Cities of The Future: How Innovation Will Reshape Cities

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, homes in the Greater Toronto Area reached an average price of $760,000 CAD. That’s a colossal increase of over 55% in the last 5 years. Even apartments cost on average more than $500,000 CAD. Toronto is just one of the many examples of cities that fail to provide affordable housing, and it’s about to get much worse. According to a McKinsey report, over 2.5 billion additional people will move to urban centers by 2050. Throughout the world, cities will face challenges regarding affordable housing, traffic jams, environmental issues and even security. Nonetheless, these cities can now count on innovation to decrease the pressure these migratory movements will produce. 

London, for example, is expected to grow by 37%, to reach 11 million residents by 2050. As of 2018, Londoners already spent, on average, 227 hours stuck in traffic. The costs associated with such loss of time is estimated to be around £1,700 per driver. Unless dealt with appropriately, drivers in London are going to suffer even more. That’s where smart cities come in. Simply put, smart cities use technology to gather data via electronic sensors all over the city, and use this data to lower costs, manage assets and increase efficiency. These sensors can help, among other things, with traffic jams. Systems of red lights are extremely complex. Setting the perfect timing for traffic lights is paramount. By using intelligent syncing of traffic signals, sensors can help cities use their infrastructure in the most efficient manner. In developing cities, this could reduce commute time by 5%. In downtown areas, around 30% of the congestion is created by residents looking for parking spots. Smart parking could effectively eliminate any need to slow down to look for parking: download the app and know exactly where to park in a matter of seconds. It would also be a way for cities to use parking spots more efficiently. Some cities have as much as 3.5 parking spots per car. The city maximizes the revenues linked to parking and people go on about their day much more smoothly. These measures may seem insignificant, but smart cities could help shave between 15 and 30 minutes off daily commute.  

Transit is only going to be one of the many challenges that cities will have to deal with in the future. Sustainability will be increasingly important as we try to battle climate change. Smart cities would enable local government to reduce solid waste, increase water savings, and even improve air quality. Beijing, for example, used sensors to track sources of pollution and was able to reduce airborne deadly pollutants by 20% in less than a year. 

While investments to make cities “smart” can help on a lot of different facets, it is still a complement more than a solution. If smart cities are already here, another revolution is coming, and it will have an enormous impact on our cities. 

Self-Driving Cars 

Here’s an interesting fact: our cars are parked 95% of the time. That means two things: cars could be used much more efficiently and we need an enormous amount of space to deal with that.  

Self-driving cars would make driving safer, more enjoyable, and quicker, but they also have the power to completely change the way we set up our cities.  Some have compared the revolution brought by self-driving cars to that of the 1908 Model T - the first car accessible to the masses, brought to our cities. In Seattle, for example, parking spots occupy around 40% of the city. Self-driving cars would mean that we do not need all this space, and therefore would benefit from larger sidewalks. The street you live on is probably relatively short, and fairly useless in terms of transit. It mainly serves one purpose: parking spots. There is no real reason to have cars pass on your street. Your cab can drop you off right in front of your house, but realistically, you could walk the 200 meters that separate your apartment from a much larger street that would be used for self-driving cars to roll around the city. These loops around the neighborhoods could reduce paved areas by around 50%, according to MIT Urban Studies Professor Alan Berger. All this newfound land could be used to build more housing units, parks or other productive spaces. According to a study done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, by switching from car ownership to self-driving taxis, the numbers of cars could be reduced by 80 to 90%,  

Self-driving cars would also unclog urban centers. Living an hour away from work doesn’t seem as problematic if you can work in your car, or even read a book. Paying 20% of the price you would pay for a large house in an urban center would make living in the suburbs much more attractive. If commuting becomes a time where you can do something useful, urban sprawl becomes much more attractive. However, it would benefit families that would already live in the suburbs. According to a study made by Morgan Stanley, productivity gains would be worth $1.3 trillion USD a year in America and $5.6 trillion USD worldwide.  

Self-driving cars are coming. They can help us lower the price of transportation, lower our carbon emission, and reduce commuting time, but will also have a considerable impact on our infrastructure, as well as real estate dynamics.