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Letter from the Editors The Academy in Action
Three questions to test new digital planning approaches against Ed Parham examines whether digital advances in design and planning translate to better places.
The 15-Minute City: Future Utopia or Dystopia?
Adam Muggleton assesses the risks of surveillance as part of 15-minute city infrastructure .
Could nature be the biggest winner from digital engagement technology in our cities?
Mike Saunders demonstrates how digital platforms can help deliver nature-rich environments.
Losing Our Senses in the City
Irma Delmonte warns of declining spatial memory in the age of GPS and AI.
Digital Magics and TechUtopias
Harrison Brewer investigates the promise of tech-utopias.
Designing for the Invisible
Maryline Esteves explores how AI agents will soon curate urban journeys.
When Tech Gets in the Way
Lewis Hubbard advocates for a simplified approach to SuDS design.
The New Economics of Infrastructure
Shane Mitchell explores the shift from asset delivery to adaptive ecosystems
The City Observatory: Rotterdam
In this instalment of BDPlab’s Good City papers, Fleur Dassen and Björn Bleumink explore developing ideas for urban resilience to rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather.
MyPlace: Stralau
Lucy Bali reflects on the significant of Stralau, Berlin in her life.
ArtPlace: 20 Years of the AoU
Connie Dales shares a selection of illustrations created to commemorate th AoU’s 20th anniversary.
Member Spotlight
Young Urbanist Jack Strange reflects on how the AoU’s ‘learning from place’ ethos came in handy during a year in Seoul.
Book Review
Harry Knibb shares his thoughts on The Smart Building Advantage by Dr Matthew Marson.
Urban Idiocy
The Urban Idiot ponders whether ‘smart cities’ are really all that smart.
Urban Philosophy
Resident philosopher Andreas Markides ruminates on the life and times of Archimedes, perhaps the forefather of Digital Cities.
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The Academy of Urbanism is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation that brings together both the current and next generation of urban leaders, thinkers and practitioners. Our mission is to understand, promote and celebrate what makes great places and to apply these lessons to the improvement of towns and cities across Europe and beyond.
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Academy Team
Christine Smallwood Managing Director
Connie Dales Comms + Events Planner
Avantika Pathania Membership Coordinator
Sarah Hughes Finance Manager
Welcome
What a busy few months the Academy has had! There have been too many events to mention but I wanted to highlight the Summer of Walking which has enabled us to strengthen our presence in many different regions around the country. It was great to see so many members getting together to delve into the fascinating urban themes that the walk organisers chose. Whether exploring green urban spaces along the Bath River Line, looking at achievements in the city of Stirling, or a city exploration via the lyrics of the Pet Shop Boys, there was an inspiring choice of walks across a varied, informative and hugely entertaining programme.
We have also been further afield in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, for a Place Partnering Initiative. A group of Academy experts analysed current challenges and reviewed the best ways to ensure the city centre is vibrant for its residents and is seen as a destination for visitors.
Aside from immersing ourselves in places, we’re all grappling with AI and this edition of the Journal is looking at data and tech. It’s an area in which things are changing very quickly and there is a lot to explore. A lot of the subjects featured here did not exist twenty years ago when the Academy was founded.
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And, I couldn’t finish this letter without referring to our 20th year anniversary party which took place suitably enough in JTP’s offices on Thursday 13th November. Twenty years! Such a lot has been achieved during that time and I wanted to express my gratitude to all those who have been part of our extraordinary journey – our members, Board directors and the Executive Team. They are the ones who have pulled together, collaborated and made it happen and the reason why the Academy now looks to the future with much confidence. My own involvement with the Academy goes back several years and I can say that it has enriched my life through much learning but primarily through the friendships that I have made.
My 2-year term as chair comes to an end in January and I’d like to wish Matt Lally and Shane Quinn who will take over as co-chairs much success.
Andreas Markides AoU Chair
Editorial team
Harrison Brewer
Connie Dales (AoU Exec)
Harry Knibb
Leyla Moy
David Rudlin
To join the editorial team or contribute an article to the Here & Now Journal, contact journal@theaou.org
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Richard Wolfstrome
For all other enquiries, including sponsorship, contact Connie Dales at cdales@ theaou.org
Editorial
As cities accelerate into the digital age, this ‘Digital Cities’ edition reflects on how technology is reshaping urbanism, governance, and the lived experience of place. Key trends we’re watching are:
Ed Parham examines whether digital advances in design and planning translate to better places.
Adam Muggleton examines walkable neighbourhoods, highlighting debates over surveillance, equity, and the balance between nudge and enforcement in urban design.
Mike Saunders demonstrates how digital platforms can amplify community voices and help deliver nature-rich environments.
Irma Delmonte warns of declining spatial memory in the age of GPS and AI, urging cities to engage our senses and cognitive abilities.
Harrison Brewer investigates Sidewalk Labs and NEOM’s ‘The Line’, revealing that while technology promises magic, real progress lies in incremental improvements and public participation.
Maryline Esteves explores how AI agents will soon curate urban journeys, raising questions about personalisation and the risk of echo chambers. Urbanists must balance machine logic with human intuition.
Lewis Hubbard advocates for simplified, collaborative approaches to SuDS, cautioning against overreliance on software.
Shane Mitchell analyses global infrastructure, showing a shift to adaptive ecosystems where digital intelligence and collaborative governance underpin resilient futures.
As we navigate digital transformation, technology must serve people. The future of urbanism lies in balancing innovation with inclusion, efficiency with empathy, and digital intelligence with human agency—so digital cities can flourish for all.
The editorial team
*With thanks to our AI urban bot for this editorial.
The Academy in Action
Since the last edition of Here & Now we celebrated the AoU’s 20th Anniversary with a party held at JTP’s studios in London, which was a brilliant night. But if you missed it, don’t worry –we’ll be continuing to incorporate 20 years of learning from place into the programme elsewhere as the year goes on.
Autumn also played host to a great lecture with Spencer de Grey at the Foster + Partners campus; literary programming including Authors of Urbanism with Johnny Rodger in Glasgow and a new YU Book Club in London; more of the online Urbanism Hour series; and most recently our final in-person event of the year, Delivering Inclusive Urbanism, held at the British Library in partnership with the Dutch Embassy and Chris & Melissa Bruntlett.
Looking to 2026, we’ve recently launched the call for nominations for the next cycle of the Urbanism Awards, where urbanists of all backgrounds are invited to submit their ideas for Great Streets + Spaces, Neighbourhoods, Towns, and European Cities. For more details visit theaou.org/nominate
Coming up at the AoU:
• Members’ Winter Party
Wednesday 28 January 2026, London
Tickets at theaou.org/party
• The Founder’s Lecture: Tina Saaby
Tuesday 10 February 2026, Cambridge University
Tickets at theaou.org/lecture
• Authors of Urbanism: Form Follows Fuel
Wednesday 18 March 2026, Glasgow
Tickets at theaou.org/authors-of-urbanism
A full list of upcoming events can be found at theaou.org/events
Three questions to test new digital planning approaches against
Ed Parham examines whether digital advances in design and planning translate to better places.
Recent development of digital approaches to planning and design has been rapid, and provided diverse products which offer alluring graphics, the power of AI, or even suggest replacing designers completely. But the real question is do they actually help create better places?
Better places mean places where people live happier, healthier lives, producing less carbon through their daily activities. That doesn’t mean new digital approaches are not useful, but they might not deliver these longer-term outcomes. If we can identify what they can and can’t do, we can use them to their full advantage, and this needs critical thinking.
Rather than summarising every new tool (and becoming immediately outdated), this is a set of questions to think critically about new digital approaches to help people form their own opinion:
1. Built Environment, Activities or Outcomes?
First, we need a theoretical framework that connects the design of better places to outcomes. Research shows that the built environment shapes daily life; how we get to work, the shops, or meet friends. These everyday patterns, repeated over years, affect outcomes such as health, wellbeing, and carbon emissions.
This leads to a simple framework:
1. The built environment creates a set of physical characteristics
2. These enable or constrain daily activities and, 3. In turn these influence long-term outcomes.
We can then ask whether a tool provides just a way to describe the built environment, or if it brings insight in to how this creates better places by enabling the daily activities associated with positive outcomes.
Variables: Why does it happen? (Systems that can be altered) “Slow” infrastrcuture / system data - Static (Open) datasets
Result: What happens where and when? (Emergent effects) “Live” activity data - IoT, sensors, devices
2. What, Where, When or Why?
A huge amount of urban data is available from various sources, (satellite, live traffic counts, census etc) and this offers huge potential. But data must be carefully understood to know what it actually shows. Showing what activities happen, where, and when is important, but this is different to explaining why it happens. Tools to make better places therefore need both data on the hierarchies that built environment systems create, as well as the daily activities that occur.
Next, we should ask how the model uses data. Some may be simple spreadsheets behind a nice user interface giving housing numbers or applying assumptions on daily energy requirements. That may be useful for generating development information like area schedules, but this doesn’t explain how a design affects people’s daily lives.
More sophisticated models, including many emerging AI-based products, offer this, but often on the basis of black boxes producing data that appears credible but can’t be interrogated. Models must be transparent, it should be possible to see the assumptions behind them and understand how different factors are
combined to affect results. This is where the Built Environment/Activity/Outcomes framework can be helpful to test the theoretical foundations of the model. It is also where the What/Where/ When vs Why framework can be applied - without grasping Why certain activity patterns occur, it would be literally incredible to develop a design intervention that can change them.
3. How has it been validated?
If a model claims to predict real-world activities, it should be validated against them. It should also align with a body of shared knowledge about what better places share in common and why. This creates two points to validate models against – is it consistent with the theoretical framework, and does it produce numeric results that align with real-world observation? If not, does the theoretical framework or the tool need revision?
New digital methods can refine and develop our understanding, but if a tool proposes something that contradicts centuries of urban theory and lived experience, it needs careful reflection. Is there really a relationship between the number of Bachelors degrees awarded in Architecture and Google searches for “attacked by a squirrel”, or is this a spurious correlation?!
So, that gives a checklist of three things to consider when looking at the next post on LinkedIn about a new AI driven tool. We need a combination of theories, tools and real-world validation (which sounds a lot like science). We can’t just rely on new technology because it’s new, but, if it’s suitable we can use it to contribute to a body of knowledge, and with this digitally augmented understanding, create better places.
But to finish, here’s a bonus question which is really about digital transformation of the planning system rather than adoption of digital tools by a discipline: if new tools can make delivering specific outcomes possible, do we have a planning system that can take advantage of them - who decides what outcomes are important, how are potential benefits and co-benefits used to balance competing agendas, how do we integrate disciplinary siloes and how can decisions be based on longer terms than election cycles?
Ed Parham is a Director at Space Syntax
The 15-Minute City: Future Utopia or Dystopia?
On the face of it, the 15 Minute City sounds idyllic, a city where dwellers have all essential services within a short walk or bike ride. Notwithstanding, this apparently advantageous arrangement is not without its critics. The answer to whether the 15 Minute City is a future Utopia or Dystopia, says Adam Muggleton, lies in how our data is collected and used.
Before we begin, I must confess that I am a lapsed sustainability champion. I am exasperated, because we all understand what needs to happen for sustainable, high performance outcomes within the built environment, we are just not willing to pay for them. It is a bit like wanting to lose weight, we know we need to eat less, exercise and sleep more but we just do not want to do it.
I consider myself a pragmatic environmentalist. I believe in adaptation via considered legislation, the application of technology plus laissez-faire markets as a solution to our environmental challenges. This is why 15 minute cities fascinate me. Then I pause, and find myself remembering the proverb, “the path to hell is paved with unintended consequences”. Given the current levels of available design expertise plus IoT technology I believe that 15 minute cities face two possible outcomes. If executed well they could become micro ‘Blue Zones1’ and if the law of unintended consequences applies they may become digital colonies that extract data and exert external control resulting in loss of autonomy and ultimately, mass dependency.
The Appeal of Proximity
The 15 minute city has emerged as a central concept in urban planning, promising a future in which essential services, work, education, recreation, and healthcare are accessible within a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride. This concept emphasizes four pillars of livability: proximity, diversity, density, and digitalization.
Celebrated for its potential to create more sustainable, equitable, and resilient urban environments, the 15 minute city has also attracted controversy. Detractors frame it as a vehicle for social control, surveillance, or spatial inequality. At its core this is an anti-car approach that seeks to reverse the last 70 years of urban design that facilitated high volume travel by car. The bet is that proximity and community will trump the current desire for car ownership.
Evolution - The Nudge Approach
The design principles for an ideal 15 minute city include:
• Proximity and choice for goods and services
• Mixed use neighbourhoods
• Open and walkable urban realm
• Freedom of movement via proximity
• Self governance
I cannot imagine anyone objecting to the principles above unless they insist on using a car for every daily task. However, due to the lack of green field sites and the need to reuse the existing built environment, realising these principles would require adaptation i.e. evolution not revolution.
There is also a natural cultural resistance to change that can only be overcome in my opinion, by selling the objective benefits to change. Any compulsion via control and punitive disincentives defeats these principles and turns a potential Blue Zone into a resentful, low trust community.
A high trust, low crime community is an emergent property of great urban design, community cohesion and generally accepted cultural norms of civilised behaviour. Great design, well executed and communicated, can change lives and the future of cities. A 15 minute city designed using
these principles would ideally nudge rather than compel people to live a generally low environmental impact, healthier lifestyle with ease.
Revolution - The Enforcement Approach
Despite its benign origins, the 15 minute city concept has faced backlash. Some critics portray it as a tool of surveillance and restriction. While these fears often stem from a lack of understanding, they underscore legitimate concerns about governance, inequity, and overreach. Topdown planning and uneven distribution of amenities risk creating confined, inequitable spaces.
Attributes of a 15 minute city that enforces change include:
• Restricted or regulated movement
• Segregated districts
• Surveillance and control
• Confinement and limitation
• Punitive disincentives
An example of an enforcement approach is the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London UK. ULEZ operates 24 hours a day and is designed to cut emissions by charging vehicles that do not meet specific emission standards. This charge is effectively a tax and when you tax something you get less of it. ULEZ is a segregated district that requires surveillance and for everyday working people, issues punitive disincentives in the form of unavoidable charges.
The ULEZ has delivered measurable benefits such as a reduction of 54% of nitrogen dioxide levels2, retduced noise pollution and calmer traffic levels. However, anecdotally
I have spoken to every Uber and taxi driver I have used near this area and they all despise it. ULEZ has reduced their income and increased their costs. For travellers it is harder to get to hotels within ULEZ and consequently I do not stay in hotels in that zone anymore. There is also night time sabotage of ULEZ surveillance equipment in a growing ‘V for Vendetta’ style resistance movement. When people are sabotaging and resisting enforcement, it is an act of protest from people who are not being listened to.
As any protest movement grows, the potential for regulating and confining people using their phones, digital IDs, and surveillance via geofencing in 15 minute cities may become irresistible to an authoritarian government.
Smart 15 Minute Cities
Are smart cities an evolution of 15 minute cities? Maybe. We are living in interesting times where the confluence of design expertise, technology, large capital pools and politics make smart cities possible. There are several new build smart cities under construction world wide and their design objectives incorporate proximity and automation via real time total surveillance. It remains to be seen if the public will accept this brave new world, or will even be given a choice
The 15-minute city, or for that matter a smart city, itself is neither utopian nor dystopian. The communities and cultures that emerge will depend on design, ethics, business opportunities and delivered benefits to people who live and interact there.
From my research, the thing that is currently underrated and requires more thought is the development of business opportunities and subsequent employment opportunities that 15 minute cities might provide. Without adjacent employment opportunities 15 minute cities will in my opinion struggle to succeed.
There are several high-profile examples of failed or stalled smart city projects around the world, often due to a blend of financial, social, governance, and technological challenges. The one I am most familiar with is the Toronto Sidewalk Labs smart city project in Canada. This project should have worked given that Sidewalk Labs is a Google / Alphabet subsidiary, i.e. well funded, and Waterfront Toronto (a public development agency) plus the Ontario provincial government wanted the project to move forwards.
The project failed due to a mix of governance challenges, unresolved privacy concerns, a lack of public trust, and misalignments between the ambitions of tech and government partners.
The most persistent controversy centred on the project’s unprecedented levels of data collection and surveillance via sensors embedded throughout the neighborhood. The concerns over who would own, access, and use this data was never really adequately addressed and Sidewalk Labs’ data governance proposals failed to earn public trust.
How do we know if we are living in Blue Zones or a Digital Colony?
English common law is built on the presumption that individuals are born free. It fundamentally recognizes personal liberty as a core value with inherent rights, especially those relating to personal liberty, security, and property. The role of the state in common law tradition is to maintain and guard these fundamental freedoms.
This core value is embedded deep within British culture to the point where it is an unconscious assumption. A 15 minute or smart city that includes surveillance and overt enforcement is a challenge to personal liberty and I believe will ultimately generate protest and rebellion.
For me the Blue Zone is the desirable outcome. How will I know if I am enjoying the wellbeing implied from a 15 minute city? This would be the checklist I would have to answer yes to on all points:
• Is my privacy respected
• Do I have freedom of movement
• Do I save money
• Can I walk for my daily and weekly shopping needs
• Can I walk or use public transport to get to work
• Can I walk or use public transport to access fitness and leisure activities
• Can I live without a car
• Is housing affordable
The 15-minute city represents a transformative approach to urban development, moving toward cities that are more sustainable, equitable, and connected. Some might say 15 minute cities are how our grandparents lived prior to mass car usage and the growth of the suburbs.
However, challenges persist. These include the potential for gentrification, uneven service distribution, aligning legacy infrastructure, addressing political resistance, and ensuring meaningful public participation.
If surveillance is ubiquitous and tied to identity plus enforcement delivers punitive costs you are living in a digital colony or maybe a prison in my opinion. Personally I would run as far away from that as I could. Therefore, sign me up for a Blue Zone!
Adam Muggleton has 40 years of global real estate experience, is currently Chief Technology officer at AESG, published author, property industry philosopher, and podcaster
1 Blue Zone: a region where people live significantly longer than average 2 tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/airquality
Pictured: First page - Málaga photographed on 2022 Urbanism Awards assessment visit; second page - photo by Rich Smith via Unsplash; opposite page - site of the Toronto Sidewalks Lab by booledozer via Wikimedia; this page - Reggio Emilia photographed on 2024 Urbanism Awards assessment visit
Could nature be the biggest winner from digital engagement technology in our cities?
Mike Saunders demonstrates how digital platforms can amplify community voices and help deliver nature-rich environments.
Could it be that for place-making, one of the most impactful uses of technology is in promoting access to nature, even when nature is the very thing we use to escape technology in the rest of our lives?
We are rapidly ushering in an era of AI, where the influence of humans is increasingly delegated to technology. The built environment is no different from any other realm of modern life: algorithms are dictating decisions in transport, planning policy and design. But we experience the result of these decisions on our neighbourhoods, in a deeply analogue way, the value of which was highlighted powerfully during COVID1 For 12 years until the start of this year I ran
a community engagement platform called Commonplace, which I co-founded to elevate the voice and influence of individuals in collectively shaping their neighbourhoods. Over 10M people have used Commonplace to be part of a conversation about the place they live, enabled by technology (including heavy use of AI to categorise and analyse this engagement data). Looking back on that decade, the most impactful take-away has been, without a doubt, my understanding of the emphasis that communities put on the value of access to green space and nature in their neighbourhoods. Armed with this understanding, I have recently co-founded Afield, a non-profit that champions wild urban spaces in the neighbourhoods of greatest need.
One of the great assets of Commonplace’s work is the dataset of anonymised public participation and opinion, which charts the priorities communities put on various aspects of their neighbourhoods. Looking across every Commonplace project except active travel engagements (which are notably technical in their focus), access to nature and green space is the second most frequent topic of feedback by communities. It is a huge dataset: almost threequarters of a million public comments, so it is worthy of serious and weighty consideration. The message from the sentiment of these comments is clear: there is insufficient access to nature close to people’s homes, which is particularly pronounced in areas of higher deprivation.
When research has consistently pointed to the huge positive impact that nature has on wellbeing, it should perhaps be no surprise that communities rate it more highly than topics such as safety, car parking and housing supply. But for me and many others it is not only a surprise but a massive opportunity.
Let’s step back for a moment to reflect on how this data was collected. The Commonplace technology platform is much more transparent than other engagement methodologies of collecting public feedback - either analogue or technological. In most cases on Commonplace, people can read and respond to what others have written. Our hypothesis has always been that this would reduce rather than increase polarisationalthough this wasn’t always shared, particularly in the early days. The data is clear though: over time we have seen a very consistent trend of more positive and less negative feedback, showing that Commonplace2 has increased people’s willingness to accept the collective view of the community.
This is impactful because greater community alignment, or cohesion, around a topic means greater clarity of need, which in turn can lead to more effective delivery of interventions by architects, planners and developers. My favourite example is ‘Mini Holland’ in Waltham Forestwhere Commonplace collected tens of thousands of public responses to proposals to improve walking and cycling, including participation in codesign of solutions. Whilst
there were campaigns against the changes, the Commonplace data showed broad public support. The results have been spectacular, with Kings College research3 indicating that thousands of years of human life will be saved due to improvements in air quality.
Which brings us neatly back to wellbeing and the benefits of nature. Commonplace has run many engagement projects focusing on access to, and value of wild spaces in cities. ParkPower4 was a state-of-the-city reflection on green spaces in London, and Re-think Glasgow a call for climate adaptation ideas for Glasgow at the time of COP26 in the city. London’s nature recovery strategy is currently under public discussion on Commonplace5. The message from these projects as well as copious academic research is that wellbeing and nature are intrinsically linked: remove nature and wellbeing dramatically suffers.
Cities need nature, and nature needs cities. The Nature Towns and Cities initiative has recently
launched with exactly this vision: to ensure that cities do their bit to achieve the government’s goal of protecting 30% of England for nature by 20306 .
The case for more nature in cities is undeniably strong, and as demonstrated by the Commonplace evidence, is very popular. So what are the barriers to making it happen, and can technology help remove them? I think there are three distinct opportunities:
Firstly, ‘prioritisation’. Technology can pinpoint the urban areas that have the greatest need. Natural England’s Green Infrastructure mapping7 goes a lot of the way. At Afield we will shortly be publishing a new data map that combines need and opportunity to show the priority hotspots. Attention, funding and support should be directed to these places to achieve the greatest benefits.
Secondly, ‘partnership’. A strong coalition of community, local authority and local stakeholders such as property developers is needed to deliver wild spaces in
these priority areas. Technology such as Commonplace is potent is its ability, when used with purpose, to convene a trusted, local, co-production environment to create momentum and accountability.
Thirdly, ‘proceeds’. Funding for any project, however beneficial, is challenging in the current economic environment. In particular, new natural spaces need not only start-up funding but ongoing management costs. The good news is that markets for biodiversity net gain and carbon capture can provide income for nature restoration. But right now that only works for large areas of new natural habitat. Technology can solve this by packaging up the smaller urban spaces to create new income streams.
In addition, technology is underpinning bioblitzes used to measure biodiversity; being harnessed and adapted for wider needs by the Community Tech movement8; and supporting radical new democratic processes9. If brought together, these myriad tools offer an opportunity that should be grasped.
Walking down any high street, the number of people buried in their smartphones gives weight to the argument that digital technology distracts from the analogue world around us. My vision is that rather than stifle it, digital technology should amplify the analogue beauty and effectiveness of natureenhanced neighbourhoods, by creating demand, expectation and solutions that are owned
by, and give rise to better lives for people living in, particularly the most deprived areas, of our towns and cities.
Future cities and their leaders must make purposeful use of technology to listen to, and act on, the needs of local people and nature. If they do that effectively, technology can help unlock nature-catalysed windfalls of health, wellbeing and resilience that will be of extraordinary value.
Mike Saunders co-founded Commonplace and more recently founded Afield Environmental.
Imagery: First page - photo by The Blowup via Unsplash; previous page - photo of Mini Holland scheme courtesy of Urban Movement; this page - photo by Nerea Marti Sesarino via Unsplash
1 Longitudinal associations between going outdoors and mental health and wellbeing during a COVID -19 lockdown in the UK. PMC, 2022 2 Commonplace Impact Report: commonplace.is/blog/connectingpeople-to-places-a-review-of-ourimpact-2024-2025.
3 Waltham Forest air quality study: walthamforest.gov.uk/sites/default/ files/2021-10/Waltham%20Forest%20 Kings%20Report%20PA%20Final.pdf
4 Park Power, a partnership led by the London Collective including Commonplace. Siemens, the City of London Corporation, DAR Group and Get Living: parkpower.commonplace.is/
5 London’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy: londonlnrs.commonplace.is/
Irma Delmonte warns of declining spatial memory in the age of GPS and AI, urging cities to engage our senses and cognitive abilities.
GPS technology has fundamentally transformed how we navigate urban environments, but evidence suggests this convenience comes at a cognitive cost. I tested it out on my navigation skills and reliance on technology to see how our brain adapts to urban landscapes. Is the sense of orientation a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ ability? Will the new cities be designed to rely on AI-integrated systems for navigation? Or is the age-old method of knowing our environments — even if that means asking people for directions — still a thing?
The Neuroscience of Digital Navigation Research from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, revealed that habitual GPS use is directly correlated with declining spatial memory over time1. The hippocampus, the brain region responsible for spatial navigation and memory formation, showed measurable changes in people who rely heavily on turn-by-turn directions. Other studies of London taxi drivers demonstrate this ‘use it or lose it’ principle in reverse: active drivers possess larger hippocampi compared to retired ones, while GPS-dependent individuals show decreased functional coupling between the hippocampus and other brain regions.
Overreliance on GPS might even be changing our brains. When we outsource navigational abilities to follow passive GPS instructions, we bypass the cognitive processes that create mental maps of our environment. This disengagement may affect not just navigation ability but overall brain health, as spatial navigation has been shown to exercise critical neural pathways linked to memory formation and cognitive aging.
The Human Touch
Many of us instinctively turn to our smartphones for wayfinding and navigating urban space. But navigation apps typically prioritise efficiency over experience, optimising routes that avoid delays rather than selecting paths that might enrich our connection to place and engagement with architectural and urban space.
To find out, I decided to run a little experiment. I chose an area of London I am not familiar with to see how I observed the urban environment and oriented myself in order to arrive at the final destination — all without the help of my smartphone.
Walking through a quiet residential street in Hackney, I found myself constructing what urban theorist Kevin Lynch would call the ‘image of the city’ — a mental map built not from GPS coordinates but from my immediate sensory environment. The street presented itself as a coherent path, defined by the regular rhythm of Victorian and Edwardian brick buildings that create visual continuity. Their repetitive fenestration patterns — the arched windows
on the left façades — became distinctive landmarks that anchored my spatial awareness, each architectural gesture marking incremental progress as I walked through the unfamiliar territory.
Yet this homogeneity Lynch warned against poses a particular cognitive challenge. Without a central landmark, I look for corner shops, or sharp district boundaries — anything that makes the environment seem less monotonous and homogeneous. The parked cars along both sides of the street create a subtle edge defining the pedestrian zone, but they offer little distinctive character. As I move forward, I’m acutely aware of how my brain actively seeks differentiation — scanning for the slight variations in brickwork color, the ivycovered building on the right, the subtle shifts in roofline — minor elements that become magnified in their importance precisely because the street lacks stronger visual anchors.
This street, stripped of obvious contextual richness, forces active rather than passive navigation. I cannot simply follow turn-by-turn directions; I must read the urban fabric itself, interpreting how the buildings, street width, and material textures create a coherent sense of direction and place. This cognitive engagement — the very process GPS navigation seeks to eliminate — is what builds a spatial memory that I can later recall and rely on for navigation.
Reclaiming Spatial Cognition
I completed my journey from London Fields to Shoreditch Church, getting lost twice and once stopping in a coffee shop
to ask for directions (proudly telling them that I did not have the smartphone with me).
What I appreciated from this dérive was the fact that I did not have to follow a specific ‘most efficient’ route. I start to think that maybe taking detours away from the route suggested by Google Maps are actually enjoyable. Less efficient, perhaps, but isn’t a city meant to be a beautiful place to be immersed in and enjoyed, rather than a terrain to be traversed?
While smart cities are increasingly integrating navigation technologies into urban planning, urban design can also be supportive of natural wayfinding through legible street patterns, distinctive landmarks, and intuitive spatial organisation.
As cities evolve toward technology-integrated futures, the challenge lies in creating systems that enhance rather than diminish human agency.
By combining GPS precision with augmented reality (AR) contextual richness and healthconscious routing, urban designers and practitioners should consider developing navigation systems and tools that exercise our cognitive abilities while guiding our steps. The goal isn’t to reject technological assistance but to ensure it engages rather than bypasses the cognitive processes that connect us meaningfully to the places we inhabit.
Irma Delmonte is a Senior Researcher at Foster+Partners. Across history, design, urbanism, and cultural studies, she supports designers in the development of complex research narratives. She obtained her BArch in Architecture from IUAV (University of Venice) and her MA in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London).
1 Dahmani, L., Bohbot, V.D. Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation. Sci Rep 10, 6310 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62877-0
Call for nominations now open
Old or new, large or small, known or unknown - we are looking for the places that work well. These could be places you’ve lived in, visited, worked on, or researched. In particular we want to hear about the places that have taken and continue to take action, delivering the transformation required to provide positive social, physical, and economic urbanism.
The categories:
European City of the Year
Cities in the UK or elsewhere in Europe with a population of more than 150,000
Great Town / Small City
Towns and small cityies in the UK or Ireland with a population of less than 150,000
Great Neighbourhood
Smaller scale urban areas that provide places for local residents to live, work, and play
Great Street or Space Streets and public realm schemes such as squares, parks, harbours.
Full details and nomination form at theaou.org/nominate Deadline Sunday 15 February 2026
Digital Magics and Tech-Utopias
Harrison Brewer investigates the promise of tech-utopias within the built environment by unpacking two highprofile digital urban visions
When I started my career in planning and the built environment, it felt like one of the hype words was ‘digital planning’. The idea of bringing the power of technology to bear in the built environment was intoxicating and still captures the imagination - every conference I’ve attended in the last couple of years has a digital planning panel preparing for the eventual AI takeover, for good or for bad. It is however a tale of two sectors when it comes to digital adoption.
When I worked in design consultancies, digital tools were everywhere - we used drawing softwares, 3D modelling tools, stunning visualisation engines (now even more so where AI can enable anyone to create professional CGIs from a plan), and chunky viability calculators. As a planning consultant submitting and monitoring applications, I was using Microsoft Word and trawling local authority planning databases that looked like it was built on Windows 98. I was once referred to a physical copy of a 300 page Local Plan only five years ago, at a time when the world was just getting to grips with Zoom calls and remote working. Now working in a local authority, it’s a happy medium between AI assistants and programmes that freeze if you click too quickly. Technological adoption takes time to embed within different agencies and institutions - the things we marvel at in conferences and op-eds are moonshots teasing at the magic of what’s possible. The practical use-cases for tech are often much more simple, technical, and far less sexy.
Despite the fact that the biggest leap in progress will come from less exciting technological developments in the built environment, ‘techutopianism’ still wins the imagination. Tech utopianism can be described as the belief that advancements in technology will eventually lead civilization into a post-scarcity utopia where artificial intelligence has solved the climate crisis, addressed global inequality, and created meaningful and enriching lives for everyone. Its growing popularity among tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike (an unholy alliance if ever I’ve seen one) has shaped a global conversation over the power and role of technology within our lives. According to techutopians, technology can be waved like a magic wand, eradicating the ills plaguing our planet. If only we trust those waving it and supply them with countless hectares of land, gigawatts of energy, litres of water, and billions of dollars. Whereas Arthur C Clarke, the famous sci-fi author, believed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, the tech bros will have us believe that tech really IS magic and all we have to do is believe.
The other side of ‘technology as magic’ and tech-utopianism is ‘technology as a tool’. These are the applications that are relatively boring in comparison to the fringes of our imagination. Instead of discussing artificial super intelligence,
we should be deploying interactive PDFs on publicly accessible websites. Instead of AImanaged smart buildings, we could be talking about common data environments for all local authority planning data. These ideas are far less captivating but arguably far more effective at enabling built environment professionals to do their work better. In the words of Terry Pratchett, ‘’It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done”.
This is the essential dichotomy that I see when we talk about digital adoption within the built environment - ideas that gain traction are the ‘tech as magic’ use-cases whilst the ones that would enable us to do our jobs better are the less adopted ‘tech as tool’ applications. One offers a panacea to all our troubles whilst the other is uninspiring and often neglected.
In recent years, we’ve been given some reallife examples of what a ‘tech as magic’ future might look like. Google’s Sidewalk Labs trialled a project along Toronto’s waterfront as a pilot for digital-led regeneration. Some of the project’s key headlines was adding a digital layer on top of physical infrastructure and the built environment in order to improve the efficiency and adaptability of the development. The zoning code was going to adapt to demand in real-time, traffic lanes would alternate between cycle and pedestrian lanes during rush hour, and a ‘pay as you throw’ refuse system would reduce material consumption. The Sidewalk Labs development was an example of ‘tech as magic’ within the urban space, where the physical environment around you reacted instantly, by its own accord or… by magic. It made the case that technology could and would solve urban problems far quicker and more efficiently than humans ever could and at the scale of planning and managing a city of millions in the 21st Century. Who needs actual planners when an all-seeing, all-knowing (all-loving?) technological power can make those decisions for us?
According to a press release, the developer’s plan was to “design a new kind of mixed-use, complete community” and apply new digital technology
Courtesy of ChatGPT
to “create people-centered neighborhoods.” Excusing the oxymoronic idea of using digital technology to facilitate people-centred places, the project was canned in 2020 as Sidewalk Labs walked away. Some reasons include increasing land prices, Covid-19 reducing the desire for densification, and strong local opposition. More interestingly, commentators have suggested that the project was a ‘tech-first, people-second’ design where technology was included for technology’s sake. Lanes that change alignment in real time to ease traffic are great but if the main problem for Torontonians is housing affordability or community resilience, it seems like a misuse of funds and focus. Additionally, any technologically-enabled urbanism is going to create questions of privacy and priority. Who is accountable for managing the data gathered on residents and what happens to that data over time? Are the design of digital platforms creating a procurement scenario where one provider is unfairly prioritised over others? In other words, if your whole neighbourhood is run on Android but you want to switch to Apple, how does that work? How do you keep pricing competitive if one company has a monopoly on your operating system?
Either way, the project did not go ahead despite a lot of time and resources invested in planmaking and design. I refer to a quote I read recently from someone working in innovation and public administration - ‘No innovation until everything works’. Whilst the imagination is laudable, perhaps the resources would have better been used elsewhere (although without a tech-led vision, the project likely wouldn’t have gotten international acclaim and investment, government backing, et cetera… which begs the question whether this was an example of tech as magic or simply sleight of hand).
Source: Flickr
In a similar vein, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s ‘NEOM’ projects have also presented a ‘tech as magic’ solution to urbanism. The Line, the flagship project, is an example of an otherworldly urban futurism where technological integration into the built environment creates an urban experience with little to no friction whatsoever, a seamless, compact, and luxurious urban experience. The Line has no roads, no cars, and was due to accommodate 9 million people within 34 square kilometers. All essentials were to be within five minutes walk and high-speed rail
intended to carry you from one end to the other in twenty minutes. There were even plans for a 46,000 capacity football stadium. That’s bigger than the capacity of Villa Park in Birmingham and not far off Paris St Germain’s home in Paris, the Parc des Princes. In other words, that’s a serious stadium squeezed into a seriously small space and if you’ve attended a major sporting or cultural event, you’ll know how intense and stress-inducing leaving that venue can be. How does it work in a city 200 metres wide? The answer must be… by magic.
Whilst writing this article, I’ve had to change to using the past tense when referring to The Line. The giga-project has since been rolled back from promising to deliver 16km by 2030 to just 2.4km. Not even KSA’s sovereign wealth fund could raise this project from the ground and now, the fund is retreating from its investment. Many professionals claim that it was never feasible or practical to build from the beginning despite millions of pounds and dollars of design work produced by the world’s top architectural and design consultancies. Many others continue to criticise the project for numerous environmental and human rights violations. None of the project’s realities embodies the ‘tech as magic’ ambition of its vision and designs. CGIs showing an upsidedown skyscraper-cum-chandelier hanging pendulously from a seismic harbour gateway give way now to the reality of huge trenches of sand sitting dormant in the desert.
The role of these two cautionary tales is not to hammer the wonder of technological wizardry out of you. The potential for the digital and the technological to reinvent the way we live, work, and connect is exponential. Social media sparked the democratic revolutions of the Arab Spring in 2011 as protestors organised over facebook. AIenabled civic software helped Taiwan coordinate one of the best national responses to Covid-19 in the world. Technology, like magic, is a current that can be channelled into doing good just as easily as doing bad. Where we go wrong is when we willingly believe that technology can deliver a utopia. The irony is that utopia literally translates to ‘no place’ - somewhere that does not exist. Whilst building a reality that does not yet exist has its place in urbanism, at a time of real need and pressing crises, our faith is better placed in what does exist, in people and places.
Harrison Brewer is a Development Officer at London Borough of Hackney. He is also a Young Urbanist and sits on the e-journal Editorial Board at the AoU.
Source: Neom / YouTube
Designing for the invisible user: when AI agents navigate our cities
Maryline Esteves explores how AI agents will soon curate urban journeys, raising questions about personalisation and the risk of echo chambers.
Walk down London’s Oxford Street in ten years’ time, and the crowd might look the same, but no two people will be seeing the same city. Through a pair of augmented lenses, your personal AI knows what you like: independent coffee, quiet side streets, sustainable fabrics, size seven shoes. As you walk, it quietly edits your field of vision, highlighting a tucked-away gallery, suggesting a detour through a calmer street, reminding you of a brand that matches your values. The city rearranges itself around you.
Now let’s try and imagine everyone else’s version of Oxford Street. Each one different. Each one curated by a digital companion that knows its human better than they know themselves.
For decades, we’ve talked about humancentred design. But what happens when the
user isn’t really human anymore? When our experiences of the city are increasingly mediated through artificial intelligence? Are we, as builtenvironment professionals, ready to design not just for people, but for the AI agents that guide them?
From smart cities to sentient streets
The ‘smart city’ movement promised seamless efficiency: sensors in lampposts, responsive lighting, data-driven planning. The next phase will be more intimate and more invisible.
AI agents - personal, portable, always-on - will soon be the filters through which most people experience place. The question isn’t just how the city uses data to serve us, but how our data companions use the city to serve us.
Photo by 0xk via Unsplash
Where we once designed legibility for the human eye, we may soon be designing legibility for the ‘Algorithmic One’. What information will a building need to ‘broadcast’ for an AI to know it’s relevant to its user?
In marketing and retail, this shift is already well-underway. AI systems are learning to analyse sales calls and predict footfall. The integration of data and narrative is becoming the new craft.
The built environment will be next.
A new stakeholder in the built environment
Developers already think in layers of audience: investors, tenants, residents, visitors. Soon, there will be a fifth: the AI intermediaries acting on behalf of all the others.
An AI doesn’t stroll down the high street or admire façades. It scans, parses, and prioritises. It will seek metadata, not mood… At least for now. Its choices will be guided by structured information: accessibility data, energy efficiency scores, digital ratings, pricing algorithms.
A building that fails to surface this data clearly may become invisible to the digital agents that recommend where we eat, shop, or stay. Places could rise or fall in prominence based on how ‘discoverable’ they are to machines.
Urban visibility will have a second dimension: search visibility.
Think of how websites are designed today. The language of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) like tags, keywords, quietly dictates how content is built. Tomorrow’s architects and planners may face a similar challenge: creating cities that are both humanly rich and algorithmically legible.
Maybe what we need is a new term: Physical Experience Optimisation: PEO, designing for the ‘visible engine’ rather than the search engine.
Personalised cities vs shared experiences
The promise of AI-mediated living is hyper-personalisation: places and experiences tailored precisely to your taste and mood. But there’s a quiet paradox here.
When every journey is personalised, the collective experience of the city begins to fragment.
If each citizen walks a different route, guided by an invisible algorithm, what happens to the serendipity of stumbling upon a street musician or a local market?
There’s also the risk of flattening. AI systems, trained on preference and pattern, may start steering us toward what’s ‘most likely’ to please us, which means places begin to optimise for the predictable. When AI optimises for efficiency, it erases nuance and distinctiveness.
The intangible, the slightly offbeat, the spaces that rely on a sense of vibe or gut feel could
struggle to compete in a world where every decision is datarationalised.
In the process, we might lose something deeply human: the conviction that a place moves us for reasons we can’t quite name.
And beneath that sits a subtler danger: the creation of physical echo chambers. If AI agents continuously curate our routes and routines to align with our interests and comfort zones, our cities could begin to mirror the social media feeds we already inhabit: self-confirming, familiar, homogenous.
Imagine a world where sports fans, foodies, and luxury shoppers all move through separate invisible geographies, rarely overlapping.
The public realm, long a space of friction and encounter, risks splintering into micro realities that never quite meet: a mosaic of overlapping privacies.
Storytelling for machines
In marketing, we’ve long known that data without narrative doesn’t move people. But as AI begins to mediate choice, we’ll need stories that machines can understand.
Every building, brand, and district will require a kind of digital mirror: a structured narrative layer that tells AI agents what it stands for, who it serves, and why it matters. For property and place brands, this isn’t science fiction, it’s a new literacy.
Imagine a future where an AI assistant curates your day based not on location alone, but on alignment with your
values: inclusive design, cultural authenticity, walkability.
The future won’t just reward visibility; it will reward codification. Places that can clearly express their qualities, eg inclusivity, cultural authenticity, sustainability, walkability; through consistent, machine-readable data will be the ones surfaced first.
Codification becomes the new storytelling. Not in the sense of reducing meaning to metrics, but of translating meaning into metadata. The urban storytellers of tomorrow may need to write in two languages: human and machine.
Early signals: the algorithmic city is already here
This future isn’t entirely hypothetical.
In Copenhagen, real-time mobility data already adjusts traffic lights and bike routes dynamically. Helsinki has trialled AI-driven publictransport optimisation. Paris uses predictive models to plan cultural programming based on crowd sentiment. Further afield, Seoul and Singapore are at the frontier of adaptive urban systems with AI driven mobility systems. Shopping malls in Dubai use predictive analytics to direct visitors to quieter routes or higher-margin retailers. In Tokyo, digital twin districts simulate how people and data interact, allowing developers to test scenarios before construction begins.
These examples show the early outlines of an “algorithmic urbanism”, where design, data, and behaviour feed each other continuously.
But they also raise difficult questions: who controls the code that shapes our perception of space? And how do we ensure that AI augments, rather than replaces, human curiosity?
Ethics, agency, and the loss of serendipity
AI could help design more responsive, inclusive environments, ones that adapt to individual needs, guide vulnerable users, or balance real-time demand. But it could also narrow our worlds, turning cities into comfort zones optimised for convenience.
When the algorithm knows your preferences too well, it stops showing you anything new. For urbanists, that’s a profound challenge. Cities have always thrived on friction: the unexpected encounter, the accidental view, the tension between order and chaos.
If we outsource our navigation, discovery, and even aesthetic judgment to AI, we risk sanitising the very messiness that makes urban life meaningful.
Physical echo chambers would be the ultimate consequence: invisible partitions separating communities not by class or race, but by algorithmic curation.
If left unchecked, this could quietly erode civic empathy: the simple understanding that others move through the same spaces differently.
On a human level, what will this do to us cognitively if we only ever encounter the predictable and the known? The city has always trained our brains to be alert, adaptive, improvisational.
If AI filters out surprise, we risk a kind of perceptual atrophy.
And underpinning all of this is a question of trust. As AI mediates more of our choices, we may grow less confident in our own instincts and more dependent on systems whose logic we can’t fully see.
Perhaps our job in the AI age won’t be to perfect the user experience, but to protect its imperfections to design for wonder as much as for efficiency.
Reclaiming the human
AI will soon shape how we see, interpret, and value the world around us. But cities are not spreadsheets. Their worth lies as much in atmosphere as in analytics; in the way light hits stone, or laughter echoes through a square.
As we begin designing for the invisible users, the AI agents who will navigate on our behalf, we must resist the urge to make our environments too knowable, too optimised.
The next era of urbanism will belong to those who can balance machine logic with human intuition. While AI might be able to tell us where to go, only we can decide why it’s worth the journey.
Maryline Esteves is a strategist and placemaker exploring the intersection of people, brand and place. Through her practice, Cura, she works across the globe to create places that are socially, culturally, and environmentally regenerative.
When tech gets in the way: Advocating for a simplified approach to SuDS design
Lewis Hubbard advocates for simplified, collaborative approaches to SuDS, cautioning against overreliance on software.
“Someone’s got to hold a ******* pencil!” So I heard at this year’s AoU Congress in Utrecht. I think it was an expression of polite frustration that, for all the talk, eventually someone has to draw (and then build) something. But the line also got me thinking about tech. Most of us use an enormous amount of sophisticated software each day - AutoCAD, Revit, Illustrator, specialist modelling software. On the whole this is hugely enabling. But I think there are cases where tech can get in the way, overcomplicating what we should be able to communicate intuitively and distracting us as designers from our overall aims. For me, SuDS design is one of these cases, where our reliance on software-led hydraulic modelling is inadvertently steering us towards rubbish SuDS and more constrained landscape designs.
Urbanists, and increasingly the civil engineering profession as a whole, are in agreement as to what ‘good’ SuDS look like. Good SuDS capture surface water in the landscape, as close as possible to where it falls, enabling reuse, infiltration and its gradual movement through a site. As well as being a tool for the management of flooding, SuDS can and should promote biodiversity, remove pollutants and contribute to healthier and more attractive places to live. To achieve these aims, basic SuDS that seek to simply channel rainwater into detention basins or storage tanks will not do – as designers we need to deploy a whole range of SuDS features that are integrated into the landscape throughout our site.
We know that local authorities want these kinds of SuDS in new developments too, and most have commendably progressive SuDS design guides to steer design teams in this direction. At the same time, it is now the standard request of most local planning authorities that a full hydraulic model of their site, produced in proprietary software, is submitted as part of a planning application, or, at the very least, as part of a site’s precommencement conditions. The engineering reasoning behind this is persuasive – hydraulic modelling is believed to enable greater accuracy in assessing a site’s vulnerability to flooding than alternative approaches, and we have used it with great success in modelling piped drainage systems. In my practical experience, however, it is hopelessly incompatible with doing SuDS
well, and undermines our goal of designing places that are resilient to our increasingly unpredictable rainfall.
There are a few reasons for this. Most directly, it is incredibly difficult to accurately represent landscape SuDS designs in software that is set up to model them like an old-fashioned piped network. SuDS based on vegetation also behave very differently to traditional piped drainage systems. We as designers are therefore pushed towards the sorts of SuDS that are more easily depicted in the software – those that convey water directly to a tank or detention basin.
Second, software-led hydraulic modelling is woefully incompatible with the highly collaborative, iterative realities of the design process. For me, a good SuDS design is developed by a landscape architect and civil engineer working in partnership with the wider project team. The problem with bringing hydraulic modelling into this relationship is that it is too inflexible a tool – it just isn’t practical to continually remodel in response to the reality of a constantly evolving landscape design. The natural outcome is that SuDS design becomes divorced from landscape.
Finally, the highly technical nature of hydraulic modelling, which relies on expensive software and often on specialist drainage engineers, serves to push SuDS design out of the remit of many landscape architects. It also encourages developers, aware of the requirement to submit hydraulic models as part of a planning application and ever conscious of costs, to minimise
the involvement of landscape architects. For me, this hugely undermines our ability to design good SuDS that are fully embedded in the landscape and offer real aesthetic, environmental and community value.
The fact is, good SuDS design is inseparable from good landscape design. We therefore need approaches that enable the two to be designed in collaboration, drawing on the skills of both engineers and
landscape architects. For me, a less technical approach to SuDS design, with simplified calculation tools, has huge advantages over tech-enabled hydraulic modelling.
Lewis Hubbard is a chartered civil engineer and Director of Lewis Hubbard Engineering, a multidisciplinary practice focused on social housing and urban infrastructure.
Attractive, landscape-led SuDS at Woodberry Down and Spring Park in Hackney / Source: Susdrain
The New Economics of Infrastructure:
Rethinking Value, Digitalisation, and Collaboration in the Age of
Intelligent Systems
As cities across the globe rethink how infrastructure creates value, Shane Mitchell explores the shift from asset delivery to adaptive ecosystems — where digitalisation, lifecycle stewardship, and collaborative governance form the foundations of a new urban economics.
From Assets to Ecosystems
Infrastructure has always shaped the form and function of our cities — the networks beneath and between buildings that make urban life possible. But today, its meaning is expanding: from fixed assets and physical delivery to dynamic systems that connect people, data, and place.
Across the built environment, this shift is redefining how we plan, design, and value urban systems. A new economics of infrastructure is emerging — one centred on the depth of connection between systems, stakeholders, and outcomes. The effects of this transformation are particularly visible in the Middle East, where I have been leading infrastructure design and consulting teams on city-wide digital masterplanning, innovation programmes, and strategic advisory initiatives over the last decade.
Municipalities, transport authorities, and developers are increasingly treating infrastructure as an ecosystem, by integrating digital intelligence, lifecycle stewardship, and shared prosperity. Lessons learned from fastgrowing regions now offer new insight for developed economies adapting ageing networks, and for rapidly urbanising areas where the imperative for smarter growth is accelerating.
Digitalisation: The Nervous System of Cities
Digitalisation is transforming infrastructure into a responsive system — one that senses, learns,
“Infrastructure is no longer something we build and leave behind — it’s something we continuously learn from.”
and adapts based on feedback from real-world conditions.
In Europe, the long-standing idea of a city data commons, exemplified in Amsterdam and Barcelona, shows how open information can function as civic infrastructure, in areas such as infrastructure planning, transport services, and public service provision.
Globally, cities have built a substantial library of digital strategies. Tokyo has long applied predictive analytics across transport and
Figure 1. From Linear Delivery to Adaptive Ecosystems
buildings; Toronto’s digital planning frameworks align civic data with environmental and social objectives. Virtual Singapore — and more recently Rotterdam — illustrate the emergence of the ‘cityverse’, where physical and digital models co-evolve into a live, participatory layer of urban experience.
Today, cities in the Middle East are showing what else can be done. Riyadh’s citywide infrastructure planning model is aligning ministries, utilities, and investors around shared outcomes. Dubai’s digital frameworks demonstrate the value of integrated data linking energy, mobility, and public services. Abu Dhabi’s ambition to become the world’s first AI-driven city embeds data intelligence directly into infrastructure, demonstrating how governance, trust, and technical capacity can scale together. Doha, building on the digital foundations established for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, now deploys realtime monitoring and whole-system optimisation across assets and networks.
Lifecycle Value and Circular Thinking
Previously, the old economics of infrastructure ended at handover. The new approach, however, recognises whole-life value — economic, environmental, and social — long after project phases are completed.
Across the Gulf region, innovation-led infrastructure is accelerating. Saudi Arabia is integrating research ecosystems and digital platforms under Vision 2030. Abu Dhabi
and Dubai are investing in AI clusters, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing. Muscat’s innovation zones demonstrate circular models where government, industry, and academia collaborate on low-carbon value chains.
Across Europe, circular-economy principles are now being embedded in procurement, prioritising longevity, adaptability, reuse, and social value. Copenhagen and Helsinki extend this
into human-centred models focused on wellbeing and resilience.
Integrated innovation districts — from Dubai’s Design District to Vienna’s Aspern Seestadt and Barcelona’s 22@ — illustrate how infrastructure investment can catalyse governance experimentation and new forms of collaboration.
At a national level, the UK is strengthening lifecycle value through public-private programmes such as the National Digital Twin initiative, cross-cutting geospatial work like the National Underground Asset Register, and emerging systems-thinking coalitions. These efforts reinforce the shift from projects to systems and from cost to value.
Globally, lifecycle and systems-value approaches from the World Bank, the Global Infrastructure Facility, and the World Economic Forum are embedding whole-life metrics directly into financing and development — reshaping how infrastructure value is defined and delivered.
Governance: The Hidden Infrastructure Digital transformation only succeeds when governance evolves with it. The UK’s National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority represents a move towards whole-life value — recognising that infrastructure and service provision sit on a shared continuum. European data-commons models show how openness strengthens trust, agency, and participation.
“Governance, not technology, is the underlying operating system that enables complex urban systems to work together.”
Good governance determines whether digital tools become public assets or organisational silos — and whether innovation becomes systemic or episodic.
From Scale to Connection
Innovation rarely begins with megaprojects. More often, it emerges in smaller scale environments, such as neighbourhoods trialling circular design, communities co-producing services, or districts testing new planning and data-governance models.
Across the Middle East and Europe — from Dubai’s connected communities to Nordic climate-positive districts — innovation clusters are becoming laboratories for adaptive urbanism. Knowledge institutions such as Dubai’s Museum of the Future and Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council are shaping global discussions on AI, quantum technologies, and materials science, signalling how emerging capabilities will reshape urban systems.
Towards a Shared Urban Future
Infrastructure is evolving into a shared platform for resilience, inclusion, and innovation. It values adaptability over rigidity, lifecycle stewardship over capital delivery, and connected ecosystems over isolated assets.
Social value is becoming integral. Social value models and frameworks such as Social Life’s Social Sustainability Assessment show how infrastructure can strengthen belonging, equity, and wellbeing — essential qualities of resilient cities.
“The cities that will lead are those that treat infrastructure not as a cost, but as a conversation.”
For planners, designers, and policymakers, the task ahead is clear: to weave digital intelligence, lifecycle thinking, and governance innovation into the fabric of placemaking — co-creating communities and designing infrastructure that enables participation, purpose, and long-term liveability.
Shane Mitchell FRSA, AoU, MCIM, MIET is Founder and Director of UrbanPeer Ltd. and a member of the Academy of Urbanism Gulf Chapter Steering Committee. His work spans infrastructure innovation, sustainability, and digital strategy globally, and in the UK, Europe, and the Middle East.
Figure 3. From Scale to Connection
The City Observatory Papers:
Rotterdam Climate Adaptation 5
A partnership between BDP and the AoU
Rotterdam: Climate Adaptation
The Netherlands is known for its brilliance in water management but as climate change accelerates with rising sea levels and more extreme weather, the country is moving from fighting water to embracing it. This article is a collaboration between Fleur Dassen from The Green Village Field Lab at Delft University of Technology and Björn Bleumink, who leads BDP’s Rotterdam Studio. It explores the work of the lab as a test bed for developing and applying ideas to make the city more resilient.
The city of Rotterdam occupies a unique position as a delta city. Its strategic location on the curve of the River Maas has enabled it to grow into one of the world’s largest ports as well as being a multi-cultural hub, home to over 170 nationalities, and a ‘melting pot of cultures.’ However around 85% of its land area is below sea level and 10% of its homes are located outside the primary dike system. The city therefore has a longstanding tradition of innovation and a proactive approach to climate adaptation.
Fleur Dassen is the Communications Specialist for Climate Adaptation at The Green Village, a field lab for sustainable innovation in the urban environment at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands.
Björn Bleumink leads BDP’s Rotterdam studio. He has over twenty years of experience in human-centred and nature inclusive architecture and urban design projects.
This is more than a purely technical engineering exercise, Rotterdam has embraced a holistic approach, integrating climate resilience into daily life to enhance residents’ well-being. In this way, social cohesion is facilitated through a program that has evolved from ‘water resistance’ to ‘water resilience’ through integrated design solutions, citizen engagement, and experimental pilot projects. Crucial to the programme is Delft University of Technology’s (TU Delft) and The Green Village that has been built as a test bed for innovation as part of a long-standing tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration and holistic thinking that characterises the Dutch design approach.
Challenges
Rotterdam’s climate challenges are multifaceted. Its adaptation program; Rotterdam Weather Wise (Rotterdams Weerwoord), focuses on six core issues: drought, heat, precipitation, flooding, groundwater, and land subsidence. As Johan Verlinde, program manager of Rotterdam Weather Wise, explains: “Rotterdam is kind of like a bathtub: we face the paradox of both too much and too little water.” Rainfall patterns are shifting, periods of drought are increasing, and when it rains, it is more intense than before.
Water challenges in Rotterdam go beyond just rain: rising temperatures and prolonged droughts threaten water availability and amplify urban heat, especially in densely built areas. Meanwhile, fluctuating groundwater levels contribute to land subsidence, affecting nearly 30,000 buildings. That’s why climate adaptation is no longer only about keeping water out but about retaining it – to stabilise groundwater levels, reduce land subsidence, and create water buffers during dry periods. This is what Rotterdam means by
rainfall. “Due to historical urgency, we have been working on climate adaptation for a long time, and progress has been made,” Verlinde says, “but at the same time, not enough is happening yet.” Climate adaptation needs to be accelerated and rolled out everywhere in the city, both in the public and private sectors.
The city’s most pressing challenges lie in the city center and older northern and southern neighbourhoods such as Bloemhof, Tarwewijk, Oude Westen, Oude Noorden,
“Strikingly, 85% of the city lies below sea level, and about 10% of its homes are located outside the primary dike system.”
a shift from water resistance to water resilience.
Rotterdam has been adapting to climate change for decades. After heavy bombing in World War II, the city had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. During this reconstruction, many canals were turned into roads, water was pushed out, and the city became more hardened, making it more vulnerable to heat and heavy
and Crooswijk. Older buildings, narrow streets, and limited green space exacerbate problems like rainwater flooding and heat stress, making these districts particularly vulnerable. At the same time, Rotterdam needs to accommodate 50,000 new homes in the coming years, while space remains limited in an already densely developed city.
Climate adaptation in Rotterdam
The City of Rotterdam has a unique approach to integrating climate adaptation into every project. Whenever public space is ‘opened’ for maintenance or construction, climate adaptation measures such as space for water retention or greenery are always included. At the same time, gradually the city center is being made less attractive for cars, making space available for more water and greenery. “Where possible, we would like to restore the canals of the past, which were filled-in to make room for cars. We are currently investigating how to make this possible to strengthen the city’s water system,” adds Verlinde.
The approach has three main components: public space improvements, private housing initiatives, and active resident involvement. Given that about 40% of the city is public land and 60% private, Rotterdam collaborates with major housing corporations – who own over half the housing stock – to utilise the many flat roofs for green (vegetation), blue (water), and yellow (energy) roof solutions. At the same time, residents are engaged through awareness campaigns and community projects such as communal gardens. Verlinde: “As every neighbourhood is different and has its own specific challenges, each district has its own strategy. We work from the storm surge barrier to the front garden.”
Hofplein
One of Rotterdam’s current flagship projects in climate adaptation is the redevelopment of Hofplein –long known as a congested traffic junction – into a vibrant, green city square. Today, Hofplein is the literal hot spot of Rotterdam, up to 7 to 9 degrees Celsius warmer than surrounding rural areas on hot days, making urban heat stress a key challenge that the redesign seeks to address.
In the new plan, car traffic will be reduced to just two lanes along the square’s edges, creating more space for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport. The iconic fountain will remain the central feature but will now be surrounded by plants and trees that provide shade and cooling and absorb rainwater. An underground water reservoir will store excess stormwater in the first aquifer and provide irrigation during dry periods. The project exemplifies a shift toward human-centred, climate-resilient design.
In the north of Rotterdam, a former elevated railway line is being transformed into a linear public park: the Hofbogenpark. Once used for trains connecting the city to The Hague, the two kilometre long viaduct will function as a green corridor through four districts – connecting people, ecosystems, and public space. The Hofbogenpark will be the longest rooftop-park in The Netherlands and shares many similarities with the New York High Line. It brings nature into the heart of a dense-
ly built environment, threading through rooftops, above streets, and past apartment blocks. The park will offer space for walking and resting, with public platforms in between. With native planting and habitat design, it also contributes to a broader ecological network across the city. Special ramps will be provided for small animals like hedgehogs so that they can get on and off the roof.
In terms of climate adaptation, the Hofbogenpark functions as a
“As every neighbourhood is different and has its own specific challenges, each district has its own strategy. We work from the storm surge barrier to the front garden.”
decentralised water management system. Rainwater from surrounding rooftops is collected, filtered by vegetation, and stored in underground reservoirs, ready to be reused during dry spells. By connecting neighbourhoods through greenery and walkable space, the Hofbogenpark also offers more comfortable places for people to meet, strengthening social cohesion and wellbeing in a densely populated part of the city.
Above: Using flat roofs to
Innovation is crucial Innovation plays a vital role in becoming climate resilient. Verlinde stresses: “Historically, we built our way out of water problems with pipes, pumps, and dikes. But these systems are reaching their limits. Now, we must find smarter ways to work with the natural system, both above and below ground, using soil and water buffers, for instance, to better manage wet and dry periods.”
But innovation isn’t just technical. Complex issues like flooding and heat stress come with shared responsibility and require collaboration across sectors. “Many of today’s climate challenges cannot be solved by one party alone,” Verlinde stresses. “They are shared challenges that demand integrated thinking – where streets, buildings, and infrastructure work together as one urban system. That requires not only new technologies but also new ways of collaborating, communicating, and planning.”
This is where field labs come in. To be implemented widely, solutions need to be proven effective, adhere to specific regulations, and be easy to install for dayto-day workers. To help speed up innovation while managing risks, Rotterdam collaborates closely with field labs such as The Green Village at Delft University of Technology. “The construction and water sectors are traditionally quite conservative and risk-averse – for good reasons” explains Floor Pino, program manager for climate-adaptive innovations at The Green Village. “When something goes wrong, it directly affects people’s lives. Startups bring fresh ideas, but these must be tested thoroughly before large-scale implementation.”
“Historically, we built our way out of water problems with pipes, pumps, and dikes. But these systems are reaching their limits.”
Hop-step-jump
The Green Village is an open-air living lab on the TU Delft campus where researchers, entrepreneurs, and public partners experiment with sustainable innovations for the built environment. It’s a place where ideas can move from theory to practice – and where ‘failure’ is not only allowed but encouraged as part of the learning process. Unlike the ‘real world,’ The Green Village is a low-regulation environment. Building codes are switched off, allowing innovators to test concepts that would otherwise be blocked by policy or permit restrictions. Uniquely, people also live in The Green Village, providing real user feedback on innovations during the development phase. Pino: “Our goal is to facil-
itate and accelerate innovation – using field labs to speed up the development and implementation of climate adaptation solutions. We aim to make the built environment in the Netherlands and beyond more climate resilient, faster.” The Green Village forms the ‘hop’ in their hop-step-jump method: the first step where innovations are developed, tweaked, and tested. From there, they move to a ‘step’ – a pilot in an urban setting – and then the ‘jump’ to large-scale implementation. By enabling fast, iterative testing and involving residents, researchers, and entrepreneurs early in the development process, The Green Village reduces innovation risks and helps scale up climate-adaptive solutions faster.
Moving through phases at different paces
Rotterdam Weather Wise and The Green Village have built a strong collaboration based on knowledge exchange, practice-driven research, and innovation. One key challenge in innovation is syncing the fast pace of innovators with the slower process of market acceptance. Within the municipality,
One key challenge in innovation is syncing the fast pace of innovators with the slower process of market acceptance.
established standards – such as fixed road designs or pavement types – may not accommodate innovative solutions. Verlinde explains: “Managing these differences and building understanding within the organisation takes time.” Moving from pilot projects to standard practice requires solutions to prove themselves over time and may also require changes to existing regulations.
Pino also notes a lack of urgency: “When the threat isn’t immediate, it is hard to secure investment and commitment from stakeholders.”
The Green Village also functions as a space where stakeholders are brought together to share knowledge, identify obstacles, and jointly work on feasible solutions. Verlinde concludes: “The key is long-term and systems thinking -understanding that each action
contributes to the larger urban system.”
From idea to scaling up
From water barrels to floating green islands and water-permeable tiles, many innovations developed at The Green Village can now be found across Rotterdam. A strong example is BlueBloqs from FieldFactors, a natural system to restore the urban water cycle by capturing, filtering, and storing rainwater for reuse. The concept was first tested at The Green Village, where technical aspects such as purification through biofilters and underground storage were optimised.
Soon, FieldFactors found a daring first partner to conduct its first real-life pilot with: the City of Rotterdam itself. The pilot was installed in Rotterdam’s Spangen
district – a densely built neighbourhood struggling with waterlogging and in need of improved public space. Today, rainwater from 40,000 sq m of paved surfaces is captured, purified, and stored underground for reuse – irrigating the Sparta Stadium football field, urban greenery, and replenishing groundwater.
The reuse of water not only saves millions of litres of drinking water per year but also improves the livability of the area – reducing heat stress and creating greener, more welcoming public spaces where residents can connect and children can play. The pilot involved close collaboration between the municipality, water board, businesses, and residents. Since then, the system has scaled to other Dutch cities and internationally, including Madrid.
Citizen engagement
Climate adaptation requires not only policy and technical solutions but also behaviour and engagement, explains Verlinde. “It’s the people who experience the effects
“It’s the people who experience the effects of climate change first-hand, so their involvement and well-being are essential to making the city truly climate-proof.”
of climate change first-hand, so their involvement and well-being are essential to making the city truly climate-proof.” Rotterdam Weather Wise works to empower residents and include them in decision-making. With Rotterdam’s diverse population and the specific challenges of each neighbourhood, this is not always easy – but it is crucial. Pino adds: “At The Green Village, we involve our residents directly in the innovation process – they provide valuable
feedback, are the end-users of climate-adaptive innovations, and help us understand how solutions work in daily life. At the same time, involving them raises awareness and fosters ownership of the challenges and solutions ahead.” To engage citizens, the city offers subsidy programs for water storage, roof disconnection, and adding greenery. Each year, ten elementary schools receive ‘green-blue’ playgrounds that combine nature education with climate resilience.
Pavement-popping contest
During the COVID pandemic, an unexpectedly successful climate adaptation initiative was born: the national ‘tile-popping’ competition between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The idea was simple: which city can remove the most tiles (paving slabs) and replace them with greenery? Residents can sign up together with their neighbours, receive municipal funding, and have their tiles picked up for free by a special ‘tile taxi’. What started as a playful rivalry has now become an annual tradition that encourages residents to make their streets greener and more climate resilient. It has since grown into a national movement, with over 190 cities across the Netherlands taking part.
Rotterdam Weather Wise works with ‘district coordinators’, local residents who serve as a bridge between citizens and the municipality. They gather feedback, listen to concerns, and help translate local needs into concrete actions. Ellen Van Bodegom, is a district coordinator for the Noordereiland district and ‘captain’ of the foundation Iedereenaanboord (All Aboard). “You shouldn’t see citizens as just demographics and make decisions based on data and personas,” Van Bodegom explains. “You should see, value and treat each person as a neighbour with their own talents and expertise. That’s how you connect with people and get them involved.”
All Aboard!
Iedereenaanboord is a citizen-led foundation based on Noordereiland, that works on making the district more climate- and futureproof, with financial support from the municipality. Noordereiland is a densely built island that is surrounded by the Meuse River, located between central Rotterdam and the south bank. The island is unembanked, meaning it lies outside the main dike system that protects much of Rotterdam from flooding.
Because Noordereiland lacks these protective dikes, it is more vulnerable to rising water levels compared to surrounding areas. The likelihood of water reaching the quays is rising: from one to
five times per year in 2020 to up to 10 times annually by 2050. At the same time, many of the buildings are older and poorly insulated, leading to heat stress in summer and cold indoor temperatures in winter – challenges that will only intensify in the coming years. Climate adaptation and local resilience are therefore important for both safety and quality of life.
Iedereenaanboord works across three transition areas: green (health and regreening), yellow (energy transition and circular economy), and blue (living with water). The foundation operates from a fixed location, metaphorically called ‘the wheelhouse’ – a multifunctional community hub where residents can meet for coffee, swap household items at the swap store, pick up packages, take cuttings from the plant library, or collect their order of local products. This diversity of activities is one of the keys to success, says Van Bodegom:
“If you only talk about plants, only plant lovers will come. We want to include people with different
interests and backgrounds. When someone comes to swap a chair for a lamp, they might also discover the plant library and get more involved. People can participate in whatever sparks their interest, while contributing to the neighbourhood at the same time.”
Each year, Iedereenaanboord, together with Rotterdam Weather Wise and partners, organises the Stormfestival to mark the start of the storm season on 1 October. The event helps residents learn about local flood risks, how the Maeslantkering storm surge barrier works, and how to prepare for high water events.
Innovation also plays a key role at Noordereiland. “We want to be the place where people can experiment and learn. If you want to test something on a small scale, a mini Rotterdam, you can come and innovate here.” Iedereenaanboord facilitates these innovations together with knowledge institutions like Hogeschool Rotterdam and Erasmus University. Students are connected to local residents to co-develop practical, realistic solutions.
“If you want to test something on a small scale, a mini Rotterdam, you can come and innovate here.”
One recent student project at Hogeschool Rotterdam resulted in three simple, low-cost designs to make balconies more climate-resilient – created especially for residents with limited financial means. The designs were created together with neighbours, and Iedereenaanboord is now looking to further develop and implement them.
One of the biggest challenges in climate adaptation, according to Verlinde, is ensuring that every resident is part of the conversation. “Not everyone has the time, headspace, or resources to think about climate resilience – yet those with the fewest means often suffer the most from extreme weather.” Climate justice remains a key concern. “How do we reach every Rotterdammer – not just with our message but with real benefits that improve their daily lives? That’s the challenge.”
Left and opposite: Students of Hogeschool Rotterdam presenting their designs for climate resilient balconies.
...it would be a city that no longer fights water but welcomes and manages it in harmony
Climate challenges are real and pressing for every city. Urban design and innovation play crucial roles in addressing these complex issues, especially in dense cities like Rotterdam, where space is limited and overlapping social, economic, and environmental challenges converge. Making space for water and greenery might not seem so innovative, but in Rotterdam, it represents a vital shift toward resilience, health, and social well-being.
If Verlinde and Pino could design Rotterdam’s future, it would be a city that no longer fights water but welcomes and manages it in harmony. Rather than a concrete jungle, Rotterdam would be celebrated as the greenest city in the Netherlands – an equitable city where all residents and nature thrive. From homes to streets, neighbourhoods, and the entire city, Rotterdam would remain a city of action while thinking and planning ahead for a sustainable future.
MyPlace
Stralau:
A yachting peninsula in Berlin
Lucy Bali
I love walking on the riverside path round the Stralau peninsula, past self-built houseboats, shady weeping willows and chestnut trees, swans and ducks, and tiny marinas where sailing boats sway. You’ll often find me on the weekend amongst the walkers, bird watchers, dog owners and joggers, especially on a crisp Autumn morning, observing the changing colours of the fauna.
Transformed and developed into a modern ‘luxury’ residential area, nicknamed a ‘city on the water’ and referenced as the cradle of German water sports, the peninsula, formerly in East Berlin, has not always been crowded with artsy boat people and speed-walking yuppies. This green idyllic haven once welcomed the Stralau Fishing Festival, back in the 16th Century. In the 19th Century, Germany’s first competitive sailing club was founded on the half-island, owing its heritage to today.
As I walk, I see old industrial memorials commemorating its history. The path is nestled between late 19th century industrial factories, once manufacturing carpets, bottles and palm oil, and breweries and boatyards.
Although on the north side, I am reminded of the area’s
dark history. Across the river, next to the visitors’ mooring for pleasure boats, my eyes are drawn to the Knabenhäuser, the former orphanages, where, until 1949, orphans were held in inhumane conditions. Next to it is Rummelsburg’s former gruesome prison, once detaining homosexuals, the “mentally deviant” and Jews during World War 2, as well as West German prisoners held as hostages for the East German government in a political power play during the Cold War.
Today, it is the epicentre of Rummelsburg’s most bourgeois block, ‘providing the perfect example of the symbiotic relationship between Berlin’s troubled history and its gentrified future’ (The Berliner, 2023).
So I continue walking, ruminating about my role in all of this, in the heritage of this place…
Lucy Bali is a strategic urban planner with international expertise in climate resilience, adaptation, and sustainability governance. Her work focuses on integrating sustainability into urban development frameworks and strategy.
If you’re interested in getting involved with the AoU in Berlin, please email us at info@theaou.org
ArtPlace
20 years of the AoU
Connie Dales
These illustrations are just a selection of the 26 produced as part of the AoU Timeline exhibition at our recent 20th Anniversary. Across 4 A0 boards, an illustrated timeline depicted 20 years of AoU activity, from the first ever Urbanism Awards, to the launch of the Young Urbanist, to Covid and more recently.
Click here to see the full timeline.
Member spotlight Learning from Place in Seoul Jack Strange
Young Urbanist Jack Strange reflects on learning to learn from place and how it helped him on his year out in Seoul.
“Everywhere you go is a field trip”
“Once you study urban planning, there is no going back”
“Keep sketching” “Paid to people watch”
These are just some of the phrases I’ve heard during my time at
Academy of Urbanism. It’s not because they are cliches – although some can be argued to be – but because they allude to a special theme of conversation happening at the Academy. During my short time here, several special moments have emphasised this continuous conversation. The first, the YU Bicicleta Brava Tour (see Here & Now, Summer 2024), the second, volunteering at the Academy Awards 2023, and third, seeing the collaboration between Danish and English placemaking at the ‘Places where People want to Live and Work’. The diversity of these events is both a testament to the imagination within placemaking, and the enthusiasm that animates the Academy.
During the last academic year, I was living in Seoul, Republic of Korea for my International Year. The sudden, and drastic, change in my environment wasn’t an accident; I selected my options based on the criteria of ‘wanting to live where I wouldn’t expect to in the future’. Yet, despite the 8 (sometimes 9) hours’ time difference, the population density being seven times what I was used to, and entirely different contextual environment, I still found the ‘Learning
from Place’ approach remained applicable in understanding Seoul.
Countless examples separate the urban fabrics of Europe and Seoul. The first, for me, was just the scale of the city, particularly when viewing it from several mountains surrounding the city. The statistics don’t lie, but seeing both the extent (and stature) of Seoul’s urban area from these invokes a profound sense of awe that is intoxicating. The concept of ‘sonder’ is particularly apt here. The structure of the city, with the ‘cookie-cutter’ apartment blocks, stretching out to the horizon, the wide arterial roads mimicking the river that it runs beside, and a distinctive scintillation of urban lights compounds this effect, and adds a touch of romance to this feeling. That you are one
of these people, going about their everyday lives, also looking out at you. I began to ponder if the structure of the city should, could, and would be different in the future. If my imagination perceived Seoul to be this futurological landscape, what else could it become?
I feel my observations from Seoul’s metro system echoes those from the wider cityscape. Like the city, the subway is extensive – its core (Lines 1-9) have a length of 330km, and this excludes wider metropolitan services. In Seoul, I became familiar with some of these lines, using lines 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 frequently to affordably explore different areas of the city. The frequency, accessibility and transit-oriented development that occurs (particularly in more ‘modern’ areas of the city) made private transport a secondary thought.
While sonder was palpable on the mountains, the scale, bustling nature and proximity experienced within the metro created an almost unspoken community amongst the users. This community generation works reciprocally, with the lines and stations themselves having individual characteristics – from the carriage design, the line’s timetabling, other users, and prevailing ambience – that shape the user’s experiences of that route. Anecdotally, whilst London has similar, the line identity in Seoul seems markedly stronger.
The emergent sense of place hints at what ‘futuristic’ urban landscapes could become. Despite the metro being conceived through utilitarian philosophies, the lines themselves have emerged as distinct personas. While the official mascot (Ddota) plays a role, the creation seems user driven. The result of this is an intangible social asset that is usually unforeseen by the urban economists and sustainability planners. This ‘soft’ social infrastructure seems to have
more weight in Seoul’s metro, whilst its ‘hard’ social infrastructure is integrated above ground, in mountain parks and along increasingly pedestrianised streets. This highlights an interesting paradox within the city: Seoul manages to deliver elements of a personable city whilst being built inhumanably. Whilst Western typologies distinctly separate the hard, soft and transit infrastructure, Seoul attempts, and oftentimes succeeds in making this seamless. Its megastructures are seen to have personality, and these foster an unwritten sense of community.
Naturally, these observations are context dependent. Seoul in particular faces widespread loneliness among its populace, and issues that are attributed to this. This example suggests that soft social infrastructure is just one of the ways in addressing this multifaceted issue. I also suspect that the extremes of scale, density and activity amplified my own sense of marvel, awe and sonder. It could have led me to ‘read’ into the city more than others that are more acclimatised.
The city of Seoul has provided me an unforgettable, year-long field trip, filled with countless people-watching opportunities. I deeply miss it. Yet, as I resume my final year of my Integrated Master’s at Birmingham, I know that the subtle hand of Seoul will be guiding me. I’m writing this on the train, distracted by the stories being told and written by my co-passengers, much like what caught my imagination on the Airport Express on my first day. I’ve learnt a lot during the year, and I have the Academy to thank for cultivating the curiosity and reflection.
Jack Strange is a Young Urbanist at the AoU and is currently studying at the University of Birmingham
The Smart Building Advantage Book review
In line with our ‘digital cities’ theme, today, we are reviewing The Smart Building Advantage: Unlocking the Value of Smart Building Technologies by Dr Matthew Marson.
Published in 2024 this book is a whistle stop tour through the history, approaches, skills, value drivers, linkages with ESG, challenges, and tactics required to drive value from smart building technologies.
Probably unsurprisingly, as Marson is managing director of JLL Technology, I felt that the book is written from, or at least highly cognisant of, a building owners perspective.
At 95 pages, divided into nine chapters, the book is highly digestible. Being non-technical myself, I wondered if I would find reading a book on smart buildings overly techy, focussed on edge processing and the very latest in sensor technology. Pleasingly the book is written at a level understandable by most real estate professionals. Well referenced in the Harvard style, Marson’s academic background comes through with each chapter written in clear essay style, a summary and references for further reading.
While the author is clearly a proponent of smart buildings, Marson is alive to the challenges brought about, for example, by a lack of industry skills or technology obsolescence. Some of the more interesting
elements of discussion, for me at least, were around the value of smart buildings. On this topic Marson walks the reader though traditional valuation methodologies, and how these can and are being improved through building datadelivered by smart technologies. The opportunity outlined in the book is ‘that a smart building can bring an ability to unlock US $3 in business value for every US $1 invested in technology’.
Packed with personal insights from a broach career across geographies and assets, Marson provides tangible examples of smart building deployment and talks to the slower than anticipated adoption of technology in real estate.
Other than the value discussion, my second most underlined chapter was the final one, Strategies and Tactics to be the Winning Property Owner. In this chapter Marson distils his seventeen step process to design and deliver smart technology in real estate developments, along with guidance for each step.
Overall, if you, like me, have heard about smart buildings but are yet to fully grasp the concept, understand its components, benefits and challenges, then The Smart Building Advantage is a good companion to distil a broad, complex topic into 95 informative pages.
The Smart Building Advantage: Unlocking the value of smart building technologies is available from Amazon for £27.60
Harry Knibb is an Academician and Board Director at the AoU. He is a Development Director at Oxford Properties and sits on the Here & Now editorial board.
Urban Idiocy: Smart Cities
Brilliant ideas that ruined our cities
‘Smart’ is one of those words used in advertising that always makes things better. The Idiot has a smart TV, a smart watch and was tempted by a smart washing machine, even the fridge is smart, apparently. There is smart banking, smart clothing even smart water the implication being that these things are somehow innovative, data driven, and automated, even if it is not always clear how. But when applied to cities the term ‘smart’ is taken to a whole different level of meaninglessness, and we know what this leads to, we have seen it before with prefixes like ‘eco’, its leads to idiocy.
When Google were planning the ill-fated Sidewalk City they produced, what they called The Yellow Book, a 437 page vision for a smart city – This was before they alighted on Toronto as their preferred location. The Yellow Book vision is bathed in the soft light of progressive benevolence but was based on industrial levels of data collection. Indeed, it proposes a system of data as currency whereby access to services depends on how much of your data you are prepared to share. So, for example, someone visiting a friend in the scheme who didn’t want to share their data might not be able to hail a self-driving ‘taxibot’ or even pay for a meal in a restaurant.
The book describes how in the morning people will wash
in front of their smart mirror while it scans them to assess their health with a link to their doctor (and health insurance company?). Waste would be whisked away in vacuum pipes with non-recyclables being weighed and charged to the resident’s account. The Yellow Book describes data being used to reward good behaviour: business licences and loans could be more easily renewed for companies with good ‘digital reputation rating’, certain types of housing might be denied someone who had a complaint filed against them. With all the data logged centrally it would be made available through Google Glass, so that people could see people’s ranking and association in real time.
Remember this was not an episode of Black Mirror, it was the vision document!
The final proposal for Sidewalk City in Toronto was scaled back a long way, from the Yellow Book, many of the features had been dropped including the glass dome covering the whole neighbourhood. But the vision was clear, it may have been liberal and progressive in its language but it was profoundly anti-government, imagining a private city state with huge amounts of data and power being vested in the private corporation that would own and run the scheme. Google assumed that the way people operated online would be the same as the way they live within
a city. The howls of protest from the citizens of Toronto put pay to this idea.
Sidewalk City was urban idiocy of the highest order. More stupid than most of the other really stupid ideas that the idiot has covered over the years in this column. The common theme in many of these failed utopias has been the way in which designers have developed a mistaken idea about how people will live, whether it be neighbourhood units or streets in the sky. The happy, cohesive communities that inhabit the architect’s vision and stare out of their CGIs, act one way, but in the messy real world people act quite differently.
The question is whether Sidewalk City was just an extreme outlier or whether its idiocy infects the broader idea of the smart city? Looking at the many examples of smart cities across the world, a more realistic criticism might be that they over-promise and under-deliver. Smart cities mean more than a good wifi signal and dimmable street lights. Are smart cities just an empty slogan used by big consultancies and tech companies to sell products and services to cities that they don’t really need?
Look at the web site of any of the big consultancy and they will list their Smart City Services: traffic management, parking, drainage and flooding, smart
energy, infrastructure, crime and security, maintenance etc… But what they are essentially offering is to install sensors and to collect data. These include CCTV, traffic counters, sensors that detect mobile phones, air quality testing stations as well as the internet of things so that every street light and waste bin is connected. All these sensors collect huge amounts of data in real time giving a picture of the city minute by minute. The question is what to do with this data?
Rio, for example, built an enormous operations centre designed by IBM that looks like Cape Canaveral, with rows of city workers at curving desks in front of a huge array of screens showing the city in real time with hundreds of feeds from CCTV and sensors. The problem is that there is not a great deal that the city authorities can do about what they were seeing
on the screens, particularly in real time. It allows them to understand more than they did about what’s going on, but the solutions are bedevilled by the same city governance issues, inefficiencies and lack of resources that had always existed. There is a reason why Sidewalk City was to be a ‘privately run city state’ and why its Yellow Book bemoaned ‘how difficult it was to get anything done in a city’.
This problem of getting things done, even when you have tons of data is something the smart city web sites are less clear on. Of course, there are some simple things that the smart city does well: managing power grids, detecting leaks in water pipes, dimming streetlights when there is no one around, phasing traffic lights, prioritising bus lanes, directing taxis to high demand areas etc… But it’s hardly the city of the future.
To be effective, the smart city needs to engage with its citizens and change their behaviour which is potentially the start of a slippery slope that leads to Sidewalk City. At the benign end of the slope is the provision of information. The residents of Barcelona, for example can download a smart parking app that tells them where there is an available parking space. This has reduced the need to cruise around the streets looking for a space and thereby reduced congestion, brilliant!
There are lots of instance in which information alone can change behaviour but sometimes a little more is needed. The next step down the slope would therefore be ‘smart pricing’ in which costs are varied based upon demand. This is hardly new, electricity companies and train operators have always had higher prices at peak times, but the idea of
the smart city is that this can be done in real time with road and pricing, varying depending on the amount of traffic on the road. Smart it may be, but it is also likely to be deeply unpopular.
Taking things another step down the slope would involve the digital citizen with a smart card or app as happens in places like Amsterdam and Singapore. This can be used to access municipal services, for public engagement and democracy and on public transport etc.. This does start to make the city much more efficient both for citizens and for city authorities who no longer need to rely on their sensors but can track the habits and movements of their citizens via their apps. The Amsterdam system is signalled out for particular praise as being democratically owned and run in the interests of citizens.
But in other hands such systems open-up the possibility digital identities being used to control access to services. China’s Social Credit system is often cited as a system where people can gain credits for doing good things such as giving blood and losing points for unpaid debts or traffic violations. A low score
can then mean limited access to certain services, credit etc…
Then of there is the tracking of citizens without their knowledge. This already happens with sensors to track smart phones. Shopping centres in the UK use the data to understand how many people are using their centre, where they come from and by cross referencing this with demographic modelling data get some idea of their socio economic status, all anonymously, of course. Then there is facial recognition when you don’t even need to be carrying a phone. In Amazon Fresh stores you can just walk out with produce, the store having scanned your face and linked you to an Amazon Account. Many police forces in the UK are rolling out facial recognition units, scanning faces in shopping crowds and picking out known suspects and tracking their movements. The film Minority Report is not that far away!
The issue with the Smart City is that it doesn’t really work effectively unless it expands to include the digital citizen and, as soon as this happens it raises all sorts of red flags about data privacy and exclusion.
The irony is that the Smart City existed centuries before the invention of the first computer. As complex self-organising structures cities have always evolved in the face of pressures and problems as illustrated by a practical example: In the past when traffic became impossible cities and their citizen’s changed their behaviour. They tried to find alternative routes or switched to alternative forms of transport. In some cases they moved their home closer to where they worked or relocated their offices to the suburbs. People don’t just sit in traffic for years, they modify their behaviour and the city evolves accordingly. And, as Geoffery West demonstrates in his book Scale, larger cities are better at doing this than smaller ones, it’s almost as if cities came into existence because they made us collectively smarter as a species. Smart city technologies may facilitate this collective smartness by giving us better information, but let us not kid ourselves that they are the thing that makes the city smart, the risk is that they do quite the opposite.
Photo by Denys Nevozhai via Unsplash
Digital Cities Urban philosophy
Our resident philosopher Andreas Markides ruminates on the work of Ancient Greek mathmetician Archimedes, perhaps the forefather of Digital Cities.
A digital city is an urban area that uses digital technology and data to improve services, increase efficiency and enhance sustainability as well as quality of life for its residents. It integrates technology like the internet and AI to manage systems like transportation and energy, making cities more responsive, connected and resilient.
So, if technology is the answer to city-making, it occurred to me that we should cast our mind back to one of the world’s greatest inventors: the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.
Archimedes laid the foundations of modern science and mathematics when he approximated the value of pi (π) and developed the method for calculating the surface area of a sphere. His work inspired Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Newton and the designer Isidorus of Miletus who, after reading Archimedes’ ‘On the Sphere and the Cylinder’, went on to design the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s (formerly Constantinople) greatest monument.
But he is perhaps best known in popular culture for his cry of ‘Eureka!’ — Greek for “I have found!” — and the story behind it.
The story goes like this: One day while having a bath, Archimedes
kept pondering about how and why some objects float in water whilst others sink. Then the idea came to him that it had to do with the weight of the fluid being displaced by that object (hence a large, hollow object displaces lots of water and it’s the weight of that water that keeps the object afloat). He was so excited by this revelation that he jumped out of his bath and started running naked through the streets of Syracuse proclaiming ‘Eureka!’
This revelation is what gave us one of the laws of physics known as Archimedes principle.
These days, many of us lead a fast, frenetic lifestyle. Would a more tranquil existence not be more preferable? In order to be creative and happy we need to stop burdening ourselves with an otherwise busy existence. If it is a busy life we must lead, we should at least seek a measure of solitude, that rare moment when it is just us. How many moments of reflection do we allow ourselves to enjoy each year? Those quiet moments, away from the maddening crowds, are necessary because they allow us to rediscover
ourselves and reorientate our lives. I think it was Buddha who said that Time doing nothing is never wasted; similarly Andreas is suggesting that time having a bath is always therapeutic.
Many of Archimedes’ inventions have been beneficial to the world, and whilst living in Syracuse, Sicily, he was always being sought after by one king or another to help them in difficult situations, like defending their city from invaders and so on. Just a small sample of what he invented:
• He devised powerful ballistic machines that shot blocks of stone in order to repulse the invading Roman fleet
• Using his principles of levers, he launched tubs of hot tar at the enemy
• The ‘Archimedes Screw’, used to this day in many parts of the world to irrigate fields (illustrated below).
The story of how Archimedes died is equally as interesting. Syracuse was being invaded by the Roman army but Archimedes was busy on the beach drawing squares, lines and circles while attempting to solve yet another mathematical
problem. The Roman general had given strict orders to his army not to harm Archimedes; he wanted him captured alive in order that he might benefit from Archimedes’ brains.
A Roman soldier who had finished rampaging through Syracuse, started walking towards the beach when he saw an old man bent over some shapes in the sand. Archimedes was too focused in his work to notice the soldier, but he saw the soldier’s shadow as he got nearer. Archimedes carried on working whilst proclaiming to the advancing soldier ‘Do not disturb my circles’! The soldier had not recognised Archimedes and was annoyed by the old man’s defiance. He therefore drew his sword and plunged it into Archimedes’ heart.
I feel a pain in my own heart every time I think of this episode. What if Archimedes had lived a few more years? What other brilliant inventions for the world would he have come up with!
Would he have invented digital cities 2,500 years before we have?
Andreas Markides is the current Chair of the AoU and Chairman of Markides Associates
Image sources: First page - portrait of Archimedes by Remondini via Wikimedia; previous page - illustration via Picryl; this page - Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash
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