According to popsci.com, “by 2030 five billion souls wil be living in urban areas, up from 3.3 billion today. The inevitable result is the megacity, a monster urban infrastructure already roaring to life in Asia and Africa. Such growth poses profound ecological problems, but at their best, cities are actually the easiest place for eco-minded living. Here, we present the most visionary ideas put forth by scientists, engineers, and designers to make the cities of the future what they were meant to be all along: sustainable.”
What could a green mega city look like?
- People would get around in two-seater pod cars, an electric city car inspired by researchers at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology. You would pull one from a stack near a major hub (they fold during storage), drive it where you need it, park it, and forget it. It charges with solar panels on the roof and pumps excess energy into the city’s grid while parked.
- Another mode of transportation would be the a Skytran, which is an on demand maglev railway that can carry up to 14,400 people an hour. Individual pods speed along the highway at up to 150 mph. They pull into pit lanes when they reach their destination.
- Power sidewalks would help make electricity. “The Crowd Farm” proposed by architects James Graham and Thaddeus Juscyk, gathers energy from people’s footfalls, or walking. Blocks installed underneath the sidewalk depress slightly under the force of a person’s weight and slide against each other, while a device converts the resulting energy into an electric current.
- Vertical farms, inspired by a company called Organitech, are 30 story robotically tended hydroponic oasis that produce food and water for 50,000 people. Vegetables float in styrofoam trays on automated nutrient tracks.
- Green tower buildings eliminate the need for air conditioners and boilers. Geothermal wells under the buildings use the constant temperature of the bedrock to cool the buildings in the summer and heat them in the winter.
- The city would feature energy highways where wind turbines invented by architect Mark Oberholzer line all the highway medians generating power for the urban grid as you “whoosh past them.
To find out more and to take a virtual tour of this green city, click here.
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