About Vices and Prophets of Future Cities

“Modern cities are uniformly dumb”

Figure 1: The truth about smart cities: 'In the end, they will destroy ... - theguardian.com

“Modern cities are ill conceived... not smart, but, on the contrary, are uniformly dumb and therefore doomed...”. The author of this diagnosis is Stephen C. Rose – a New York writer, philosopher, fighter for civil rights. He is also known for his work in the UN, where, in particular, he was the editor of the magazine “CHOICES”. Rose was awarded a number of prizes for his activities. Recently he appears regularly in print with publications on the problems of urban planning.

Studying the structure of modern cities and the way of their residents’ life, Rose found a number of disadvantages that make these systems fundamentally wrong. Among them:

1. Distribution of street space in favor of vehicles and to the detriment of pedestrians;

2. High population density and the total number of urban people, resulting in the deterioration of the ecological situation, growth of real estate prices and much more;

3. Presence of huge buildings covering the sunlight and acting overwhelmingly on the mind;

4. A large element of spontaneity in layout planning, impossibility of a rational route designing and considerable remoteness of different places from each other;

5.  Tough separation of available housing in terms of affordability, comfort, etc.

These deficiencies cannot be corrected within the existing cities, therefore the only way to remove them is the creation of new settlements. Rose finds the origins of the ideas that can provide the basis for new building and construction from C. Alexander, C. Doxiadis and J. Fresco. It is obvious that these names should be added with the name of the General Designer of SkyWay transport A.Yunitskiy, who has performed two researches on the problems of sustainable urban development in the early 2000-ies against grants from the UN.

On the way to a perfect city

Christopher Wolfgang Alexander is an architect and designer, creator of more than 200 architectural projects worldwide, in particular in California, Japan and Mexico. He is one of the founders of the “pattern language” in architecture that today has become a kind of a mainstream in urban planning. The basic Alexander’s idea is that citizens should design their environment themselves, as all the most beautiful places on earth were created not by architects, but by ordinary people. This task could be simplified by patterns that meet the simplest questions: how high should a window be, how many floors should be in a building, what area in the community should be allocated for green spaces, etc. Thus, an architect seeks to combine the individuality of each citizen with the general principles of arranging the space of their life together. Its consequence should be adequacy of the environment to the human himself.

Figure 2: SkyWay Linear city

Another prophet of future cities a Greek Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis gained worldwide fame as the leading architect of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan as the father of Ekistics architectural idea and the Ecumenopolis concept. A city is treated in this theory as a dynamic phenomenon developing in space and time in such a way that the overall arrangement of space would allow the development without destroying urban “fabric” and the loss of scale. The plan of Islamabad was conceived as a new city with cars separated from people providing easy and inexpensive access to public transport and utilities.

Jacque Fresco, whose name appears third in the list of ideologists of “smart settlements”, developed concepts in the sense of holistic design, worked out the ideas of a passive home, cities with sustainable development, resource saving and overall automation. Jacque Fresco believed that energy and resources spent on creating mass destruction weapons would be better spent on improving the quality of life and achieving an optimal symbiotic relationship of man with nature. He suggested the project of a circular city, which was inspired by a tooth-wheel, promoted the concept of a “sandwich house”, which consisted mainly of prefabricated components made of aluminum.

In the book “Looking Forward”, co-author of which Jacque Fresco was, describes a cybernetic community in which there is no need to work and members of the community acquire other values. “The Venus Project” developed by Jacque Fresco declared the goal to establish a social system on the basis of resource-saving economic model based on the extensive use of technical and technological solutions.

The missing and main element

Combining the ideas of Alexander, Doxiadis, Fresco and others, Rose comes to the formation of the concept of a city where living will be maximally comfortable, affordable and economically viable. First of all, the right cities should be pedestrian. All objects in them should be within a walking distance. The height of buildings should not exceed 3–4 floors and the area of the entire settlement – 1 square mile. The population ― maximum 10,000 people. The city's communication with neighboring cities is provided by linear transport systems capable to transfer people and cargo at high speeds. Such a description is in harmony with the concept of SkyWay linear cities authored by Anatoly Yunitskiy. Moreover, Yunitskiy specifies the type of transport that would be capable to allow to abandon cars, being undoubtedly the main problem of cities.

Figure 3: SkyWay Line connecting city with airport

“Streets and crossroads, squares and parking lots, bridges and viaducts, garages, gas stations and much more in modern cities are built for the car and in favor of the car. It subdued cities to a greater extent than man, who has built them. Man, who, as a biological species, is in need of quite other conditions,” says Anatoly Yunitskiy in his monograph. Moreover, the processes of the urban environment formation are subordinate to the car, and man himself is forced to obey it. “Millions of people in cities sit down daily at the car wheel and spend hours in a confined space of small volume in a state of stress, inhaling dirty air saturated with vapors of fuels and lubricants, exhaust fumes from the traffic, the fumes of heated asphalt.”

The impossibility of normal man’s life in the city congested with cars is obvious. However, there was simply no alternative to this mode of transport until recent times. In addition, as emphasized by Yunitskiy, “the main reason for the formation of cities, metropolises and mass concentration of people is the provision of transport accessibility. The availability of jobs, educational, health and cultural centers, places of mass recreation and entertainment, opportunities to people for physical contact with each other ― that’s what pulled together at first thousands, then millions of people in one place. Thus cities were born. Their spatial image was initially formed by the pedestrian, then, during centuries, a cart driven by a horse, and in the 20th century – the railway (including tram and metro) and the vehicle (including bus and trolley bus). Historically, it was transport that has shaped the spatial image of modern towns and cities, their spatial frame.

Only because of the need to ensure transport accessibility modern cities have such ultra-high concentration of residential and industrial buildings, people and flows of matter and energy, heat and gas exchange associated with them. This leads to the destruction of natural plant communities, pauperization of fauna, changes in microclimate, geological and hydrogeological characteristics of the area, absolute numerical domination of man, as well as extreme anthropogenic transformations of the indigenous landscape. Today up to 50% of all illnesses of people in cities can be attributed to the “city-forming”. First and foremost these are the diseases resulting from crowded habitation and also air pollution, noise, vibration and electromagnetic radiation.”

Figure 4: Giant 50-lane traffic jam in China… http://lifeglobe.net/entry/7004

SkyWay transport systems can become the required solution that would disperse all that is concentrated in the cities. Due to their characteristics they are capable to provide accessibility at distances much larger than in other modes of transport. It means that the need for the concentration of a large number of industrial, social, cultural and other institutions on a small area automatically disappears. There appears the possibility of human settlement in the logic of linear cities. “High-speed “green” transport communications pass along the middle line of such city, along the green lane with 100 m width, over the trees, i.e. at the height of 50 m or more – Anatoly Yunitskiy describes a settlement of the new type. – Green in the sense that they are safe, do not endanger people’s life and health (provided by ecological cleanness, quietness, safety of fast traffic, etc.) and do not disturb the harmony of the natural environment, including landscape. When the length of such city is 50 km and an the average travel speed of 200 km/hour, the maximum travel time for its resident will be 15...20 minutes (from end to end of the city) and the average travel time – 10...15 minutes.

Offices, industrial and other buildings and structures of mass concentration of people will be also located in the middle of the green area of the city and will be within a walking distance for residents. At the distance within 100...500 m between such buildings, it will take a pedestrian not more than 3...5 min to get to them. At the same time each building will have a station of the transport network located on the roof or upper floors, where passengers will be able to get by escalators or high-speed elevators.”

Fig. Linear city 1 – multi-track speedy “green” routes (straight, reverse, reserve ones); 2 – villa development zone; 3 – high-rise office, industrial buildings and structures, cultural, commercial, recreational and other centers; 4 – pedestrian walkways.

Сorrect structure of the city – path to prosperity

According to Rose, the correct arrangement of resting and work places will automatically lead to the prosperity of society as a whole. Such arrangement assumes that all technology and infrastructure that people use will become more energy efficient and safer from an environmental point of view. Automatic devices will control their use and interaction and the cost will be distributed among all members of the community. In addition, accommodation, work and everything else will be integrated within a unified living space, where the population of up to 10,000 people will be optimal from the viewpoint of conditions for the growth of local economy. Rose also lists many other advantages of “smart cities” in comparison to the cities, which he called “uniformly dumb”. The only thing that is not mentioned neither by him nor by other theorists in this field is the technology that would really allow to pass over to a new format of settlement. Naturally, we mean the SkyWay technology.

SkyWay city “will have no traffic congestions, smog, people will not die on the roads, – says Anatoly Yunitskiy in his speech at the international exhibition Smart Cities India. – Children will be able to run barefoot not on the asphalt, but on the grass and parents will not fear for their lives. The entire population will be employed, mainly in the service sector including cultivation of natural food for their families, they will be healthy, nourished and they will have a lot of free time for creativity and self-development, as the working day will be significantly reduced.

Figure 5: SkyWay Linear city

In the same way as elevators in high-rise buildings are included in the cost per square meter of housing, a smart linear city SLC will have not vertical, but horizontal SkyWay elevators that will be included in the cost of residential and infrastructure buildings and structures. The cost per square meter of housing in such cities, built in a completely different, natural logic will be not higher, but, on the contrary, 25–30% lower than in traditional cities.”

To be at home everywhere

The trend towards forming a new approach in urban planning is caused by multiple factors. Unfortunately, most of them are negative. Environmental and social situation in modern cities is on the brink of disaster. International congresses, exhibitions, launched investment and technological programs, numerous publications in media – all this suggests that the time of radical and decisive changes is coming. As at one time mankind switched over from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled one and from living in villages to living in towns – similarly, now we have to make a new transition. The man of the future will be able, like a nomad, to wander constantly, and at the same time, to keep the feeling of home everywhere thanks to an efficient transport. Or, alternatively, to live always in the same place, but to have at any moment a possibility to reach anywhere quickly and comfortably.

“Settlements of the new format will be able to cover and improve all the spheres of human life and society, – writes Stephen Rose, trying to predict the economic and moral consequences of the ongoing transformations. – The company that will be able to implement the new approach in practice will be bigger than Apple and Google combined. The new world order will be based on values similar to those bequeathed to us by Buddha, Confucius and Jesus. They include tolerance, mutual aid and equality.”