ana016: The Future of Cities

In a rare in-person episode, Tim and Joe speculate about how technological trends will shape the future of cities.

Use hashtag #ana016 to reference this episode in a tweet, post, or comment

View full show notes at anarchitecturepodcast.com/ana016.

Intro

FINALLY WE CAN TALK SERIOUSLY ABOUT FLYING CARS

Discussion

• Joe’s report from the future: Living in Australia is like living 15 years ago in the US
  • Actually, Amazon Australia Launched 3 weeks after we recorded this episode. WE MAKE THE FUTURE HAPPEN
  • Australia’s NBN: National Boondoggle Network
  • By the time it’s installed, it’s obsolete
  • Crowding out private investment
  • A perfect example of why governments shouldn’t build infrastructure
  • Status quo thinking
  • Grandiose infrastructure projects vs. necessary maintenance
  • The Strong Towns approach
• Smart Cities
  • Sensors and centralized management
  • Algorithms and AI
  • Informing future development
  • Roads and complexity – Can AI optimize traffic?
  • Smart grids – balancing demand
  • Hayekian knowledge problem
  • How useful is all of this information?
  • What’s the real benefit?
  • Incremental development vs. political grandstanding
  • Joe’s market solution for traffic light priority
  • To optimize road systems, privatize them
• Automated Vehicles
  • A giant leap, or incremental adoption?
  • Communication, reaction time, and automatic re-routing
  • Vast improvements in vehicle safety
  • Induced demand
  • Expanding the suburban catchment area: an exponential relationship
• Urbanization, Suburbanization and Exurbanization
  • Telecommuting
  • Robots building robots to build other things
  • Benefits of face to face meetings
  • Milton Keynes – No relation to defunct economists
  • Patrik Schumacher’s EXTREME view: a 15 minute commute is too far
  • Economies of agglomeration
  • “Cities are the brains that direct the rural muscle”
  • Ed Glaeser – Triumph of the City
  • Skyscrapers and Universities
  • “We could be the new Pittsburgh!”
  • Another Adelaide boondoggle – the new medical precinct
  • Adelaide’s coming rental market crash
  • Foreign buyers will lose their shirts
  • A paucity of safe investment opportunities – because CENTRAL BANKS
  • Job opportunities draw people to cities
  • Slums and favelas – a symptom of opportunity
  • Resourcefulness of slum dwellers to compensate for lack of capital
  • Property rights for slums
  • The Long Now Foundation
  • Demographics – Human population as an “S” curve
• Feeding the Cities
  • Vertical Farms – might make sense if they’re horizontal
  • A long way from crowding out the land
  • Permaculture – pigs are high tech
  • Monoculture – the result of subsidies
• Logistics
  • Automated Delivery
  • Online grocery shopping – more energy efficient
  • Night time deliveries
  • Fedex’s parking ticket manager
• Automated Vehicles, Congestion, and Parking
  • Drop you off, go park itself
  • Changing multimodal transit
  • Dynamic routes – adapting to needs in real time
  • Doubling peak hour congestion?
  • Eliminating on street parking?
  • Induced demand strikes again
• FLYING CARS – THE REAL SOLUTION
  • Peter Thiel – “We wanted flying cars, and we got 140 characters”
  • Jetsons? Rin tin tin? Flubber? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!
  • Automated vehicles are a necessary prerequisite to flying cars
  • Flipping the city upside down
  • Streets become streets again – more public spaces
  • Don’t park – Hover!
  • Helicopter taxis in Sao Paulo
  • Energy density is essential
  • Micro nukes flying around the city driven by self-aware AI’s – what could possibly go
  • wrong?
• Other Advances in Energy
  • Thorium reactors
  • Virtual power plants – aggregating decentralized power sources
  • “Behind the meter” schemes
  • Solar farm shares rather than roof-mounted
  • Photovoltaic roof shingles
  • Solar roads – a non-starter
  • Batteries
  • Your car can power your house
  • Quick charging stations
  • WE NEED THE ENERGON
• Construction Industry Technology
  • Modular construction
  • Bricklaying robots
  • Tim loves watching masons work
  • 3D printed buildings
  • Drone cranes – what could possibly go wrong?
  • Japanese demolition – No more working at heights
  • VR Drone site visits
  • Holographic design
  • Augmented Reality
• Virtual Reality
  • Will we still build real places?
  • Authenticity matters
  • Cities provide authentic experiences
  • VR allows people to live where they want
  • Virtual 20th High School Reunion is better than the real thing
  • Are haptic hugs creepy?
• The Future of Politics
  • A path to privatization?
  • The trend towards decentralization favors free markets and deregulation
  • Technology – tool for liberation or control?
  • Liberty Minecraft – The Virtual Built Environment of a Stateless Society
  • Two trends: individualization and voluntary socialization
  • Two more trends: Technology disrupting jobs and technology creating ultra-abundance
  • Low skilled workers becoming more entrepreneurial
  • Passive income opportunities
  • Reason to be optimistic

Links/Resources

• Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says NBN was a mistake and it may never make money
• Strong Towns
• Waze
• Traffic Jam Experiment (Video)
• Automated Cars in Intersections – Pretty sure this is faked, but illustrates the idea.
• Induced demand
• Ed Glaeser – Triumph of the City
• The Long Now Foundation
  • Seminars About Long Term Thinking (SALT)
  • Clock of the Long Now (Danny Hillis SALT Talk)
  • Stewart Brand on Cities and Demographics (SALT Talk)
• Vertical Farming
• Permaculture:
  • Permies
  • Drew Sample – Urban Permaculture
• Peter Thiel’s Manifesto About Flying Cars (and some other stuff). TL;DR
• Thorium Reactors
• Virtual Power Plants
• Blockchain based “Behind the Meter” Scheme in Australia
• Tesla’s Photovoltaic Roof Shingles
• Transformers Energon
• China: 57-Story Skyscraper built in 19 Days
• Japanese Building Demolition
• Google Earth – Kennedy Space Center
• Liberty Minecraft

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