions of the project and "wearable technologies" that will aid workers in heavy lifting and repetitive task...

What if we don't want smart cities?

2019-07-25T12:21:00-04:00

Smart cities make two fundamental promises: lots of data, and automated decision making based on that data. The ultimate smart city will require a raft of existing and to-be-invented technologies, from sensors to robots to artificial intelligence. For many this promises a more efficient, equitable city; for others, it raises questions about privacy and algorithmic bias.

Promises for a better, smarter city have flooded media headlines, but if these so-called "smart cities" are said to be the answer, can the general public adapt to these infrastructure dreams? In a recent piece by Shoshanna Saxe for the New York Times, the experienced civil and mineral engineer at the University of Toronto shares her perspectives on the matter.

In her op-ed piece "Im an Engineer, and I'm Not Buying into 'Smart' Cities", Saxe sheds a detailed response to smart city dreams. For one thing, "they will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones."

Saxe continues to add that with the rapid rate of technology turnover and disruption, could city residents deal with these types of technical disruptions when it comes to water and power services?

"City infrastructure, especially in high-i...

Revisiting "A Pattern Language"

2019-07-12T13:09:00-04:00

“A Pattern Language” is not about architecture, but about how specific design choices can help us build better relationships. By fitting a series of those choices—the patterns—together, you get a room, a house, a neighborhood and eventually a city.

Curbed architecture critic Alexandra Lange takes us on a journey through some of the key lessons from Christopher Alexander's seminal work, A Pattern Language.

The book, originally published in 1977 has long been out of fashion in architecture schools, but, Lange argues, with the rise of smart cities and other quick-fix approaches to contemporary urban and global design problems, now is perhaps a good time to revisit Alexander's earnest, methodical, and people-centered tome.

Lange writes, "As New York, Toronto, Singapore, and more places around the globe build so-called smart cities, maybe we need to read “A Pattern Language” again in that context," adding, "Who is the audience for the smart city? Who has access to the data? Who has the ability to make design decisions based on that data? Is this city going to build better relationships? People are the scoring system, whether you’re deciding on a rug for the living room, or a light rail system for the city."

...

Mass timber and high-tech meet in Sidewalk Labs' vision for Toronto

2019-06-25T18:56:00-04:00

Sidewalk Labs, Snøhetta, Michael Green Architecture, and Heatherwick Studio have unveiled a controversial $1.3 billion plan to reprogram a portion of Toronto's industrial waterfront into a new smart city prototype that envisions a wireless, data-driven, and mass timber-filled future for the city.

Site plan for the Sidewalk Labs Quayside development. Image courtesy of Picture Plane for Heatherwick Studio and Sidewalk Labs

The thorough and graphically-slick plan aims to articulate "a new approach for inclusive growth" by developing a 12-acre site with a mix of mid- and high-rise housing towers, shared pedestrian plazas, and commercial uses. The plan is being submitted for consideration by Waterfront Toronto, a government-funded corporation that is tasked with redeveloping the 1,977-acre Toronto Waterfront. The group selected Sidewalk Labs as a potential developer for a portion of the site in 2017. Since the initial proposal was unveiled, there has been a significant amount of public c...

Coworking real-estate empire We Company announces smart cities initiative

2019-03-19T17:17:00-04:00

We Company, formerly known as WeWork, has announced plans to launch a smart cities program. Since its founding in 2010, the real-estate empire has collected an enormous amount of data on how people work and live, using that information to shape its more than 600 spaces. As the global coworking company expands its brand to tackle residential real estate (WeLive) and education (WeGrow), it is hoping to use its aggregated information to reenvision the future of our cities.

To do so, We Company has hired Di-Ann Eisnor, the former Waze executive, and Dror Benshetrit, the designer and futurist whose eponymous studio is known for their pioneering object and installation designs. Together, the two (alongside engineers, architects, data scientists, biologists, and economists) will use their innovation of the tech sector to address problems of urbanization and climate change.

WeGrow NYC, We Company's first elementary school; designed by Bjarke Ingels Group. Photo by Dave Burk.

In recent years,...

A Conversation with Alex Baca on City Engagement

2018-11-26T19:14:00-05:00

On this episode of Archinect Sessions we're joined with Alex Baca, a Washington DC-based journalist focused on smart cities, planning, bike advocacy and urban mobility devices. Recent news, and related controversy, surrounding Amazon’s newly announced move into New York City and Washington DC is what initially motivated us to bring Alex onto this show.

Listen to episode 133 of Archinect Sessions, “A Conversation with Alex Baca on City Engagement”.

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“Colonizing Experiment in Surveillance Capitalism”: Privacy Expert Resigns From Google-Backed Smart City Project Over Surveillance Concerns

2018-10-26T12:28:00-04:00

A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy guidelines would largely be ignored by participants. “I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, wrote in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.

Smart phones, smart cars, smart cities, but smart for who?

Amid the smart city trend, Santa Maria Tonantzintla locals in Mexico fear the loss of their cultural traditions

2018-10-18T18:15:00-04:00

In Tonantzintla the smart cities proposal became a lightning rod for those concerned about a development that seemed to favour outsiders rather than residents...“They are ashamed of their roots,” [local resident Mercedes] Tecuapetla Quechol says. “They saw something they liked in the United States or in Europe, so they want to put it here.”

The Mexican town of Santa Maria Tonantzintla is caught in the all-too-familiar situation of preserving its centuries-old customs as newer smart-city technologies are being introduced. While city officials and planners argued that implementing new technology intends to benefit the community, locals saw this as an attempt to westernize their town and wipe out tradition.

An army of underground robots will collect waste and deliver parcels

2018-05-28T22:36:00-04:00

Initially Sidewalk's deal with the organisation will cover a 12-acre site but it is believed it wishes to expand this to the whole area - which at 325 acres will represent a huge land-grab....As part of the planning process of bidding to develop the waterside location, the firm looked at 150 examples of smart cities, including those built from the ground up such as Masdar, in Abu Dhabi and Songdo in South Korea.

Jane Wakefield chatted with both critics and proponents of a, Sidewalk Labs, proposed project on Toronto's Eastern waterfront.

Jan Gehl has his doubts about 'Smart Cities'

2018-05-07T14:52:00-04:00

I think we haven’t thought through the challenge of technology for city mobility. We are stuck with some 120-year-old ideas that the industry is desperately holding on to. I tell students: Whenever you hear the word “smart,” beware, because that is somebody who wants to sell as many millions as possible of some new gimmick. And he is not necessarily giving you a better quality of life.

Annette Becker and Lessano Negussie, curators of the new exhibition RIDE A BIKE! Reclaim the City at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt, Germany, interviewed the 81-year-old 'people-friendly city' evangelist for the show's accompanying book.

Will cities themselves become Silicon Valley's Biggest Start-Up?

2018-02-26T14:18:00-05:00

In the maddening gap between how this place functions and how inventors and engineers here think it should, many have become enamored with the same idea: What if the people who build circuits and social networks could build cities, too? Wholly new places, designed from scratch and freed from broken policies.

In Emily Badger's latest piece for the Upshot, she investigates the Tech Industry's newest sector of disruption, the City. From Alphabet company's proposal for Sidewalk Labs in Toronto to a proposed smart city in Arizona, Silicon Valley is looking to build urban utopias of their own. While the idea has received strong negative feedback, particularly from urban planners and architects who believe the tech industry should stay within its lanes, Badger wonders if approaching the problems modern cities are facing through a tabula rasa mindset might be beneficial.

Data-collecting benches are making their way into cities

2017-07-17T16:47:00-04:00

A pair of USB ports on a console on the front of the bench provides juice from the solar panel mounted at lap level between the seats. Who wouldn’t want to hang out at a bench like this? It certainly catches the eye of passersby. What these kids might not realize, however, is that this bench is watching them back.

"Smart" benches are spreading—recently a series of them, manufactured by Soofa, was installed in a tiny neighborhood park next to I-77 on the north end of Charlotte, North Carolina with the intent of the neighborhood's analysis and redevelopment.

Soofa, founded in 2014 by three graduates of MIT Media Lab, is one of a handful of companies designing data-collecting street furniture. Their solar-powered benches register Wi-Fi enabled devices within 150 feet of them, sending data back to an office building in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the sensors can't access personal information from your phone, they pick up and remember your devices' MAC address. The technology allows cities and urban planners to count users of various public spaces, identifying when and for how long they're visited, and potentially optimizing their design.

"The line between collecting data for a valid public purpose and the unreasonable surveillance of private citizens can be tough to tease out. Beyond c...

400 of the smartest acres in the country

2017-01-31T19:06:00-05:00

The Japanese technology giant wanted a place to experiment with solar power and renewable energy, autonomous vehicles and other technologies. And it needed a public partner and community support. It found that in Denver, DIA, Xcel Energy, developer LC Fulenwider and many others.

Tamara Chuang highlights some of the technology (ranging from consumer electronics, to "smart" public infrastructure) Panasonic was hawking at CES 2017. Some of which will be employed at Peña Station Next, a new TOD, smart city lab on the edge of Denver International Airport. Last month, she reported on the installation of some of the first bits, brains for 53 street lights.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Foxx on the future of transportation: "We had to do something different."

2016-10-28T13:49:00-04:00

Car and Driver caught up with Foxx in Pittsburgh. The DOT chief, previously mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, reflected on the promise of autonomous and connected cars, the recent Smart City Challenge, the massive increase in traffic deaths, the potential of the shared vehicles unfolding right outside the window, and more. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for grammar and brevity.

University of Miami School of Architecture helps to create a new Smart City in the Yucatan Peninsula

2016-09-02T16:07:00-04:00

The project, which is being designed by UM SoA’s Responsive Architecture and Design Lab (RAD-UM Lab), will be built next to the Yucatán Science and Technology Park (YSTP), established by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. RAD-UM Lab specializes in technology-based designing and the “internet of things,” everyday objects that can collect data and connect to modern tech.

The University of Miami School of Architecture continues to experiment in the realm of responsive architecture, this time at an urban scale. Zenciti is a proposed "smart city" to be located in the Yucatan Peninsula where the gathering of data will play a prominent role. Information technology will be embedded into the inner workings and infrastructure of the project allowing for potential opportunities to monitor urban issues such as traffic patterns, transportation, pollution levels, and energy consumption. Smart City models are curently in use in Europe with examples such as Amsterdam and Barcelona. Zenciti has the potential to be one the first examples in Latin America.

This initative is a collaboration between the University of Miami's School of Architecture, Center for Computational Science, and College of Engineering, as well as the Yucatan State Government’s Information Technologies Innovation Cente. The UMSoA has aggressively been expanding research into responsive arch...

Columbus, Ohio wins DOT's $50M Smart City Challenge

2016-06-23T13:48:00-04:00

Columbus, Ohio, has won a $50m prize for its plans to smarten up its transport system. The money is made up of a $40m Smart Cities grant from the Department of Transportation (DOT), a $90m fund put up by private sector partners and a further $10m from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s charity Vulcan, which will be used to finance electric vehicle infrastructure.

Columbus managed to beat six rival cities that were shortlisted by the DOT earlier this year:

Austin, Texas
Denver, Colorado
Kansas City, Missouri
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Portland, Oregon
San Francisco, California

Imagining the future cyberattack that could bring down New York City

2016-06-21T14:46:00-04:00

Copycat attacks sprang up around the world: trains going haywire in Japan; smart thermostats freezing pipes in Minneapolis; Chinese hackers noodling around a water utility in San Francisco. Americans suddenly realized that, although they had spent plenty of time anguishing about how to protect the country’s physical borders, with every device they bought, they had been letting more and more invaders into their cities, their homes, and their lives.

"They had moved everything they did online, thinking they were moving into the future; they woke up the morning after thinking they’d moved into a war zone instead."

This is a great work of speculative fiction that imagines a cyberattack that brings down New York City in the near-future. Self-driving cars smash into the roadside, hospital staff can't access their records, power plants go offline causing mass blackouts.

The article's subheading reads "A scenario that could happen based on what already has." And, indeed, most of the technology described is already in use.

The automation of cars, homes, and entire cities means IRL hacks are a real threat. For more on this, check out Archinect's interview with Joseph Grima of Space Caviar about the RAM House, a prototype dwelling equipped with "airplane mode."

For tips and tricks on how to shore up your cybersecurity, take a look at this handy beginner's guide specifically tailored to architects. And for more content related to changing not...

Are we losing the cyberwar?

2016-06-16T18:09:00-04:00

There are simply too many ways for an attacker to get into your computer now. If you log on to the office network with a smartphone, or if you carry a laptop between work and home..you make it very easy for intruders to enter the office network [..] With Wi-Fi hot spots, which can be easy to tap into, popping up everywhere, and with ever more network-enabled devices entering both the office and the home—smart TVs, smart front-door locks—intruders have a panoply of ways to break into your life.

"Looming darkly over this almost Mordorian cyber threatscape is the prospect of cyber war—a future conflict fought with weaponized code that can do physical damage to infrastructure, and potentially kill people."

According to this New Yorker article, cybersecurity experts look back fondly on the days of computer viruses. The real problem now is cybercrime – and it's increasingly becoming an IRL threat as well, as we make "smart" everything from our houses to our cars to our lightbulbs.

This month, Archinect's coverage includes a special thematic focus on Privacy. For more on the ways that technology is changing our notions of privacy and security, check out some recent articles:

Do you have projects that grapple with cha...

Losing yourself in the smart city

2015-12-03T18:35:00-05:00

Thanks to Big Data, it is now next to impossible to reside anonymously in a modern city. Why? Because data anonymization itself is almost impossible without using advanced cryptography. Our every transaction leaves a digital marker that can be mined by anyone with the right tools or enough determination.

Apple and Google are poised to shake up the auto industry

2015-09-17T14:14:00-04:00

This year, “connectivity” has supplanted “horsepower” or “torque” as the prevailing buzzword in Frankfurt. The talk is of self-driving cars, battery-powered cars, and information technology designed to link cars with data networks to make driving safer and more efficient. Even though neither Apple nor Google is close to mass-producing a vehicle, nervousness about their intentions — which remain cloaked in mystery — is understandable.

Will India's 'smart city' initiative exacerbate social stratification?

2015-05-12T14:29:00-04:00

Recently, the Indian cabinet green-lit a £10 billion scheme that will be divided equally between building 100 smart cities, and rejuvenating another 500 cities and towns over the next five years. Yet many experts and planners fear that such “insta-cities”, if they are made, will prove dystopic and inequitable. Some even hint that smart cities may turn into social apartheid cities, governed by powerful corporate entities that could override local laws and governments to “keep out” the poor.