The keys to the cities of the future must go through sustainability. Without this requirement, the future will be quite unpleasant in terms of available resources, the habitability of the different cities, and not only that, if the basis for a realistic and solid feel sustainability is not, things will get worse. That is the outstanding feature of a Smart City, maintaining infrastructure benevolent environment by maximizing all the variables that make a comfortable and pleasant life for its inhabitants.
If you were born in the 80s is with me that took about 30 years saying that the future will be bad if we do nothing to stop it. When we were little, oil is going to end in 50 years, and yesterday was said to have oil for about 53 years, which is certainly surprising if we see it through the eyes of the innocent and above 80 years. Anyway, the reality is that we are increasingly number of humans on Earth that resources are scarce and depleted (some), but we are at least able to develop technology that allows us to be more careful with the environment.
What is a Smart City?
The concept Smart City is a great marketing term, which sells very well and in the background is more complex and rich than it may seem. I say this because a city is not Smart City to have charging points for electric or plug-in hybrid cars. It is if you also have a series of ” efficient and durable infrastructure of water, electricity, telecommunications, gas, transportation, emergency services and security, public facilities, intelligent office buildings and residences “sustainable and a long etcetera.
A smart city is one that allows you to manage all resources and process all waste cleanly and efficiently, and further optimized, and cares a tremendous amount of sectors, as detailed in this apt phrase collection of Wikipedia:
Indeed, a city or territory considered intelligent manifested primarily by its multidimensional and multifaceted nature, in terms of actors, on key domains (transport, energy, education, health, waste, security, economy …) and in development and use of technologies.
The smart city is the future, and only through appropriate reform our own cities can approximate the ideal of this concept. Everything happens for being aware of the need to ensure sustainable construction, efficient urban planning, have laws that encourage these developments and encourage any realistic initiative to allow the reality of sustainable urban mobility, for instance which matches our particular interest.
Grenoble as an example of smart city in the field of sustainable urban mobility
In the sense of what we discussed above, that the theory is very inspiring and beautiful, plus interest, actual physical implementation actions that have and will serve to improve some aspects of complex smart city are those of really matter. We have other examples apart from that we will now discuss, as everything related to Intelligent Transportation Systems, but the case of Grenoble, which we discussed as a project for over a year, is the most interesting today.
In October of 2014, 70 ultra-compact vehicles Toyota i-Road and Toyota COMS, will be transferred to the city of Grenoble, in France, to carry out the project “Cite lib by Ha: Mo” . In addition, about 30 charging stations developed and managed by Sodetrel are present for a period of three years. It is assumed that this project is a pilot, but will continue in the future more independently. This project is possible thanks to a unique partnership between Grenoble and the Metropolitan Area of Grenoble-Alpes, French energy company EDF, Toyota and Cite lib, a local car sharing operator.
We can say that this is a system of “institutionalized” shared vehicle. The difference between the normal system, say, and this project is that the public transport system connects to the car sharing service to find the optimal combination of transport depending on what time it is. This is to encourage networking between different modes of transport public (tram, bus, train) and compact electric vehicles will be available to the public.
With this would be achieved, in theory, bring together the best of both worlds: the versatility, environmental goodness and timeliness of public transport system with the flexibility of the car as a means of travel. But the equation we save our particular car, stay home, save time (in the case of Grenoble, eye), and cease to emit large amounts of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases.
The basic idea is that those traveling by metro car can go in the first or last kilometers of travel, thereby giving them more flexibility and allow them to save time and reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality in urban centers.
This is one of several legs upon which holds a Smart City. Urban mobility is important, but not unique, as all infrastructure must pull in the same direction, and the same for the different applicable to each sector (recycling, use of resources, management of green areas, policies .. . would be totally incomprehensible to list everything here). In this sense, point to Grenoble and partners for the initiative, and see if we soon see a smart city genuine and 85%, for 100% I think is quite utopian in the next 75 to 100 years.
Useful Link: http://www.sbtjapan.com/
