The Future of UK Social Infrastructure

How can we future-proof the physical and social infrastructure assets we will need as a society?

I recently wrote a report, with the B Corp Newcore Capital, on the future of social infrastructure in the UK. (The report focuses on the built assets for social infrastructure, not the human networks and capital).

The report suggests that real estate investors can – and need to - do a better job at engaging with the future.  

“Nobody wants stranded assets, figuratively or literally.”

It sets out some of the drivers of change, the major trends (such as demographics, climate change, digitisation) that we’re pretty certain are going to shape our context in the years to come. It looks at some tools and techniques that we can harness in order to help understand what we might face. And it suggests some of the areas where society might need new social infrastructure in the future.

As well as identifying opportunities for new social infrastructure investment, the report also draws broader conclusions for investment across the real estate sector: an increased focus on resilience; more emphasis on flexibility; greater integration; and a continuing shift towards sustainable solutions.

It suggests that those building, refurbing, and investing in physical assets can’t be passive in the face of the future. They have resources and the ability to make choices that can help shape a more sustainable world.  

They should, as I said at the launch of the report:

“Be prepared for the probable; be flexible for the possible; be proactive for the preferable.”

 For the full report, see here:

https://newcorecapital.com/the-future-of-uk-social-infrastructure/

What Future For Our City Centres?

As we re-imagine our urban experience post-pandemic, here’s six principles for vibrant, inclusive and sustainable city centres in the future.

In recent years, our city centres have in many ways been a success-story. They’ve seen amazing new cultural offers, retail led-regeneration, people moving back to live in the middle of town.

City centres also face structural challenges. Online shopping is hitting physical retail hard; climate change means city centres can be hotter and more prone to flooding; high property prices are just too much for many; while flexible working means fewer people popping out to get a haircut or buy a sandwich at lunchtime.

The micro economies of those city centres where few people live have been particularly hard hit

Covid has exposed and exacerbated some of these frailties, particularly for those city centres with a 9–5 office monoculture. The micro economies of those city centres where few people live have been particularly hard hit during the lockdowns.

As we emerge from the pandemic, there is the opportunity to reset, to build for a better future. At Cardiff University we held an event on ‘Rethinking the City Centre’ to consider how we might make city centres vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive.

This was the first in a series of events, jointly run by the School of Geography and Planning and the Welsh School of Architecture, looking at the City in 2040. We want to use the future creatively to explore what our cities might face, how they might be better, and then bring that back to inform research and practice today.

Challenges Facing City Centres

Discussants at the event ‘Rethinking City Centres’ explored first some of the challenges faced in urban centres today: affordability of housing, struggling shops, and disconnects between people, technology and place.

We’re already at a tipping point in so many cities in terms of affordability

People are being priced out of city centres. They can’t afford to live there, so are moving to suburbs and satellite towns. And some existing communities find that the city centre vision is so hipster, so gentrified, so full of pavement cafes, that it doesn’t have spaces, places, and facilities for them. We see city centres being hollowed out, with shopping and offices over-dominant and expensive homes in prime districts lying empty for much of the year. (A study by Alison Wallace, University of York, found 38% of new build properties in London’s Westminster were bought by overseas buyers).

For Dr Mhairi McVicar, Reader in Architecture and Project Lead of Community Gateway at Cardiff University “We’re already at a tipping point in so many cities in terms of affordability…We have an utterly broken housing system in the UK, which is often about private development coming in and extracting profit very quickly and then leaving again.”

“The crisis of retail has been accelerated by the pandemic…City centres and high streets are struggling”, according to Judith Everett, Executive Director for Purpose, Sustainability & Stakeholders, The Crown Estate. Discussants talked of the importance of retaining vibrant streetscapes and of retail henceforth being much more about ‘experience’ than ‘stuff’.

Big development projects take so long, that by the time they are finished, the world has changed

Lev Kushner, Founding Partner, Department of Here, talked about disconnects in the city centre: the disconnect between the rapid rates at which technology and culture change, and the much slower rates of change with infrastructure and buildings. Big development projects take so long, that by the time they are finished, the world has changed. He also pointed to a disconnect between ‘convenience and community.’ “When you can get just about anything in the world delivered to your couch, that’s a recipe for peak laziness. That means not meeting and bumping into people, not sharing ideas and creating community.”

Ultimately, Kushner feels that “people are going to continue to want to be near to each other”, that in the end, we want to satisfy our basic physical and psychological needs. The question remains, however, where will we satisfy those needs? In suburbs, in satellite towns, in rural areas, or in the city centre?

Six Elements of a Future City Centre

While respecting that every urban context is different, I took away from the discussion six principles to guide the city centre of the future.

1. Green. All agreed that should be more green space, less traffic, less pollution and more biodiversity. City Centres will be net zero. We might explore growing food in our town centres, on rooftops, closer to where people need it. A greener centre would bring opportunities for more healthy, active and sustainable living. And smarter buildings, less traffic, and reducing the need to travel would not only improve wellbeing, but also respond to the climate emergency.

For Judith Everett, “if we can reduce traffic on the street, improve air quality and biodiversity, we can also make it more pleasant experience for people who live, work and shop in the centre.”

2. Flexible. The building, streets, and infrastructure of the future will be highly adaptive. We need to make places work much harder, to cater to more needs, at more times of the day and night. We’ll see repurposing of buildings, multi-use spaces that arepart-office, part-distribution centre, part- education facility. We’ll see spaces cater for different age groups, pre-school nurseriesalongside senior living alongside life-long learning. Digital technology will help support this flexibility and these multiple uses.

Lev Kushner reminds us: “We just can’t tear buildings down, and spring them up again, to keep pace with our with our rapid technological and cultural change. These highly fluid environments will put a premium on the ability to programme and activate spaces, that’s where value will be.”

Not just mixed use, but mixed users

3. Inclusive. City centres should be opportunity-rich, accessible, affordable and welcoming for different types of people, of all ages. A more diverse population should have the opportunity and to enjoy and participate fully in the city. The ethos should be:‘Not just mixed use, but mixed users.’

Mhairi McVicar wants to see “..the city centre planned and developed for those who live, work, meet, and create in it. That means not only decentralization of power to include the community voice and community design, but also of the resources and support structures to enable participatory transformation.”

4. Emergent. The successful city centre will be the result of ‘co-creation, not over-curation’. It will be inconvenient and messy in places. Cultural institutions, offices and shops will no longer be prisoners of their buildings. They will reach out, onto forecourts, parklets and reclaimed road-space and interact with the urban realm and the people there in new and unexpected ways.

“How do we plan for and support the messier aspects of life, ecology, joy and connectedness?” McVicar asks. “How do we provide access to affordable, messy space? And how we give people capacity and tools to be involved?”

Co-creation, not over-curation

5. Authentic. Who wants to visit a clone-town, identikit, city centre? To be attractive, cities will need to show their personalityand difference. And that personality should be built on an understanding of what’s there. Planners and developers should take time to understand the things that build and bind communities, to respect and enhance the — often hidden — assets already there.

For Judith Everett: “Place-making means drawing on what’s already there, valuing what is already there in co-creation…while drawing from what’s exciting in other communities and bringing that back into the city centre, not thinking we have all the answers. “

6. Inspiring. The city centre will be more than shops and offices. It will be about experience and about human interaction. This will be supported by new digital tools. We’ll see a better blending of the physical and the virtual, with virtual-reality cues and digital infrastructure helping to programme different human interactions. The city centre should not be about more ‘stuff’ but about more ‘joy’.

Not just come and buy this thing, but come and do this thing

Lev Kushner concluded: ”Ultimately developers, retailers, city governments want to attract us, they chase people. And people want people. Experience is increasingly important. Not just come and buy this thing, but come and do this thing”.

So, the city centre of the future should be green, flexible, inclusive, emergent, authentic and inspiring. To guide us to this future, we need to continually ask ourselves the question: for whom and for what are we reshaping a new city centre?

How Will Cities Sound In The Future?

Sound is such an important part of how we experience urban life. Can we design our cities of the future to be more acoustically alluring?

I was out doing a Bristol Sound Walk recently, acoustically mapping a neighbourhood with the Hush City App. As I logged wind in the trees, playtime in a local school, the constant background drone of traffic, I found myself asking what will this city sound like in the future?

Sound in Cities

Sound is such a fundamental component of our cities, of their vibrancy, of their urban identity, and of the health and wellbeing of their citizens. But it is too often disregarded. The architect Juhani Pallasma complained of the ‘Ocularcentrism’ of culture and design, how sight takes precedence over the other senses. For the UK Noise Association noise is the ‘forgotten pollutant…sidelined when decisions are being made by the public and private sectors.’

According to the World Health Organisation, noise is the second most important environmental health factor, after air pollution: ‘Excessive noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people’s daily activities…It can disturb sleep, cause cardiovascular and psychophysiological effects…Traffic noise alone is harmful to the health of almost every third person in Europe’.

Those that can afford to, live quietly.

There are distributional impacts, too, of noise pollution, which map to social exclusion. Those that can afford to, live quietly. The less well-off live near to noisy industry, next to busy roads, or packed in crowded dwellings with poor sound insulation.

Of course, sound can also contribute positively to the urban context. It can be part of the sense of place — the ringing of church bells, the hubbub of pavement cafes, the shouts of children playing out. Sound complements our other senses and helps to make sense of where we are; auditory cues, often barely noticed, help us navigate our towns and cities.

So, how will cities sound in the future? As we urbanise and densify, can we create sonic landscapes that work for all our citizens?

Science and Data

We’ll certainly understand urban sound better. Smart cities, 5G, and citizen science allow much closer mapping of the negative physical and mental health impacts as well as differential social impacts. Colleagues at NYU’s Center for Urban Science & Progress have deployed microphones in 60 spots around the city to understand the noise-scape. So far, the sensors have collected more than 150 million recordings, understanding the pattern, type, and intensity of noise, which city officials can then use to reduce pollution. Apps and wearables will generate yet more data that can be layered with health and wellbeing data to understand correlation and causation.

Changing Mobility

Given how much noise is due to traffic, changing urban mobility — particularly the wholesale move to electric vehicles — offers huge possibilities. Traffic noise is particularly intrusive: combustion engine noise covers so much of the spectrum, generating noise that can go round corners.

Unfortunately, electric vehicles now need have to be noisy for safety reasons. The charity Guide Dogs commissioned research in 2013 that suggested ‘Quiet hybrid and electric vehicles are 40% more likely to collide with pedestrians than cars with a regular combustion engine’. These safety concerns led to EU lawsmaking acoustic vehicle alerting systems mandatory. Car makers have used the opportunity to think about the character of their car and brand in deciding what noises to generate.

Planning more mixed-use neighbourhoods and enabling more flexible working could have big noise benefits.

Cities will get bigger wins by reducing the need to drive. Noise dropped by 50% during the pandemic. Planning more mixed-use neighbourhoods and enabling more flexible working could have big noise benefits. Taking space away from cars and giving it to pedestrians, cyclists or green spaces, and building trams and light rail, could make our cities sound much better.

As we conquer terrestrial noise, we’ll face new airborne challenges. Delivery drones are slated to fill our skies; and there’s big investment in airborne personal mobility services. The fact that these have vertical take-offs, fly at much lower levels over communities, and have an annoying high-pitched tone, will — unless there is better design and regulation — add to the urban cacophony.

Electrifying Everything

A massive change over coming years will be the electrification of everything — generators, waste-collection, heating, cooling, as well as transport — and there is an opportunity to make sound an integral part of design.

A new air-con unit is bought every 4 seconds in India.

Heat pumps are becoming mandatory in the UK and air-source pumps in particular are causing arguments, with residents worried about the number, volume, pitch and proximity. Similar challenges will be faced by cooling systems, as our cities heat up due to climate change and the urban heat island effect. Air-con use is set to explode across the world; a new air-con unit is bought every 4 seconds in India. Added to this, the increased investment in mechanical ventilation in the wake of the Covid pandemic means there’ll be a lot more engines and pumps whining away in our cities.

This gives an opportunity for more thoughtful design. Just as electric car manufacturers are asking what acoustic personality they want their vehicles to have, we can ask the same questions about our buildings. Joshua Taylor, a researcher at Bristol Interaction Group tells me ‘We may be able to vary or control the running speed of static equipment, to create more pleasant sound-scapes or to stop unpleasant sounds from travelling as far. We often have more control over frequency and timbre than decibels and loudness. For example — the constant pitch drone of ventilation or AC might feel penetrating but could be tuned or slowly varied so people find it more comfortable.’

Augmented Auditory Reality

We’ll certainly be using technology to shape our auditory landscape Not just wearables but ‘hearables’. Personal technology, not to block, but to interact with and to tune the world around them.

This could help blind and partially sighted people navigate the environment, as in the Cities Unlocked project I worked on with Microsoft and Guide Dogs. And more and more people are wearing wireless earbuds to listen to music or block the sounds around them, and these will increasingly tune the urban environment.

Sound can be changed in real time, adding reverberation, or tweaking decay, strength, clarity and warmth.

This blocking and tuning is happening inside buildings, too. So called ‘pink noise’ provides background static to many new office spaces. And taking this a step further, Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London, which I visited shortly after the opening, uses an electroacoustic system to capture the sound, digitally remodel it, then send broadcast the acoustically-improved edit back out. Because this is all done digitally, sound can be changed in real time, adding reverberation, or tweaking decay, strength, clarity and warmth.

This acoustic tweaking might move out of the building into the urban neighbourhood, recording, modulating, and amplifying the sound of the city.

Urban design

The physical design of the city can help make it sound better. Sonic barriers and defensive acoustics have already been deployed along thousands of miles of highways, mitigating some of the thoughtless road design of the past Century. These do block sound, but they are ugly and can further isolate communities.

A sound wave at the right frequency and wavelength, will counteract the sound waves of an unwanted noise.

Buildings themselves act as barriers, and we’re likely to see more active noise cancellation by buildings. Augmenting existing structures with vibrating façades, for instance, could potentially cancel out noise by exploiting the physics of interference. (A sound wave at the right frequency and wavelength, will counteract the sound waves of an unwanted noise). New technologies and new types of materials will help: frequencies of unwanted sounds could be separated and selectively muted by material layers. And road surfaces too, where porous asphalt already reduces tire noise, could be further improved,

Greener cities with more tree cover and more high quality green space will absorb more noise pollution and potentially generate more of the sounds we want to hear: wind in the trees and birds on the branches. Sarah Jane Morris, a landscape architect who leads the Bristol Sound Walks, advocates ‘proactively planting different species for the acoustic quality you want’.

Orchestrating the Future City

With these big urban changes — the electrification of energy, the digitisation of life, the densification and regeneration of cities — we have choices about the acoustic landscape we create. What sounds do we want to keep that are part of place-making? What should be the mixture of real and artificial sounds? Who gets to decide this sonic future?

Who gets to decide this sonic future?

Sound in cities is very contested. One person’s banging tunes are another person’s noisy neighbours. Incoming gentrifiers complain about long-established music venues. Young people want the right to party. And because we have a very culturally-determined response to sound, conflict can arise when different attitudes rub up against each other, with ethnic minority groups disproportionately penalised for the noise they make.

Will the cacophony of sounds that assault our cities be better regulated? A recent report on the sounds of the London Underground found that on average there was an announcement on the trains every 42 seconds and that some of the platform announcements reached 98 decibels — louder than a plane landing at Heathrow.

If Transport for London can’t curate sound for a single system under their control, what chance do we have for the planning the city soundscape?

Architects and planners design for beautiful-looking cities; they sometimes design for quiet; but what about creating lovely sounding places? In The Soundscape, Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Murray Schafer suggests we see the ‘soundscape of the world as a huge musical composition, unfolding around us ceaselessly… [people] are simultaneously its audience, its performers and its composers.’ We now have the knowledge, the technology, and the opportunity to orchestrate the soundscapes in our cities to acoustically delight all of our citizens.

This article originally appeared in Medium.

The instant city: how the desire for speedy gratification is reshaping our urban lives

Amid all the hype around the 15-minute-city of sustainable, walkable neighbourhoods, the pandemic has accelerated another kind of 15-minute-city, where everything can be delivered almost instantly to your door.

This leaflet was handed to me last week, promising ‘quality groceries delivered in minutes’. Just tap an order in your smart phone and a short-while after a motorbike will zoom-up and hand you your shopping.

Welcome to the new world of Q-commerce, (short for quick commerce), the next evolution of E-commerce that’s sweeping across our cities. Instead of waiting days for your delivery, you get your groceries, gear or gifts in a matter of minutes. In satisfying today’s connected consumer, speed, rather than quality, is of the essence.

E-commerce and Q-commerce had been growing steadily over recent years, and were given a huge boost by the Covid pandemic. Locked-down, or just fearful of going out, more-and-more people started ordering takeaways and essentials to be delivered to their doors. As the pandemic recedes, those behaviours — and Q-commerce — are here to stay.

“Speedy delivery caters to a fundamental human desire for instant gratification”.

Speedy delivery caters to a fundamental human desire for instant gratification. Psychologists think this may be hard-wired, by evolution, in our brain. Our prehistoric ancestors, living in harsh environments where they never knew where the next meal would come from, had to quickly seize whatever they found. Denying ourselves something we want is, psychologically, difficult. Companies are dashing to satisfy this desire, and the competition is fierce.

What began as speedy takeaway delivery, is quickly spreading to other product areas like food, flowers, and pharmacy goods. Established supermarkets (Carrefour, Sainsburys,) are partnering with delivery companies (Glovo, Deliveroo,) to offer selected groceries within 20 minutes. Companies like Foodpanda that started-out delivering meals now offer groceries within 15–20 minutes in cities across Asia. And start-ups such as Dija, Getir, and Snappy Shopper are joining the race.

The Impact on Cities

As the pace hots-up, what will be the impact on our cities? A lot depends on whether these new services — promising to be more convenient than a convenience store — support or supplant our local retailers, restaurants, and high streets.

Most of these platform companies begin by using existing infrastructure — shops, restaurants, roads. For a fee from the local business, they pick up and deliver to the customer.

The speedy delivery platforms quickly move on. Not wanting to rely on getting food from a restaurant at busy times, they are setting up their own ‘cloud kitchens’ in edge-of-town warehouses. Not wanting to rely on picking items from local shops, they are creating their own ‘dark-stores’ or ‘D-marts’ stocked with their own brands. Not wanting to rely on people to meet the punishing delivery schedule, they are investing heavily in developing delivery drones.

“Q-commerce will not be good for our already-struggling high streets”.

Q-commerce will not be good for our already-struggling high streets. When you can get the essentials direct to your door, from your local supermarket, in 20 minutes, why bother going to your local store? Corner shops and family restaurants will either lose trade, or have to work through the delivery platforms giving-up a big chunk of their earnings. For example Uber Eats and Deliveroo takes as much as 30% in commission, so if a restaurant charges £10 for a pizza, £3 of that might go to the delivery company. Ultimately, these platforms will disintermediate the relationship with the customer, harvesting data and running things through their app, their loyalty and reward vouchers, their recommendations.

It’s not good news either for shop-workers or serving staff. Not everyone will be able to swap waiting-tables for pedalling furiously on a bike. And because, ultimately, there will not be enough riders and drivers to satisfy the demand from all the companies delivering ‘anytime anywhere’, new jobs will go to airborne and terrestrial drones.

“Not everyone will be able to swap waiting-tables for pedalling furiously on a bike”.

In sustainability terms, speedy delivery brings an increase in traffic, a big increase in household waste, and depending on how the services are delivered, may lead to an increase in CO2 emissions. In dense cities more deliveries are by bike; in sprawling conurbations the motorbike or car dominate. (And the lack of really good cycling maps for cities doesn’t help). Some Q-commerce companies are going electric, and trying to ensure that their waste, if not reduced, is at least recyclable.

Q-commerce may not be great for the long-term health of the urban population either. We are home-cooking less and living more off takeaways. We spend an average of 90% of our lives indoors, (and another portion in cars). This sedentary lifestyle contributes to obesity and chronic disease. If everything comes to our door, and we’re not even walking to the shops, what will that do to our physical and mental wellbeing?

The Acceleration of Urban Life

What will this compression of time and space mean for community and social relationships in our cities? Some citizens are drawn by the fast pace of city living; while others dislike the speeding up of urban life, complaining about fast cars, fast fashion, fast food. Some are attracted by the anonymous, transactional nature of cities; others want the bustle and interaction of city streets.

I think some patience is necessary to build friendships, relationships, and communities that last. Neighbourhoods are built on theses social connections and the interaction of people in streets, squares, shops, They come alive with what Jane Jacobs called. ‘The ballet of the good city sidewalk’ rather than just delivery vehicles zipping by.

“They come alive with what Jane Jacobs called. ‘The ballet of the good city sidewalk’”

As a response to this acceleration of life, and building from the Slow Food philosophy, the Slow Citiesmovement in Italy stands as a stark counterpoint to this just-in-time ethos. They call for “Towns animated by people ‘curious about time reclaimed’, rich in squares, theatres, workshops, cafes, restaurants, spiritual places, unspoilt landscapes…where we still appreciate the slow, benevolent succession of the seasons…This is the joy of a slow, quiet, reflective way of life”.

Of course, not all of us can live in an Italian hill-town, with its rich culinary culture; and many people are struggling to find time just to get by. But I, for one, don’t want to live in a hollowed-out future city where food is cooked in anonymous out-of-town warehouses, where blank, dark, shops serve as logistics hubs, and where our streets are filled, not with people, but with speeding delivery vehicles

Living Fast and Slow

Instant gratification is a powerful force. Technology will increasingly enable this (primal) urge and the Q-commerce trend will likely continue to accelerate. Delivery Hero, for example, has ‘an ambition to deliver anything’. And in our busy lives, who doesn’t want to save time?

Given, however, the potential spatial and social impacts on our cities, how can we ensure that bricks and mortar and the virtual world co-exist in mutually beneficial ways?

“How can we ensure that bricks and mortar and the virtual world co-exist in mutually beneficial ways?”

Losing local shops and restaurants, means losing jobs, connections, vibrancy. It also means losing business rates. Many of these digital platforms (AirbnB, Uber, as well as the speedy delivery companies) piggy-back on local infrastructure without putting much back in. More home deliveries also mean more packaging waste that adds to council tax bills, not the costs of the delivery companies.

City authorities are taking some steps in response. In the US, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, DC, have used local ordinances to put temporary caps of 15% on delivery fees. More cities are sure to follow. But, this cannot be tackled just at the metropolitan level. At the national government level, a re-balancing of taxation between small, local businesses and the big, often global, delivery platforms is long overdue. There needs to be regulation, too, of the gig economy so that riders and drivers get a better deal.

We also have choices as citizens, as we come out of the pandemic, as to what kind of 15-minute city we want. With our fingers on our smart phones, we might want to pause, walk instead to our local shop or cafe, stop and have a chat, then cook a meal with friends or family, and just slow down.

This article originally appeared in Medium: https://pmadden.medium.com/the-instant-city-how-the-desire-for-speedy-gratification-is-reshaping-our-urban-lives-fda8f4603045

Who’s Winning the Race to Shape Our Urban Future?

In the past month I’ve visited two cities — Barcelona and Beijing — pursuing drastically different directions to the smart, technology-enabled city of the future. I know which of the urban visions I prefer; and I know which one I think will prevail.

There is no doubt that digital tech, in the form of big data, internet of things, transport algorithms and wearables — will increasingly shape our cities and how we live in them. But who will control the development and deployment of these technologies in the metropolitan arena? And what will that mean for us as citizens?

For Barcelona, the smart city focus is on the ‘right to the smart city’, empowering the citizen and restraining the big IT companies. Led by Francesca Bria, the city’s Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Office, their approach draws on participatory politics and is also informed by a plethora of European Commission-funded pilot projects, which have favoured citizen-centric approaches.

For Beijing, the smart city drive is much more about enhancing efficiency and increasing consumption. It leans more heavily on e-commerce foundations, and is characterised by a close relationship with the Chinese tech giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Huawei

So, we have these competing smart city framings: the European liberal, social democratic tradition versus the Asian collectivist and top-down approach. This is not quite ‘the clash of civilisations’, but it certainly highlights a divergence in approaches and attitudes to the technology that will shape our future cities.

Take facial recognition. At the beginning of December, China’s new facial recognition law came into force. This means if you want a SIM-card and mobile phone, you have to have a facial recognition scan. And on my recent visit to China, facial recognition was everywhere. Chongqing, where I was lecturing, has the most CCTV cameras per head in the world (168 cameras per 1,000 people according to a recent study by Comparitech). In Beijing, entry and exit to most buildings was by facial recognition, and in other parts of the country facial scanning has replaced ticketing on public transit.

I was scanned everywhere I went, and it was clear that this tracking was not just from cameras, but included sensors, wifi, and the pre-eminence of payment by mobile phone. In Beijing it was sometimes difficult to pay with cash and everyone constantly tapped to pay with their phones through Apps like AliPay and WeChat, making their lives easier, also but leaving a very detailed digital record.

Despite this huge apparatus for surveillance and control, most people I spoke to in China (students, academics and officials) weren’t overly concerned. They shrugged and accepted it as part of the deal: life is getting better; cities are easier to live in; this is the new China.

In the West, we are also making increasing use of these tracking and surveillance technologies, whether for targeting advertising or for fighting crime. But there is vigorous debate about privacy rights and the limits of intrusion. San Francisco has already banned use of facial recognition, with other US cities following suit. The Barcelona city administration argues that data produced by the citizen belongs to the citizen.

Whilst in Europe and the US we are having this very necessary, but episodic and patchwork, debate about technology in cities, China charges on. Unencumbered by the messy social conversations and piecemeal investment characterising smart city development in the West, China is deploying at scale, and rapidly. Baidu and Ali-Baba’s ‘city brains’ are combining real-time data with AI to manage city infrastructure. There will be a full-scale national rollout of 5G by the end of 2020. And, according to Deloitte, half of all the smart cities being built worldwide are in China.

China is accelerating past us in the development and deployment of urban technology. While we are still doing pilot projects in Europe, they will implement, refine and scale their offering, and then their businesses will bring it here. Already, in just a few short years, Chinese companies have grown to be the dominant presence at the Smart City Expo World Congress, the big international trade show.

I think it is impossible to hold back this tide of technology. We should certainly try to shape it through the kind of citizen participation and ‘digital sovereignty’ espoused by Barcelona. But digital technology is often invisible and insidious, arriving stealthily, with companies asking permission after the fact. And history suggests that the more advanced technology will win, whether it’s guns against spears, light bulbs against candlewicks, or cars against carriages.

So, if you want to understand how we will live in our cities in the future, look at who is winning the urban technology race today.

This article originally appeared in Medium: https://medium.com/@pmadden/whos-winning-the-race-to-shape-our-urban-future-c239c5ab221

Chongqing has most CCTV cameras per capita in the world. Photo: Peter Madden