Category: City Planning

By Otilia Drăgan

Toyota is taking another important step that contributes to Japan’s overall goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. After successfully initiating the Woven City project earlier this year, the company is now discussing with several partners the opening of a hydrogen-based city in the Fukushima Prefecture.

Sustainability is the word on everybody’s lips these days, but not too many can dream of a sustainable city prototype and actually bring it to life. This future society would be centered around hydrogen, another power-word in today’s automotive industry. The hydrogen will be locally produced and then used for clean transportation. These are the plans for Toyota’s next pioneering, sustainable city.

Toyota partnered with Isuzu and Hino to build a hydrogen-based city in the Fukushima Prefecture, with which they are currently discussing the future project. The prefecture will be the energy supplier, by producing hydrogen at several local sites, including the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R).

By Christopher Carey

Analysis of the project in the Seongdong district showed savings of 12-21 percent. 

Seoul is set to expand its network of smart poles (S-poles) – which act as streetlights, traffic lights, environmental sensors, footfall counters, smartphone chargers, Wi-Fi access points and CCTV points – from 26 to 216 by the end of the year.

The poles, launched in February, will also have the potential to charge drones and electric vehicles as part of a pilot project set to be launched in the second half of this year.

“S-poles are the core infrastructure of a smart city, which can reduce the cost while improving the scenery, safety, and convenience,” said Lee Won-Mok, Director General of Seoul’s Smart City Policy.

“We will work on developing newly-demanded features for smart cities from electric car charging to drone-related technologies to create smarter urban infrastructures.”

By Cristina Mircea

The fact that Toyota started to build its own 175-acre city of the future it’s already yesterday’s news. It is happening and it’s going to be a society of the future, fully automated, sustainable and interconnected using AI technology. But what we didn’t know up until now was how they’re planning to power the entire ecosystem. Turns out they’re going to use hydrogen energy.

Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota, which is responsible for the prototype city, recently announced in a press release (you can peruse it in its dedicated section below the article) that it partnered with ENEOS, a major Japanese player in the hydrogen business. The goal is to create a hydrogen-based society and to become carbon-neutral at the same time, by 2050, according to their estimates.

Toyota and ENEOS are going to test the hydrogen-based supply chain in and around Woven City, from the production phase to delivery and usage. The Japanese carmaker sees hydrogen as one of the cleanest energy sources available and tries to explore and implement the hydrogen and fuel cell technology as much as it can. 

Seoul’s S-Poles

By  Chris Young

The multipurpose S-Poles can also function as Wi-Fi access points.

A smaller, more versatile version of the utility pole might soon become ubiquitous throughout future smart cities worldwide. 

Amongst the implementors of such a technology is Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), which announced last year that it would install new ‘smart poles’, or S-Poles, that act as streetlights, traffic lights, environmental sensors, smartphone chargers, Wi-Fi access points, CCTV, and more.

As a Cities Today report explains, the city of Seoul, South Korea, has already installed twenty-six smart poles in six areas of the city. Each pole’s function is customized to the requirements of its specific location.

SMG is piloting a version of the S-Pole system, which is also able to charge drones and electric vehicles as well as count the footfall of nearby pedestrians.

The project, which is in the planning stage, would use drones to monitor potential disasters and provide data for emergency rescue teams.

Indianapolis’s convention center hosted the National Rifle Association convention last year, just one of the many events that didn’t go off as usual in 2020.

By Mary Williams Walsh

The pandemic is intensifying the competition among cities, which are rushing to build bigger, more alluring event spaces.

After 20 years of trying, Indianapolis finally landed the American Dental Association convention. Last December, the group agreed to gather there in 2026, promising Indianapolis tens of thousands of visitors and tens of millions of dollars for the local economy.

But there’s a catch: The dentists can back out if the convention center complex does not complete a $550 million expansion: 143,500 square feet of new event and ballroom space as well as two privately financed hotels.

That helps explain why, in the depths of a pandemic that has left many convention centers empty or repurposed into field hospitals or homeless shelters, a 25-member board in Indianapolis voted unanimously in September to add up to $155 million to the public debt.

“We see convention tourism racing back in 2023,” said Chris Gahl, senior vice president of Visit Indy, the nonprofit that markets the Indiana Convention Center and attractions like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “When the green flag drops, we’re going to be on the competitive edge.”

By Scarlett Miao

Throughout history, religious reformers and visionary starchitects have attempted to envision the future of our cities: from the Venetian model city of Palmanova to the multi-story housing complex for 5,000 people drafted by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City to Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, numerous masterplans have been crafted to illustrate some of the most unprecedented ambitions.

Today, people have never stopped investigating new approaches to urban planning that may enable a smooth transition towards a future green economy. In 2018, Dutch governments and knowledge institutions initiated the “2050 City of the Future” design study, with an aim to research how future cities should react to major challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, natural resource depletion, and pollution. During this time of collaboration, VenhoevenCS, the leading architectural firm in the team, has conducted substantial conceptual research and provided plenty of expertise in sustainable master planning.

This article will look into several case studies that have been carried out by VenhoevenCS, and compare them with visions outlined by Le Corbusier in Radiant City. We will revisit the past issues and see if we have solved them in contemporary environments. Meanwhile, we will also discuss whether or not Corbusier’s design principles are still applicable, as we have entered the future that he once imagined.