The traditional suburban office park — a cluster of homogeneous, cubicle-filled buildings surrounded by large parking lots and highways — is dying in the US.
As more corporations flock to cities, they are vacating these office parks, many of which were built in the 1980s.
The world is rapidly urbanizing. The United Nations predicts that the number of people living in cities could double by 2050 — to 6.5 billion.
Elon Musk’s new Boring Company tunnels look pretty, well, not boring.
The company on Friday published an animated concept video on YouTube that shows how tunnels underneath a city could work. In the video, a car drives onto a metal platform that then lowers itself underground. The platform, with the car on top of it, speeds along at 124 mph, while other platforms carrying cars do the same. When the car reaches its destination, the platform lifts it back to the earth’s surface.
Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s boring tunnels don’t look boring at all”
Automation could replace 250,000 jobs in government over the next 10 to 15 years — with potentially one million more under threat. The UK’s public sector workforce stood at around 5.3 million in the middle of last year, and has been falling since 2009, when it stood at 6.4 million. But that could be slashed significantly if the public sector adopts a policy of automating predictable jobs, according to a report from thinktank Reform.
Continue reading… “Robots will replace over 250,000 government jobs — and that’s just the beginning”
U.S. solar employs more workers than any other energy industry, including coal, oil and natural gas combined, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s second annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report. 6.4 million Americans now work in the traditional energy and the energy efficiency sector, which added more than 300,000 net new jobs in 2016, or 14 percent of the nation’s job growth.
Continue reading… “Solar employs more workers than coal, oil and natural gas combined”
Investment in autonomous vehicle technology entered overdrive in 2016, and 2017 is gearing up for more of the same. In the last six months of 2016, the first public self-driving taxi service hit Singapore roads, courtesy of NuTonomy, while Uber followed suit a month later in Pittsburgh. The question of self-driving cars becoming a reality on roads around the world is no longer an “if,” it’s a big fat “when.”
Continue reading… “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
South Korea is seeking to develop a train-like public transport concept that is almost as fast as the speed of sound up 1,000 km / h, the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) said Tuesday. The state-run institute will join forces with other research groups and Hanyang University to build the near-supersonic “train”, which would be able to travel from Seoul to Busan in half an hour.
A company is planning to build the world’s first floating city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The government of French Polynesia has signed an agreement with a US firm and they hope construction work will begin in 2019. The Seasteading Institute has spent the past five years trying to work out how to build “permanent, innovative communities floating at sea”.
Singapore’s shipping ports are already among the busiest and most efficient in the world. Now the city-state is exploring a new way to make them run even better: convoys of driverless trucks operating between terminals. The idea is that a lead truck will be driven by a human, with the follower vehicles being automated.
Continue reading… “Self-driving trucks to haul cargo between shipping terminals in Singapore”
Arconic – The Road Ahead from WIRED Brand Lab on Vimeo.
“Until we get to that driverless era, we’ve got a slow-moving parking lot that’s working at a glacial speed in major cities literally all over the world,” says Futurist Thomas Frey, founder of thinktank DaVinci Institute.
Continue reading… “Understanding the Disruptive Impact of Tomorrow’s Transportation”
China is planning some serious upgrades to its public transportation system in the next few years. By 2020, the country hopes to have increased its high-speed railway coverage by 18,650 miles. The project will cost an estimated 3.5 trillion yuan, or about $503 billion USD. Not only will the population be more mobile, but the rails will significantly cut down on carbon emissions and air pollution.
Continue reading… “China spends over $500 billion to expand high-speed rail”
At this rate, just about every man-made surface there is could be covered in solar panels in the future. Yesterday, Tourouvre-au-Perche, a small town in northern France, opened what is likely the first road paved in solar panels in the world, the Guardian reported.
Continue reading… “World’s first solar panel road opened in France”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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