Tech
How the Internet of Things is affecting urban design
The Internet of Things is coming to a city near you.
That's not a tagline for the latest summer blockbuster or an ad for a swanky coffee shop chain: Regardless of your feelings for the term itself, the 'Internet of Things,' which refers to the plethora of "smart" technologies inundating the market today, is a concept with vast implications for the way we'll live our everyday lives in the coming years.
And it's not just app programmers whose ears perk up whenever Internet of Things enters the conversation. With predictions that 66% of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2050, Internet of Things technology is increasingly drawing the attention of city planners, engineers and architects keen on staying ahead of the curve — they're imagining a world with smart street lamps, smart sidewalks and even smart sewage systems. The possibilities for the Internet of Things in an urban environment are nearly limitless.
While visions of drone deliveries dance like sugar plums in the heads of eager retail corporations, there are still a number of hoops — practical, technical, legal — to jump through before such a futuristic city is logistically possible. So what is realistically in the works for today's ultra connected cities? Mashable spoke with experts to explore the technologies making an impact on our urban spaces.
The world's most wired cities
We're already seeing hints of the potential of the Internet of Things on a large scale today. "Smart cities" like Songdo, South Korea and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi offer glimpses into a future of complete connectedness — though, as of yet, the cities themselves don't exactly look like something out of The Jetsons.
"You look at these cities and they're well designed and very rational, but they typically look like anywhere else," says Paul Salama, senior planner at WXY, an urban design, planning and architectural practice based in New York City. "The Internet of Things is generally invisible."
But groundbreaking advances — visible or not — are being made. Around the world, cities frequently touted as "smart" include Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London. As for American cities, Los Angeles is the world's first to synchronize traffic lights to reduce congestion, and New York City is working on America's first "quantified community," which will monitor data like foot traffic, waste production and energy usage in real-time. In other words, the future is now.
An overwhelming range of possibilities
"I can't honestly think of a field where this won't have some effect," says Jason Kelly Johnson, cofounder and design partner at Future Cities Lab, an experimental design studio, workshop and architectural think tank in San Francisco. "In architecture, specifically, it will in fact shape public space; it will intersect in a visible and tangible way."
The impacts of the Internet of Things on our cities don't begin and end with urban buildings — everything from the morning commute to public parks are incorporating Internet of Things technologies.
IMAGE: FLICKR, DON MCCULLOUGH
Cisco’s Vice President of Industry Solutions and Chief Globalization Officer Wim Elfrinkagrees that the impact will be widespread.
"More and more cities understand the $3 trillion economic opportunity afforded by [the Internet of Everything],
"More and more cities understand the $3 trillion economic opportunity afforded by [the Internet of Everything], and they are taking actions to embrace features that provide greater engagement with citizens — smart parking, smart lighting, energy and waste management," he says. "Energy savings can be increased by 30%, water consumption can be cut in half, crime rates can be lowered significantly and traffic could see a dip of up to 30%," he adds, citing Cisco's recent announcement of its Connected Roadways program, which the company hopes will provide a solution for safer roads and highways, as well as the necessary infrastructure for self-driving vehicles of the future.
Below is a synopsis of some of the ways the Internet of Things may affect major aspects of city life.
- Infrastructure: From sewage systems and water treatment to the way we build highways or parking lots, smart tech — at least in theory — can streamline a city's infrastructure and potentially lead to higher efficiency and eco-friendliness. Today, apps like Waze and HopStop update commuters about public transit and traffic congestion in real-time, and bike-sharing programs are helping urban dwellers get around with ease. Placemeter is an app that takes this one step further by collecting crowdsourced data to actually make predictions about a space, such as how crowded it will be, before you arrive.City planners are accounting for not only the Internet of Things but also the sharing economy and potential for automated vehicles."Highway and traffic planners design things to make driving safe for [human] drivers, basically," says Salama. "I see a future where, if you don't have to worry about [human error], then you can design these spaces in the way that is the most comfortable for a person. Instead of widening the lane, we're going to shrink them, we're going to make it a safe crossing distance for people, we're gonna add a bike lane. It's a pretty exciting vision: The Internet of Things paired with the sharing economy."There's potential for the Internet of Things "big picture" aspects of urban life as well as mobility."We are moving away from consuming power and natural resources on an estimated basis to consumption that is well-defined and measurable," says John Picard, an architect and sustainability expert.
"The traditional model for electricity, for example, has been to make an educated guess.
"The traditional model for electricity, for example, has been to make an educated guess. City planners would say, 'We’ve got 50 square miles and a medium population density, so this merits an 11-megawatt power plant' — which is not accurate or efficient."
Picard believes that we're moving toward a "demand response" smart grid, with which we can determine how much power or how much of a specific resource is required at a given time."Imagine drones equipped with cameras and sensors monitoring our water plants, telling us exactly how much water a plant really needs to meet the demand of the population at an exact moment in the day," he says. - Buildings and architecture: The modern-day building is much more than brick and mortar — tiny sensors create entire networks, providing information about what's happening in spaces at any point in time. Picard cites the example of Enlighted, a company that installs sensors into the lighting fixtures of commercial buildings."These sensors gather data and are able to communicate with one another to improve energy consumption and provide data about exactly what’s happening within the building," he says.The implications for these types of sensors is huge: "Think about what it would mean for a city where every building is connected and able to exchange information freely," says Picard. "In the event of a natural disaster like an earthquake or fire, this could translate to hundreds, if not thousands, of saved lives."
- Public spaces: Public spaces such as parks or sidewalks may also begin to utilize the technology to make city life easier and more efficient."There's a huge potential purely for the capacity of public space to communicate all sorts of things," says Johnson. "Social content, political content, things related to energy consumption and the way we may be able to interlace all this stuff in an urban environment. No longer is an urban space something you design and fix in stone — it's a different way of assembling a city," he says.Another public space that's on the minds of city planners? Airspace — specifically, how it relates to drones.
"The way to think about drones is as a new, potentially disruptive platform,"
"The way to think about drones is as a new, potentially disruptive platform," says Salama. "Some ideas that have been demonstrated are delivery, surveillance and reporting from dangerous hot spots. And gaming, emergency vehicle path clearing and close-distance filming have been discussed. If the technology were to come to urban areas, that would be an issue for planners and architects to tackle — what are the operating heights; safe distances from objects, buildings, people and animals; designated takeoff and landing spots; and designated flights paths (and zoning/easements regulations)." - Lighting, sprinklers and more: Perhaps street lamps aren't the sexiest of technologies, but that could change in the future. Mobeen Khan, enterprise Internet of Things practice leader at AT&T, points to initiatives such as this NYC proposal to turn street lamps into Wi-Fi hotspots, and suggests that "smart" lighting could use sensors for things like increased energy savings and public safety. "In areas that are prone to natural disasters, you can put a seismic sensor that can continuously monitor activity. It becomes a hub for many sensors to collect data and transfer it back," he says.Also on Khan's list of smart technology being incorporated into the "city of the future" are smart sprinkler systems, which save water by monitoring the optimal levels of hydration needed for city parks and urban areas, smart parking meters and prepaid energy management.
Big data, big decisions and even bigger questions
The Internet of Things is inextricably tied to another of today's hottest tech buzzwords: Big Data. Sensor technology provides real-time data that can influence everything from personal comfort on a micro-level, to sustainability and clean energy on a macro-level.
"More than 'big' data, it's about the right data,""More than 'big' data, it's about the right data," says Khan. "Especially around sensor technologies — it's about collecting the right information at the right time and acting upon it."
Sustainability is a common thread in conversations about the Internet of Things and urban areas — a truly connected city, complete with real-time data from its citizens' behaviors, could drastically cut down on pollution and waste.
"From a sustainability and efficiency standpoint, it’s really the only way that we can get control of our electricity infrastructure, as our current system will not work long-term," says Picard.
There's an amazing potential for artistic endeavors, public spaces and city aesthetics as well, Johnson points out.
"Beyond the companies doing things in a big way like IBM and Cisco, you have 'micro' people like us, in the genre of artists and startup technology/architects, who are much more avant garde and trying to sort through not just the technical potential but the creative potential," he says. "We're taking these really complex systems that have been set up by corporations and governments, and trying to find ways to make them legible and interject a human sensibility — finding the creative potential and poetry in systems."
IMAGE: FLICKR, DAVE HERHOLZ
So what's the hold up? If these incredible technologies are already in the works, why isn't every city in the world implementing them?
Cost is obviously a concern. "Who's going to pay for this?" is a question that comes up often, says Khan. Bureaucracies and competing or overlapping government/local entities are another consideration.
"When it comes to smart cities, part of the issues aren't technical," he explains. "If you're deploying a smarter city solution about water, utilities, pedestrian traffic, car traffic... these things fall under the jurisdiction of any number of entities — the city council or private contractors, etc. It's not like selling something to a retailer; there are many different constituencies involved."
Public skepticism plays a role too.
"You have these new, potentially disruptive technologies, and people will say, 'Oh it's too much for the urban environment," says Salama. "There are some issues of people buying into the vision. There is this top-down vision of 'smart cities,' and then there's another vision of people joining in and having ownership of their data."
Security concerns are another setback brought up in almost every conversation about Internet of Things applied to urban spaces: Connected technologies could potentially open up public data to nefarious entities — hackers, cyber criminals and the like.
"The devices that govern many of the systems that hold a city together rely on something called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), which is not smart enough to add a firewall or intrusion detection systems," says Carlos Peláez, director and national practice leader of Coalfire Systems. "Our current infrastructure technology cannot handle the possible enhancements that Internet of Things presents. Individual homes and citizens can make inroads, but urban planning has a long way to catch up," he says.
Picard agrees: "The physical security of the data within the connected city is probably the most significant roadblock to adoption. It will require significant planning, which quite frankly hasn’t happened yet to the degree that it needs to," he says.
Time will tell what our urban areas will look like down the road, but one thing seems certain: The Internet of Things isn't going away anytime soon. Johnson predicts that the future of urban design will incorporate Internet of Things technology in surprising ways.
"Look at what happened with the iPhone — it took eight years for us to figure out the potential of what that represents, with apps and peripherals, etc.," he says. "[Internet of Things in the sense of city technologies] probably won't just take the form of architecture or furniture or street appliances — it might take the form of lots of different, radical things that we haven't necessarily thought of."
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