Of course most people in the western world have Internet access at home. There will also be WiFi in some café or other round the corner – otherwise it’s not a trendy café. In the subway there are sometimes difficulties with getting a signal and the speed of data transfer. To make up for that, some cars can now turn into traveling WiFi hotspots thanks to built-in UMTS receivers. And in the office nothing can happen without Internet nowadays. But, as the name says, we still need a hotspot for wireless surfing. Wouldn’t it be great if Internet were freely available for us as a matter of course, anytime, anywhere?

At present we have two options for wireless surfing: via WiFi or via mobile phone networks. There is no Internet without a signal, and no Internet access without a receiving device.

Online, anytime and anywhere

In the context of the Audi Urban Future Summit in 2011 Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of the US edition of the technology magazine Wired, put forward the following hypothesis: “‘I drove my car to work.’ – Every single part of this sentence will be ridiculous to my children: ‘I drove’ – The idea that cars need to be driven will seem archaic to them. ‘My car’ – The notion of ownership is also one that is going to change. ‘To work’ – This implies the notion that you need to go to work, that there is a location where you work. And that is increasingly not the case; people work wherever.” The prerequisite for Anderson’s vision is comprehensive Internet coverage, so that we are online everywhere and at all times.

At present we have two options for wireless surfing: via WiFi or via mobile phone networks. For both of these we need a receiver device such as a smartphone, a tablet, a notebook or a UMTS stick. There is no Internet without a signal, and no Internet access without a receiving device – that is the status quo.

The decisive factor is not only the availability of a network, but also the quality of the signal and speed of data transfer. For some applications that only need small volumes of data from the WWW, this is no problem. But those who try to open the Facebook app in the GSM network, the mobile communication standard most frequently used worldwide, get impatient with its painfully long loading times. It is even more difficult to stream music or videos below ground, for example in the subway. And this is in an age when Cloud services, internet-linked apps and providers of music streaming such as simfy are blossoming.

In order to let the Internet into our lives and open up new possibilities for us, alongside availability there is also the question of the speed of data transfer.

The path to free WiFi

WiFi service free of charge in large cities is an important step on the path to a democratically networked world. There are now several models for this, some of which still regulate access. As reported in The Japan Times, since April 2013 WiFi has been available free of charge in almost all metro stations in Tokyo. However, the service can only be used five times a day at most, and then for a maximum of 15 minutes. That should be enough for most commuters, and above all it is intended to be used at the stations during waiting periods. The free WiFi service is initially being offered until the end of July, and further decisions will be taken after that.

WiFi service free of charge in large cities is an important step on the path to a democratically networked world.

In China, too, ambitious WiFi projects are being introduced in metropolitan areas. According to china.org.cn, by the end of 2013 freely available WiFi spots will be established in Shanghai in 450 public places. In Beijing as well efforts are being made to provide free WiFi in public. Unfortunately the Chinese hotspots come with the unpleasant taint of nationwide Internet censorship. At the same time the South Korean capital Seoul has announced investment of some 44 million US dollars up to 2015 to make free WiFi available practically “on every street corner” in the city. And in the major cities of Europe, too, the setting up of WiFi is marching ahead. Passengers on the London Underground can now surf the Internet free of charge with the mobile phone operator O2 and the provider Virgin Media at more than 100 stations. The app required for this can also be used by those who are not O2 customers.

The path to WiFi with free comprehensive coverage for everyone in the cities of the world is still a long one. But it is not the only means of fast surfing while on the move. Thanks to the mobile telephony standard LTE, speeds of up to 100 MBit/s are now theoretically already possible with mobile devices such as the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S4. This corresponds to the speed of glass-fiber networks. However, LTE is a premium service with charges, and will probably stay that way in the coming years.

Who is the fastest?

In order to let the Internet into our lives and open up new possibilities for us, alongside availability there is also the question of the speed of data transfer. Here Google plans to ring in a new era. The broad-band Internet project named Google Fiber is intended to make speeds of up to 1 GBit/s possible. Thus, according to Google, it would be 100 times faster than an average DSL connection and still five times as fast as the quickest current glass-fiber connections, which run at 200 MBit/s.

The broad-band Internet project named Google Fiber is intended to make speeds of up to 1 GBit/s possible.

And what will fiber Internet do for users? It will definitely provide more convenience at home and new opportunities. Full-HD videos, online games and music services will be downloadable with practically no waiting time. Internet television could finally become reality and exploit its full potential. Several programs could be recorded simultaneously and stored either on a hard drive or in the Cloud. Naturally these luxuries will not be made available for nothing. Google Fiber at full speed is expected to cost at least 70 US dollars per month.

Scott Cleland, Internet analyst and president of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy focused on the future of Internet, regards glass-fiber technology as one of the main components for the next generation of WiFi: “The main implication of Google Fiber in urban areas specifically would be that it could in turn enable much faster WiFi mesh networks, the next generation of WiFi, just like Google Fiber is the next generation of wired broadband. Reliable, fast, un-tethered broadband for portable video viewing is what urbanites want. Thus the significance of Google Fiber is that it could be an important catalyst in meeting that video portability need in urban markets.”

At present Google Fiber is still being established and initially will only be offered in Kansas City (USA). Austin (USA) was recently chosen as the second city. But the rest of the USA and the world will have to wait a long time for the super-fast Google Fiber.

By 2015 the number of devices connected to the Internet is expected to rise to 15 billion.

Relieving pressure, acceleration, efficiency

With all these plans for the future, intended to help more and more people to get a faster and faster Internet connection, one existential question arises: How robust is today’s Internet really? In the context of CES in Las Vegas at the start of this year, the international mouthpiece for forward-looking technologies, MIT Technology Review, produced the following headline: “Your Gadgets Are Slowly Breaking the Internet”.

And in truth the figures forecasted by Intel give cause for alarm. By 2015 the number of devices connected to the Internet is expected to rise to 15 billion. This would be a load on an unprecedented scale. This is why research is taking place worldwide on how to relieve the pressure on the WWW. One of the principal problems is communication of individual receiving devices with each other, which has reached almost absurd proportions. Today smartphones, tablets and PCs communicate with each other via Cloud services and exchange data that are scattered around the world somewhere on servers. This happens even if the devices are lying on top of a desk only a few centimeters apart.

One possible solution is called Named Data Networking (NDN) and amounts to a new Internet architecture. Here the user calls up the file name on the Internet, and no longer the IP address as was usual up to now. The advantage of this would be that files are exchangeable between devices, and the copy of the file that is on the nearest server or the nearest device would be accessed. According to the project manager Lixia Zhang, this would not only speed up communication but also lighten the load on servers worldwide, as today there are many data centers from which thousands of people access the same file. This relief for the servers would create a significant energy saving and thus save resources.

A further simple way of solving the problem that makes a contribution to easing the pressure is to enable data exchange and synchronization between individual devices without the Internet. Bluetooth is an example of this. However, the range and speed prove to be handicaps here. Those who are on the move and want access to a server or a Cloud therefore inevitably require an Internet connection. In the near future this will not change much.

Future gadgets such as a smartwatch and Google Glass will shake up our Internet habits once again.

Sony

New gadgets, new possibilities

In the future Internet will have to become not only faster but also more efficient. As more and more devices communicate with each other and exchange data, they will place an additional burden on the Internet but will have to make use of new ways of transfer that spare the servers. Who would have thought five years ago that we would be able to dim our lights at home using an iPad and control multi-media systems with a smartphone app?

Future gadgets such as a smartwatch and Google Glass will shake up our Internet habits once again. Then we really will be able to communicate with our car via a watch, as in the Knight Rider TV series in the 1980s, or have information from our surroundings beamed straight to our eyes, as in the blockbuster film Terminator. But all of this and much more will only be possible with a fast, stable and omnipresent Internet connection. And then the search for a hotspot and good connection will finally have come to an end.

The first of February 1995 was the date, when the new Traffic Control Center was opened. Together with the University of Tokyo the metropolitan police they were establishing a system, which is at technologically the cutting edge of what is possible in managing traffic. Since then until now this is a very impressive monument of technology with up to ten meters height of giant displays, thousands of monitors and workstations. It is the heart of the Tokyo traffic management, where all the information gathered on the streets in and around this megacity is coming in, will be evaluated, processed and spread again as valuable information for the traffic participants. A service which is indeed very treasured by everybody who needs to mobile in greater Tokyo.

All the information, which is gathered throughout the area of greater Tokyo is collected within the traffic control center.

www.shifteast.com

“It was the former style to create a huge “centralized” system,”says Mr. Takashi Oguchi, one researcher at the Advanced Mobility research Center at the Institute of Industrial Science, which is part of the University of Tokyo. The scientist there give the project around the Tokyo Traffic Control center the scientific background for the next steps in this development.

Getting information was the first challenge

Naturally the technical possibilities have been improved in the last 17 years. The first step on the way to a more fluid circle of vehicles through the rush hour was the detection of the traffic. Via cameras, helicopters and patrol cars the amount and density of traffic was detected. Valuable information for sure, but the distribution was only possible via radio. But in regular case the information reached the people too late and too indifferent to avoid a traffic jam or conserve it from becoming worse. To gather information and build a picture of the situation on the streets is one thing. But to manage the traffic is a project, which is way more challenging.

Nowadays there are more opportunities for spreading information. It is an evolution which the traffic control center experiences and bringing it to more impact on the real situation. Ultrasonic detectors are gathering information, which is then spreaded within the network of the Tokyo authorities and in the private sector. “The detectors are allocated to be utilized for controlling the signals as well,” explains Professor Oguchi. “And their information is now also applied for producing 'travel speed' information.”

The selection of what is being viewed on the big screens ist flexible.

www.shifteast.com

The “travel speed” is the main output for the people of Tokyo. This number is an estimate of how fast one can bring a distance behind himself within a certain area. It is a forecast of what is the people expecting on their way to the office. Additionally a special radio channel for the center is sending 24 hours the news about the roads of the Tokyo metropolitan area, thousands of information displays are advising the participants to a good way around the zones with the worst problems and the center is able to manage 7000 traffic lights to give the column of cars the maximum of mobility possible.

Although the information collected from the streets has been improved during the existence of the center. 17 000 vehicle detectors and thousands of cameras are collecting even more information about the traffic on the streets of Tokyo. Together with the huge amount of other figures and data the bureau of metropolitan police, where the center is located in the administration of Tokyo, there is a good picture of the situation on the streets is evolving. 24 hours a day operators are processing the mountain of information to a picture on the big screens and provide the information.

Kind of a business case, but not profitable

And the information is spread and made available for private services: “The calculated 'travel speed' based on the detector information is sent to JARTIC (Japan Road Traffic Information Center, an incorporated foundation) where all japanese traffic information collected by public sectors is collected and processed in an integrated manner,” describes Mr. Oguchi. “JARTIC provides traffic information via internet, TV/Radio program, and also provides to private sectors at certain fees.” Last but not least there is kind of a business case as well in this project, naturally far away of being profitable. Only the administration is able to uphold and develop these huge amount of investments, which is needed for such a system.

A special way to bring the information to the people on the road is the VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System), which is using the information provided by JARTIC to send traffic information to the vehicles equipped with the VICS onboard equipment. It was introduced parallel to the system of Tokyo in 1995 and is a nationwide system of intelligent traffic management. Via small boxes in every car the system is able to spread the actual information via special FM broadcasts, infrared or radio wave beacons. In this way the “travel Speed” and the additional traffic information is reaching the people in the cars on their way on the roads.

To keep an overview of the traffic in greater Tokyo is not easy. Even with the advanced technology of Tokyo Intelligent Traffic Management System.

www.shifteast.com

For sure the era of navigation systems and smartphones is bringing new opportunities to the Tokyo traffic management center. Nearly every car in Japan has a powerful navigation on board and a countless amount of apps are offering navigation services for the country. This is not only a way to bring more detailed information in the car. Future and more connected systems can be used to gather more information about the situation of and around the car. The problem is not the technology itself than questions of laws and standards, which are slowing down the speed of this evolution. And Professor Oguchi is looking forward to a paradigm change: “I personally hope that such kind of systems as the 'traffic control center' would become more decentralized, more flexible, and more resilient for any unexpected incident such as earthquake or tsunami disasters.”

The next big effort will be to guide each car individually through the labyrinth of highways, expressways and the innercity roads of Tokyo. The goal is to go into the navigation through the car systems itself, through smartphones and the traffic information boards on the roads. Every car should get a specialized and optimized route for every trip through the city. If this information is received by a critical number of participants there will be an impact of the traffic situation as a whole. But this will need a more close connection between systems like the VICS and other navigation systems in the car or on smartphones and other devices.

From information to warning

That could lead to further ideas like showing each car possible dangerous situations around the corner. Even in this case the first steps are done. For example a pedestrian walks over the road and the car which intends to turn into this street in a few 100 meters is given a warning about what happens around the corner. This is a possibility which could bring a more decentralized cloud system, which Mr. Oguchi is favoring.

Maybe in less than ten years it could be possible to leave the hands of the steering wheel while entering the Tokyo area and being driven by the car itself to the destination guided by the information of the Tokyo traffic control center. The time which is needed to go to work and back again could be used way more productive than guiding a car through stop and go. The technology is already there, problematic is the implementation such powerful systems in the widespread and versatile infrastructure of a modern city like Tokyo.

Even in this ideal of a more efficient future traffic jams will happen. A density of more than 5000 people within one square kilometer in a city of more than 12 million inhabitants in the greater area is not the framework to guarantee a fluid circulation of cars 24 hours a day. But it could help to reduce the pollution of the environment, raise the productivity and the quality of life for the amazing city of Tokyo.

"Shareway" concept by Höweler + Yoon Architecture

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

In their visions for the city of the future, Eric Höweler and his partner Meejin Yoon were occupied with finding solutions for the Boston/Washington region (“Boswash” for short). For example, they considered how it could be possible to overcome the separation between the city and the suburbs. And how commuting between home and the place of work in this area of heavy traffic could become more enjoyable again. In doing so their main vision is to fuse public and individual transport by means of a new kind of mobility platform. This platform in turn is intended to connect existing infrastructure with intelligent networks and flows of traffic.

The Audi Urban Future Initiative is taking forward the approach of the American architects in specific terms. The results will be made into a “city dossier” – a kind of operating instructions for the city of the future. In the process of creating this city dossier, a total of four workshops will take place in 2013 in which experts from AUDI AG, the curator Stylepark and the architects from Höweler + Yoon will exchange ideas.
In the first workshop in Ingolstadt, Eric Höweler recently talked with Audi experts from 14 different departments – among others Product Strategy, Design, Technical Development and Lightweight Construction. The themes ranged from information and infrastructure to energy, material and experience. As Eric Höweler said, “The purpose of the workshops is to find a holistic approach and to consider the problems from many different sides.”

Eric Höweler (Höweler+Yoon Architecture) at the first "city dossier" workshop in Ingolstadt

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

For Höweler the name “Boswash” expresses a new spatial connection that could gain its own identity – growing together through Interstate 95, the vital artery that plays an essential role in the proposals.

Workshop participants AUDI AG and Höweler+Yoon Architecture

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

In the very first workshop it became clear that it is important to have the courage to view the topic of future mobility from a wide variety of points of view and to take an interdisciplinary approach to the theme of mobility. Complex questions were posed, and consideration was given to the strengths of the region. Questions such as the following were at the forefront: What will shape mobility in this region in the future? How will people move about? And what dimensions will specifically need to be added to the concept of “mobility” so that it can face up to the challenges of the future?
In the coming weeks the Audi experts will consider in depth what contribution from their individual department could form part of a potential pilot project in the region. These contributions will then be compared with the specific requirements and needs of the region at the next workshop. It will be held in May 2013, on site in the Boston/Washington region.

Pearl River Delta: the world's biggest city

The Pearl River Delta, or simply PRD, is probably the largest metropolitan system in the world. In order to describe it, in 1990 Rem Koolhaas came up with the idea of the “generic city,” a city without history that develops at random and requires no maintenance: “If it gets too small it just expands. If it gets old it just self-destructs and renews (…) it [the generic city] can produce a new identity every Monday morning.” To observe and describe the reality of the Pearl River Delta today, as presented by the local research group NODE, also means to identify a number of elements of the contemporary city in toto, because there is something of the “generic city” in every city.

Numbers

Spread over an area of 41,698 sq km, the Pearl River Delta has a resident population of just over forty million people, which swells to sixty million if one considers the floating population. Having grown exponentially over the last thirty years—at the end of the 1970s the resident population was around two million—this enormous mass of people live almost entirely in a gigantic metropolitan network that incorporates centers such as Guangzhou (around twelve million inhabitants), Shenzhen (ten million), Dongguan (eight million), Hong Kong (seven million) and another six cities with populations of over three million. Another important node in the system is Macau, a far less populous city (with around 500,000 inhabitants), but equally important for historic, symbolic and economic reasons. Closely interconnected (the average distance between them is no more than an hour’s drive), the principal urban centers of the Pearl River Delta are the gears of a territorial macro-device with a high demographic, productive and infrastructural density, and together these centers constitute the driving force of China’s economic machine.

Histories

The Pearl River Delta is part of the Guangdong region, an area also known as Lingnan, or “south of the mountains.” Its particular historic and geographic conditions differentiate it from the rest of China, and are neatly summed up in the ancient Chinese saying: “The mountains are high, the emperor is far away.” However, even if the emperor is far away, the sea is nearby. Lying at a point where the silk routes of land and sea converge, over the centuries Guangdong has represented a door open to “the world.” As a result, the region has historically been a great laboratory of experimentation for new economic and urban forms, distinct from those of the rest of China but often conditioned by central government. Cut off from the West for over half a century after the Chinese Revolution—except for the two colonial enclaves of Hong Kong and Macau—Guangdong began to reconnect with the world after Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms in 1978. Since then, 150 years of Western industrialization and urbanization have been compressed into thirty years of high-speed growth.

The biggest factory in the world

The PRD’s development is encapsulated in the story of Shenzhen. Little more than a fishing village at the start of the 1980s, with 10,000 residents and a low income per capita, Shenzhen was transformed by Deng Xiaoping into China’s first Special Economic Zone: a “Hong Kong of the People’s Republic.” Its population was initially estimated at one million, but in over three decades it has increased to ten million. At the same time the manufacturing volume and GDP have expanded and are now the highest of all Chinese cities. A similar situation has occurred in the nearby city of Dongguan. Across all the manufacturing areas of the PRD, known as “the biggest factory in the world,” working conditions resemble those of early Western industrialization: long working hours, low wages and high social pressure. The case of the Hua Qiang Bei district (China’s No.1 Electronics Street) is different. Here the crossbreeding of industry, commerce and housing has given rise to a vital and changing urban system with “efficient congestion.”

Identity vs. infrastructure (Balance is more)

The factory-territory of the PRD has been equipped with a hefty transport infrastructure to move goods in the most rapid and efficient way. The creation of a new “fluid” identity has been facilitated by a top-down planning process, aimed at removing history and local identities. But there is also energy of a different kind in the Pearl River Delta, such as the strong connotations of the two ex-colonies of Hong Kong and Macau. At the same time, the pressing demand for equilibration and sustainability in the system is accentuated by increasing social unease. The exponents of the NODE group hope that by overcoming the production logic of “more is more” and the symmetrical problems of “more is less,” it may be possible to usher in a new era of “balance is more,” a graduated equilibrium between identity and infrastructure.

This text is based on a conversation between Guido Musante and Doreen Heng Liu (NODE).

This article was first published in DOMUS, issue 960.

Anti-works and anti-city

A ação é a pura manifestação expressiva da obra—action is a pure expressive manifestation of the work. This is how the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica described his artistic vision and the essence of his famous Parangolés, garment sculptures that interact with the movements of the human body, assuming not only a form but also a “soul.” Each Parangolé combines the myth of the dancing Maenads with the dazzling and lively spirit of the streets of Rio de Janeiro—an unpredictable magic that is both individual and collective. At the opposite (and rather more universal) end of a theoretical street classification in Brazilian salsa are the streets of São Paulo, a city that in a metaphorical image of the circus is the “whiteface” clown at least as much as Rio is the “auguste.” These streets are the evidence of a rigid city vision: “works” in which action is in no way contemplated as an expressive manifestation, let alone as a social and environmental one.

São Paulo from above

Viewed from above, São Paulo seems to go on forever. With nearly twenty million inhabitants, this metropolitan area is one of the most highly populated in South America, as well as one of the most complex and problematic. Since the 1930s, the city’s growth has been shaped
by massive public investment, particularly in the road network. In this still ongoing process, the role of strategic priority reserved for private means of transport has been detrimental to alternative systems of public transport. This has not only resulted in the
formation of a highly inflexible and largely congested infrastructural grid, but also, in broader and more problematic terms, in a process of unbalanced urbanization that has led to a drastic reduction of population density in central areas and an increased density in peripheral and border districts. As a consequence of these town planning policies, rained from on high onto the land below, São Paulo’s growth has generated adverse effects of regression for territorial and social mobility.

Emblematic cases

In many cases, São Paulo’s process of formation has been based on drastic population resettlement operations in the area and a radical rewriting of local society. A case in point is the area lying between Berrini Avenue and Pinheiros Marginal, in the southern part of the city. Since the 1990s, a shopping area, hotels and luxury houses have been built here, also financed by state capital. The over 50,000 inhabitants of the Água Espraiada favela, demolished to make space for the new and exclusive “global enclave,” therefore instigated a series of illegal occupations, with the effect being random blotches of social unease. In other cases, similar processes have generated very different results. One of these is Cidade Nova Heliopólis, which was established in 1970 to rehouse seventy families from the district of Vila Prudente and grew to become Brazil’s biggest favela with a population of over 100,000. However, this growth was accompanied by the development of a spontaneous and informal economic system and an efficient network of streets and services for communal use. Today Heliopólis is no longer a favela but a bairro—a district—that can offer services to the whole metropolis.

Urban-Think Tank at São Paulo

One of the most evident and dramatic consequences of São Paulo’s urban growth is the rapid loss of efficiency in the consolidated and “rigid” infrastructural systems. In response to this situation, new methods and modes of intervention have been developed by Urban-Think Tank—a group of architects founded in Caracas by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, with an office in São Paulo as well as in Zurich (their head office), Caracas and New York. Having become more than a purely physical phenomenon (carrier “X” has to move from “A” to “B”), vehicular mobility is addressed by the group as part of a vast and interrelated urban dynamic that sees the interaction of different kinds of mobility: from economic to social. No longer a separate issue, transport becomes an open and flexible device, interconnecting with various aspects of everyday life, the search for means of subsidence, the environment, and individual and collective wellbeing. New systems of mobility arise to enable and inspire productive activity and informal social relationships: able to “bring alive” the street, and with it the city.

Urban Parangolé

In Urban-Think Tank’s concrete utopia, mobility is transformed into a device for interrelation between individuals. As U-TT claims, even devices initially conceived as static can be reprogrammed—permanently or temporarily—and made to open up to flexible and diversified activity. Is this a new kind of informal town planning, a “Parangolé town planning” open to human spontaneity and expression? Is it possible to plan (but perhaps even this term is no longer adequate) infrastructural and architectural works without inhibiting the eclectic vitality of individual actions, pure (and impure) expressive manifestations of the “city”? We don’t have a sure answer, but it’s a good thing that someone is trying to do it.

This text is based on conversations between Guido Musante and Urban-Think Tank.

This article was first published in DOMUS, issue 961.

Traffic in downtown São Paulo.

© Ligia Nobre

According to a survey jointly produced by nongovernmental organization Rede Nossa São Paulo and the Instituto Brasileiro De Geografia E Estatistica and presented during Mobility Week (September 16 to 22, 2012), 80 percent of Paulistanos consider traffic conditions to be poor or terrible, while 65 percent say that they would leave their car at home if they had transportation alternatives. The survey also shows that, of the goals set by the current municipal executive for public transportation, none of the sixty-six kilometers of dedicated bus lanes planned for the city has progressed beyond the call for bids stage, and twenty-eight of the thirty-eight kilometers slated for renovation have not progressed beyond the call for bids stage, among other shortcomings. While the metro, at 74.2 kilometers distributed over five lines in a territory of 1,523 square kilometers, grows at a slow and insufficient pace, expansion of the car fleet is accelerated by the national economic stimulus policy through tax cuts to the auto industry, increase in household income (especially among the middle class), and easier credit access.

An empty subway car in São Paulo.

© Ligia Nobre

This situation is the result of both a history of public policies directed toward private transportation and a lack of integrated urban mobility planning, as well as insufficient investment in public and nonmotorized transportation and infrastructure. Despite it being required by federal law since 2001 and by the City Development Plan since 2002, the municipality of São Paulo does not have an urban mobility plan. As pointed out in a recent manifesto presented by nongovernmental organizations to the municipal legislative assembly during a Mobility Week event: São Paulo needs transparency. And a first step is the participatory and democratic development of a municipal urban mobility plan—for the short, medium, and long term—coordinated with environmentally responsible land-use planning that’s compatible with municipal, state, and national legislation directives.

Paulistanos need to develop a more strategic governance model, gathering public and private actors, to effectively intervene in the mobility infrastructure of the biggest metropolis in South America, one that is also part of the seventh largest economy in the world. In October 2012, municipal elections will take place in Brazil against the backdrop of weak political debate, a mobility crisis in many cities, and deep socioeconomic changes. The city of São Paulo is in the second round of a mayoral election between two candidates (Jose Serra of the Social Democratic Party, an associate of the current mayor, and Fernando Haddad of the governing Workers’ Party), and it faces an interesting moment: Will voters maintain the status quo, or will they sense the urgency to actively collaborate with the government and encourage it to make strides toward a more sustainable city?

The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 is presented to the American architecture practice Höweler + Yoon Architecture for their proposed concept for modern urbanization in the Boston/Washington metropolitan region.

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

John Thackara stated that Höweler + Yoon Architecture's project called Shareway was selected by the jury “on the basis that it was the most thoroughly resolved response to the competition brief. They concluded that it has the potential to be realized, at least in part, within the 2030 timeframe prescribed by the competition. The jury also appreciated Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s thorough research into its social and economic context, and the fact that it involves both social as well as technical innovation at a system-wide level—especially its core concept of 'opportunity without ownership'. It was important, too, that real architectural quality is evident in the execution of the winning project.”

Thackara went on to analyze each concept developed by the competing architects—CRIT, Höweler + Yoon Architecture, NODE Architecture & Urbanism, Superpool, Urban-Think Tank—and spoke in high regard of their visions that aim for global applicability.

He applauded “Superpool’s highly original online loyalty platform, called PARK, which harnesses the power of social networks to increase the use of shared transport, reduce the presence of parked private cars, and thereby free up space on Istanbul’s back streets for shared social and cultural activities.”

Thackara went on to note “the remarkable design tools and catalogues, with the family name of Being Nicely Messy, created by the Mumbai-based collective CRIT. For CRIT, mobility in the abstract is neither a positive nor negative value; what matters is a city's capacity to foster valuable connections and transactions among diverse populations. In that spirit, their project sets out to help different stakeholders in the city explore near-future development options collaboratively—rather than, as now, as non-communicating adversaries.”

Regarding NODE Architecture & Urbanism's concept for the Pearl River Delta, John Thackara stressed “the radical concept of 'cloud logistics' and buried transport infrastructure proposed by the design firm. NODE’s proposal reasserts cure presence and sociality of people on the truck and pollution-damaged streets of the ‘World Factory’ that has grown to occupy the Pearl River Delta in China."
Finally, John Thackara applauded “the socially inclusive and joyful celebration of movement for its own sake—in both physical and social ways—in the multi-dimensional, multi-velocity Parangolé concept developed by Urban-Think Tank for São Paulo in Brazil."

The jury selected the winning proposal based on project presentations made by the architects the previous day. Jury members included: architect Diana Barco, Stylepark AG co-founder and curator of the Audi Urban Future Initiative, Christian Gärtner, author and designer Adam Greenfield, social entrepreneur Harish Hande, editor and architect Wang Lu, architect Jürgen Mayer H., Audi Chairman of the Board of Management Rupert Stadler, and filmmaker and journalist Yeşim Ustaoğlu).

All five urban mobility visions are on view at Hasköy Spinning Factory in Istanbul throughout October 26, 2012.

The winning concept

Shareway: Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Boston, USA

Höweler + Yoon’s vision for the future of mobility in Boston/Washington 2030.
http://www.audi-urban-future-initiative.com (initiator of mooove.com)

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

Höweler + Yoon Architecture envision Shareway for the northeastern region of the United States that reaches from Boston to Washington, D.C.. Shareway is a mobility platform and operating system that restructures the relationships between property and access, allowing users to move along efficient mobility networks while remaining free of car and home ownership. Through a combination of physical infrastructure (hardware) and intelligent networks (software), Shareway makes travel effortless and reconfigures the structure of cities and suburbs. Proximity is a function of time and location. Geography is negotiated by speed. Distance is displaced by access. Convenience is remapped through new conveyance.

"Shareway" concept by Höweler + Yoon Architecture

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

U-TT was established in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1998 by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner as codirectors. Since 2007, Brillembourg and Klumpner have taught in New York at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where they founded the Sustainable Living Urban Model Laboratory (S.L.U.M. Lab), and, since 2010, they hold the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at ETH/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

Projects and Awards

Among the firm’s recently completed projects is the Urban Metro-Cable System (2010) in Caracas. Integrated into the city’s existing transportation system, it was conceived through a cross-disciplinary and participatory approach to urban planning that involved a public symposium attended by architects, planners, activists, and barrio leaders to put forth innovative alternatives for urban mobility.

Grotão Community Center (under construction) is a mixed-use project located in the heart of the Paraisópolis favela of São Paulo, an isolated area where erosion and mudslides have rendered the site a primarily inaccessible void in the city’s dense fabric. The terraced design stabilizes the site, transforms Grotão into a natural arena that reestablishes circulation connections, and introduces social programs, including sports facilities, urban agriculture, public space, transportation infrastructure, replacement housing, and a music school. The partners are recipients of the Swedish Association of Architects’ 2010 Ralph Erskine Award for their innovative efforts to improve living conditions in some of the world’s poorest communities and the Holcim Awards Gold 2011 Latin America for the Grotão Community Center.

Metro Cable in
San Agustín, Caracas, Venezuela (2007-2010)

© Urban-Think Tank

Metro Cable in San Augustín, Caracas, Venezuela (2007-2010)

© Urban-Think Tank

Grotao Community Center in São Paulo, Brazil (2009-2012)

© Urban-Think Tank

Rusaifah Community Center Vertical Gym #5 in Amman-Russaifah, Jordan (2010)

© Urban-Think Tank

Architects

Alfredo Brillembourg received his master’s degree in architectural design from Columbia University in 1986 and earned a second architecture degree from the Central University of Venezuela in 1992. Since 1994, he has been a member of the Venezuelan Architects and Engineers Association and a guest professor at the University José Maria Vargas, the University Simon Bolívar, and the Central University of Venezuela.

Hubert Klumpner graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1993 and received a master’s degree in architecture and urban design from Columbia University in 1995. Since 2001, he has been urbanism consultant of the International Program for Social and Cultural Development in Latin America (OAE and UNESCO).

Local curator: Ligia Nobre

Collaborators: ETH / Swiss Institute of Techonology Zurich, Columbia University New York / SLUM Lab

Metropolitan Region: São Paulo, Brasil

Rapid urbanization throughout São Paulo’s greater metropolitan region has created an urban condition in which the established, rigid systems of mobility are no longer effective. The modernist idea of what the city should be no longer matches the reality of what the city has become. Our project is a direct response to a framework that no longer functions effectively, and we aim to develop new methods and modes of mobility as a reaction to this current situation. To this end, we envision flexible mobility systems that will both enable and inspire spontaneous, informal gatherings and productive activity as a means to revive the street, while simultaneously addressing concerns about transportation, livelihood, health, and environment. Surfaces that have been viewed as static can be reprogrammed, either permanently or temporarily, to make them more flexible and multifunctional and open them to a greater diversity of activity. Hybrid energy systems and their connection to new modes of mobility can also be explored.

São Paulo

© Urban-Think Tank

We are interested in mobility not merely in the physical sense of moving from point A to point B, but in greater definitions of mobility, including economic, social, and cultural mobility. Mobility is not simply about reaching a destination, but about transforming the individual. The aim of our research is to determine the opportunities for these new methods and modes within São Paulo. São Paulo is one of the most vibrant cities in South America, with a greater metropolitan population of almost twenty million and a long history of both formal and informal development. Since the 1930s, government investment has been geared toward the growth of an extensive car infrastructure, a trend that has affected investment in alternative modes of mass transit and resulted in current issues of congestion and infrastructure limitations. This is a key component of the larger, unequal urbanization process, in which the population density in the central region of the city is reduced, while the occupation of peripheral areas increases. As a consequence, the majority of people within the metropolis face both social and territorial immobility. For current and future Paulistas, we must negotiate a balance in space and pace within the city.

Innovative new modes and pathways of transport are needed to make São Paulo an accessible and inclusive space for all of its inhabitants. To achieve this, we are examining the current programs and pathways in both favelas and downtown areas to discover new patial possibilities and ways to bridge the divide in mobility between these two spaces. We are interested in reprogramming and reimagining systems and surfaces in order to imbue them with activity, life, and purpose, thereby engendering community and revitalizing spaces across São Paulo’s vast urban landscape.

São Paulo

© Urban-Think Tank

For example, it comes as no surprise that, in the late eighteenth century, one of the first concerns of the colonial rule in India was to accumulate knowledge about different routes that would help them strengthen their rule.

In the battlefield that is the contemporary city, every cartographic technique—from Street View to municipal charts, and from GIS (geographic information system) to OpenStreetMap—possesses a politics of its own, whether deliberate or inadvertent. Enter the word Dharavi into the search box of Google Maps, and you'll find yourself abruptly catapulted into what appears to be a large patch of light yellow nothingness wedged between two suburban railway lines in central Mumbai. In this yellow-tinted cartographic void, the surrounding tangle of roads melts away and detail is conspicuously absent. As large patches of nothingness go, one quickly notes that this one is strategically positioned—a stone's throw from the Bandra-Kurla Complex, an area which after decades of northward expansion has become the city's financial and commercial epicenter, and just as close to many of the city's most important commuter hubs. Switch over to satellite view, however, and the scene unexpectedly transforms—the bland void is replaced by a speckled, irregular carpet of urbanity teeming with life.

The street bazaar on Mahatma Gandhi Road in Dharavi is always a hive of activity.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

Dharavi is revealed for what it is: one of Mumbai's districts, home to several hundred thousand residents and nearly as many small but vibrant businesses, tightly-packed workshops, crowded basement factories, ceaselessly industrious enterprises, liminal ateliers suspended in a spatial limbo between inside and outside, hi-tech print labs juxtaposed with low-tech tool shops and countless miniscule grocers—not to mention over one hundred places of worship. This throbbing, pulsating urban landscape is often characterised as Asia's largest slum, hemmed in on all sides by some of the most valuable real estate in India's financial capital. But it is unique only in its strategic position. Otherwise, it is emblematic of how half the city's population lives.

High-rise housing projects built under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority are slowly replacing locally developed low-rise settlements.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

Zoom in towards block No. 4/6/12, past the railway lines, and the headquarters of what is probably Dharavi's only resident design practice spring into focus. Not that it is in any way discernable from its surroundings, since urbz resides on the top floor of a typical three-storey structure, the uneven product—like its neighbours—of several decades of incremental growth and unabated adaptation. Accessing the office involves scaling several narrow, uneven flights of stairs, then clambering up a near-vertical metal ladder.

Work proceeding on the construction project in Shivaji Nagar with contractor Babu Bhai. Highquality rmc was delivered in small quantities to unplanned low-rise, high-density neighbourhoods such as Rafiq Nagar (Deonar).

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

Dharavi is home to between half a million and one million people—no one is really sure of the exact figure since no recent and reliable demographic statistics exist. A 1986 survey conducted by the National Slum Dwellers Federation counted 530,225 people grouped into 106,045 households, and a total of 80,518 structures, but the numbers have certainly grown since then. If the estimate of half a million to one million inhabitants is correct, its density is somewhere between four and eight times Manhattan's—a reality that is almost unimaginable, to a Western observer at least, if one considers that its buildings are on average three stories high. That Dharavi is a slum, however, is a notion that Matias Sendoa Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, the founders of urbz, resist. Terminology, they point out, like cartography, carries baggage, and defining the district as a slum designates it as a terminally diseased district where demolition and redevelopment is inescapable—a condition that amounts to something of a wet dream for the administration and the city's developers, who are only too aware of the multibillion-euro value of the land it stands on.

urbz members Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava in Savda Ghevra, a resettlement colony on the outskirts of Delhi, studying local construction processes.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

Reconsidering it as an infrastructurally underserved urban district, as urbz does, is an attempt to linguistically dodge preconceptions and focus instead on the remarkable potentialities latent in Dharavi's extraordinary socio-urbanistic make-up. As the epicenter of Mumbai's light industry and artisans, it is a phenomenally productive reality in modern Mumbai. One conservative estimate places the annual value of goods produced in Dharavi at 500 million dollars (400 million euros), which, if one considers the infrastructural investments (or lack thereof) that went into making it, probably qualifies it as the most efficient and productive district in the city.

Khotachiwadi, 2010—currently. urbz’s engagement with Khotachiwadi builds on more than three years of work aimed at saving the distinct personality of this habitat.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

As if to acknowledge that cities are complex entities that don't lend themselves to generalizations, Echanove, an urbanist of Swiss-Spanish origin, and Srivastava, who studied social and urban anthropology, chose not to lump all their activities under the umbrella of the urbz office. In parallel to urbz they run several activities, among which the Institute of Urbanology, a research center based in Goa devoted to understanding the incremental developmental processes and daily practices that define the identity of cities such as Bogotá, Tokyo, Istanbul, New York, New Delhi, Goa and Mumbai, yet elude representation through statistics and cartography alone. In contrast to the data-driven approach that has defined efforts to understand cities in recent decades, the practice of "urbanology" relies on understanding and documenting urban ecosystems through direct engagement with people and places—charting homegrown practices in the fields of housing, artisanship and trade, and the physical and theoretical spaces where these fields converge. To make this possible, the "urbanologist" must borrow from the social sciences: "At most times," they write in a text on their blog airoots/eirut, "the urbanologist and the anthropologist are one and the same."

City Makers, Dharavi, 2009. Survey of the district’s workers. Ramchandra with his son Lakhan repairing domestic appliances.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

This quasi-anthropological approach towards the observation of urbanity derives largely from the belief that designing for a context such as Dharavi—or any urban condition, for that matter—must necessarily occur with the involvement of its inhabitants, the end users. For urbz, Dharavi is a kind of laboratory where a new bottom-up, self-organizational approach to urban design can be bred. Taking a leaf from Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour's "Learning from Las Vegas," they claim that learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary. urbz highlights, for example, the contrast between the government's response to the housing crisis, i.e. large-scale production of low-cost housing blocks that quickly turn into vertical slums, and the far more numerous housing units of far better quality being built by contractors and end users at lower prices in Mumbai's many unplanned settlements.

Deepak Kunchikor’s Shaolin Kung Fu Class at the Shelter, a community initiative supported by urbz in Dharavi.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

A specific example offered in support of this thesis, and later the subject of an urbz workshop at Sir JJ College of Architecture, is a house built by contractor Amar Madhukar Nirjankar in the Utkarsh Nagar neighbourhood for 2.5 lakh rupees, or approximately 4,860 dollars (3,850 euros). In the narrative of urbanology, the contractor is a key character: He condenses into a single persona all those qualities of pragmatism, ingenuity, business savvy and political astuteness that make the machine that is Dharavi tick, despite the absence of any formal planning or infrastructural investment. Echoing David Harvey, Echanove and Srivastava perceive the city in general, and Dharavi in particular, not as the place where the factory exists but rather a factory in itself, in which producer and product are one and the same, and in which the contractor—together with the postindustrial artisan and the hardware dealer—is a vital node in the social structure.

Mumbai Contra-CT, 2011-2012. Affordable housing seminar and workshop at Sir JJ College of Architecture, where students learn from local contractors while working with them in various neighbourhoods. In the pictures, contractor Pankaj Gupta talking to JJ students. 

Photo by Priyanka Chharia

Echanove and Srivastava are acutely aware that the continued existence of Dharavi, let alone any improvement of its infrastructure and living conditions, depends on how the debate around its future is framed. For its part, despite the well documented productivity of its workshops, the government has squarely defined it an "informal settlement" and placed it in the hands of the Slum Redevelopment Authority, which unsurprisingly announced its intention to raze the district to make way for the development of new real estate. "Dharavi," the municipality asserts, clearly unconcerned about concealing its voracity for developable real estate, "is the opportunity of the millennium." Current inhabitants would be offered some kind of tenure—in most cases tiny apartments, potentially elsewhere—but the vast majority of the enormous profits generated would unquestionably end up in the pockets of the developers. urbz and the Institute of Urbanology counters this with a sort of artistic guerrilla action, disseminating through its blogs perfectly credibly images of Dharavi streetscapes merged with urban vistas of Turin, Tokyo and other cities. The message is clear: since the incremental growth of cities is the default form of urban development all over the world, Dharavi is everywhere, and the problem of integration between new and old cannot be simply swept under the carpet.

Urban System Studio, Goa, 2011. The workshop was developed with the Royal University College of Art, Stockholm. Pauli and Solano talk about the local development of Pilerne village.

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi

Dharavi + The World, Perugia, 2011. The Mashup workshop revealed the common hidden dynamics in radically different urban contexts. These collages were produced during an all night workshop at Festarch. 

© Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi, Collage by Chiara Proietti

Amar’s house, Utkarsh Nagar, Bhandup, 2011. Part of a diagram showing the construction process for a two-storey house, including details of the materials used, labour time spent and total cost in rupees. Amar Madhukar Nirjankar is the contractor and architect who oversaw the project.

This article was first published in Domus, issue 955.