Cities of the Future: The New Urban Development

Transcript

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The pandemic exposed some weak points in modern city living—prompting many to speculate that urban life might be coming to a dark close. But cities are adapting with new technology, redesigned spaces and other new features—all aimed at creating even more vibrant urban ecosystems built to meet the specific needs of the people who live there.

SOO-JIN KIM

The job of city leaders and planners will be, I think, to find new ways to stimulate this innovation, the creativity. And cities will really have to continue to educate and upskill people so that cities still serve as those socioeconomic elevators that push people up the income ladder and help them improve their chances in life.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

Whether it’s a city with a storied history like Paris or an up-and-comer like Lagos, the modern urban metropolis has long served not just as a business hub—but also as a living and breathing innovation lab. There’s just something about bringing together all those people from different social and economic strata that fuels new ways of thinking. It’s not hard to see the appeal—and why the world’s cities keep growing. In 1950, about 750 million people lived in urban areas, according to the U.N. By 2018, the number was 4.2 billion and climbing, with projections showing another 2.5 billion people moving into cities by 2050.

That sort of rapid growth will stress-test any urban plan, and the COVID crisis has intensified the strain. When the pandemic struck, many of the hallmarks of city life—easy-access public transportation, skyscrapers with shared amenities, streets packed with shops and restaurants—flipped from pro to con. Proximity equaled peril. But don’t count out cities just yet.

Project teams drawn from across disciplines are responding with a bold reimagining of what cities can be—focusing on resilience, digitization, equity, wellness and more. Today we’ll speak to several of the leaders behind these efforts. First is Jun Huang, a partner at urban design and planning firm Wei Yang & Partners in London.

MUSICAL TRANSITION
STEVE HENDERSHOT 

COVID and the climate crisis have put a renewed focus on the urban environment. What makes this discussion—and the changes we might see—so important to society?

JUN HUANG

Cities initially emerged in ancient time as economic hubs and world fortresses. Their main roles were about facilitating trading and providing protection. But they also offer social benefits. People from different places come to meet up, exchange knowledge and information. As their population grew, more facilities evolved naturally. Throughout human civilization, cities are regional economic engines and knowledge hubs. They safeguard wealth and protect lives, and they generally offer [a] higher quality and more exciting life.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The pandemic has really put a strain on some of the central features of urban life. What aspects of modern city living held up well against the pandemic’s unique challenges, and what didn’t?

JUN HUANG

Urban life means easier access to concentrated services and amenities. That’s really the real benefit of urban life—you have easier access to services even during the peak of the pandemic. Secondly, if the urban density is more or less correct, then they can make deliveries more efficient during lockdowns. Third, urban infrastructure, in particular the faster-speed internet, enabled millions of people to work from home effectively.

What didn’t really work—first, super high density. We saw this in many cities around the world because people had to share very limited resources, and they can’t avoid close contact during the peak of the pandemic. As soon as they decide to go out, you have to take the lift, sharing the lift with others. You take your risk.

Secondly, the poor housing quality, especially in bigger cities. Many urban dwellings suffer from lack of sunshine and good ventilation, inadequate room size and poor access to open green spaces. The pandemic just exposed the very dark side of the city life today—the inequality issue. Poor urban populations suffer the most due to inadequate living environment, limited access to food, open spaces, education and healthcare, and had to travel long to work.

Next, transportation. Our cities today were still built around the roads and vehicles of all types. Whether it’s a diesel car or EV car, they are cars so they can’t really offer safe and truly walkable environments. In the meantime, expensive fares—bus fares, taxi fares, train fares—and poor ventilated trains with extremely tight spaces prevent the public from switching to public transport and office workers from returning to cities. This is a real issue.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So what needs to change in response? How will cities look different—and how will the approach to projects within cities look different?

JUN HUANG

I think everybody now agrees that the next wave of urban design is really about creating truly sustainable and inspiring urban environments. You can’t just plant some trees or introduce some lawns in the middle of [a] massive development and say, “We are becoming greener.” You have to think beyond that. In essence, it’s about creating safe, healthy, vibrant and characteristic 15-minute cities. You don’t expect people to drive half [an] hour to get some groceries or milk. You really need to use urban design as a powerful tool to change our city and change our lifestyle. So as a result, I think the future wave of urban design will create a more balanced live-work lifestyle and a more positive spirit in the future cities.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Does that mean mostly that project leaders should focus more on values that were previously identified but society has moved away from, or are there fundamentally new realizations coming out of this?

JUN HUANG

I think it has to be a mix of both because we are just forced by this pandemic and climate change. If nothing happened, we can more or less just run a slow evolution. Now we are kind of forced to do a more or less revolution. We really need to make some radical changes.

Designers, you need to understand the problems of current urban life, and you need to think really hard how you can make some changes. But if you look at all the countries around the world, their reactions and the situations in the pandemic are very different. You can’t just build white blocks everywhere. You have to make tailor-made solutions. We really need to be more proactive to engage more with decision-makers. I don’t think anyone can work out a solution by himself or by the single profession because all the issues involved are so complicated. The financial advisers, investors may tell you a totally different story, and they don’t care about your design. They only look at the numbers. So really, I think the two main points [are], as designers, you have to think really hard for your solution, and secondly, you really need to engage with other professions and parties and work out a solution collectively.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

These projects also involve a lot of stakeholders—city leaders, investors, urban planners and designers, and of course residents. Is there an approach that can satisfy everyone and also be genuinely forward-looking?

JUN HUANG

First, as a project leader or the chief designer, you have to have a clear vision of the project and its impact to the city because, in all fairness, politicians, city mayors or investors, they have different goals, and they don’t have the knowledge. You have to be very professional and prepare to be the thought leader. You need to make sure they appreciate the value of your approach and offer their support. For example, I lecture in different institutes at Cambridge University in the U.K. So they always have these executive courses for local mayors and CEOs of these major companies. I have to tell them something really refreshing to make them understand even if you invest in real estate in Chicago, it’s not only about how good the building looks like. It’s about the overall impact on the city, and there’s added value to the city. And then the city will pay back to your investment.

Secondly, you need to engage or persuade the clients to engage all stakeholders. For example, if you have a project in Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai, you say, “Okay, we can’t just talk to the investors and politicians, etc. We need to engage local residents at different levels.” You need to hear what they think, what kind of life they live. Shanghai’s life is totally different to Kuala Lumpur or even Beijing. So you have to understand the local culture, people’s life and their needs. Then, work out a collective vision between different groups.

Lastly, you need to really understand the multidisciplinary collaboration. In all the projects I have been involved in, big or small, as you can understand, there are always heated debates even between architects and the landscape designers, engineers—which is the right approach? So we really need to be humble and strive to obtain more knowledge in different fields, learn from others and then establish effective collaboration. So hopefully, out of the collective efforts, we can make the project much better.

MUSICAL TRANSITION
STEVE HENDERSHOT

Building better buildings is part of the urban challenge. But just as important to a thriving future city is to remake the way people go from Point A to Point B.

PMI Future 50 leader Zhengkai Jiang is a senior project manager at CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co. Ltd. in China. Here’s what he had to say about leading a project to design and manufacture fully autonomous trains for the Nanning Metro. It’s the first independent project the company has completed with GOA4 level automation—the highest grade of automated train operation.

ZHENGKAI JIANG

It’s only got 14 months delivery period, which means we have to design and procurement and manufacture and finish all the tests and deliver it in 14 months. But the outbreak of COVID-19 brought us a big problem.

We built a strong team, experienced team to make sure every task had been looked after, and then we also adapt some experience from another project. We call it Shanghai Line 18. It’s also a GOA4, fully automatic project, but this one we cooperate with Siemens. We learned that experience from that project, taking the bad experience and good experience and integrate with them all these to this project. And then we shortened the design cycle. We hired a very experienced and innovative safety assessment agent. Also, they worked for the Shanghai Line 18 before as well. Because of this third-party, they conduct a full process audit from the very beginning, from the design. This will avoid a lot of risk and a rework cycle.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

And as with all aspects of modern city life, railway transit will continue to change, with greater focus on sustainability.

ZHENGKAI JIANG

From my imagination, the future of the railway transportation should be an all-around industry—the national railway transit mode including mainline transportation such as high-speed train, intercity trains, urban subways, trams, and low-speed maglevs, also the trolley buses. They can provide more choices for human travel with green and low carbon. In the future, the railway transportation must be more intelligent, must be more efficient.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The wave of tech-fueled mobility is just one of the changes coming to urban life. Projectified®’s Hannah Schmidt spoke with Soo-Jin Kim, head of the urban policies and reviews unit at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, in Paris. They discussed making cities more walkable, improving housing with more green spaces, plus three ways cities can become more resilient.

MUSICAL TRANSITION
HANNAH SCHMIDT

There’s no doubt COVID really changed how we live. How are cities changing? What are some short-term versus long-lasting shifts?

SOO-JIN KIM

It did look like there was a certain fear of public space emerging in the early days of the pandemic last year, at least when [the] hustle and bustle that used to make cities the hot places to be seemed to turn into a high risk of catching the virus, in fact. But not only did cities seem more vulnerable on the viral front but also on the economic front because, in fact, according to OECD data, the share of jobs that were at risk of disappearing due to the first wave of lockdowns was generally the highest in big cities. When borders and businesses closed, the economy of cities also took a very hard blow, and what used to be their strength really turned into a source of vulnerability as well.

But does this really mean the death of cities in the long term, and will we see all those busy streets and shopping malls empty? And most importantly, will we see a massive urban exodus toward more remote and rural areas, perhaps? From where I stand, there is no evidence of such an exodus because I think most of us have come to accept that even with a vaccine, life after COVID is actually going to be life with COVID. So, I think COVID will not set back the long-term trend of urbanization, but it will certainly change the quality of urbanization and people’s expectations toward cities.

HANNAH SCHMIDT

Another major focus for cities right now is resiliency. How can cities become more resilient to future threats, whether it’s pandemics or the effects of climate change?

SOO-JIN KIM

COVID-19 might be new, but resilience or resiliency is not a new concept. Ever since cities were born, they have had to battle countless disasters of different sorts—epidemics, natural, man-made.

Looking back on the lessons from all these disasters, I think there are at least three steps to take in a resilience strategy for a city: prevent, prepare and respond. The first step, prevention, is really about steering urban development away from risk areas, for example, through regulatory or fiscal incentives, and you try to risk-proof your land-use policies. For example, in the city of Cebu in the Philippines, you have urban limits to restrict development in the areas that have been identified as being at risk of flooding or landslide.

The second step is preparedness. Cities can develop a vulnerability and risk assessment. So it can be, for example, a flood hazard map, and many cities are developing local resilience action plans. Several cities now have appointed a chief resilience officer, for example, in Austin, I think, Melbourne, Milan, Paris.

And the third step is, of course, to respond when the crisis is here. You really need the whole of government approach both at horizontal and vertical levels, meaning that at horizontal level, all the departments within your city administration will need to coordinate, including with other services ranging from 911-type emergency rescue to housing, social services. It’s really an entire chain that you have to mobilize and deploy very rapidly. And then, at vertical level, of course, across national or federal, regional and local levels.

HANNAH SCHMIDT

I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, which was digitalization. What aspects of city life have undergone digital transformations? How can that help cities become more resilient?

SOO-JIN KIM

So many aspects of city life have really shifted online. You’ve got smartphone applications to monitor the evolution of COVID-19 cases and do contact tracing. And then most of us still work largely from home, and our estimates at the OECD show that around half of jobs, total jobs, can be worked remotely in big cities such as London or Paris. Obviously, you can increasingly order your groceries online, get medical care online, even visit a museum or listen to a concert online.

But one of the objectives is also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make all those public services faster and more efficient. So, all these digital technologies and innovations are a pillar of the recovery strategies of cities, and many of them, if not most of them, are here to stay, I think, even after COVID-19 is hopefully behind us. I’m thinking of examples such as the city of Florence in Italy. The city has already digitalized 85 percent of its municipal public services, which is already quite impressive, but its recovery strategy is now aiming for a full digitalization. So, I think COVID has sort of accelerated a digital transition that was often already underway in cities, but it would have taken much longer to materialize.

HANNAH SCHMIDT

In the midst of the climate crisis, cities are also looking to become more sustainable. How do they do that—and what’s the payoff?

SOO-JIN KIM

I think that unfortunately the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis are not going to wait until our cities are done with COVID-19. Every day that passes, we see more signs of environmental degradation that affects cities. And we know that cities already generate two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions at a global scale, and they produce like half of the world’s solid waste. But the good news is that cities are not just the problem. They are also a big part of the solution.

For example, there is a huge shift toward more sustainable urban mobility, and you’ve got many cities that are investing in expanding or building cycling lanes. Many cities are investing in public transportation. They’re also enlarging the size of sidewalks to make cities more walkable. And then, moving away from transport, cities are also really rethinking the way they produce and they consume, and they are trying to transition toward more circular economy.

HANNAH SCHMIDT

What does this all mean in terms of projects? What kinds of things do you expect to see?

SOO-JIN KIM

Cities will have to look different. First of all, in terms of when and how people use the city. So, for example, working from home is something that is bound to stay at least partially, which will mean that there is a huge potential to repurpose public spaces, spread out urban traffic, urban activities. I think it brings back the concept of chrono-urbanism, the way the city adapts to different uses over time but also over space.

A second change is, I would say, housing. Housing in cities will need to be of a higher quality, have better ventilation, for example, better thermal insulation, soundproofing mechanisms.

And then, apart from housing, there is this overall increasing interest for bringing nature back to the city. Also embracing those nature-based solutions, and some cities are actually committing to very concrete and quantified targets. For example, you have the city of Milan that pledged to plant 3 million trees by 2030. And there are interesting initiatives; also like in Paris, there was a project to turn school playgrounds into oases to combat this phenomenon of urban heat islands. So, really the goal, I think, will be to make cities more walkable, more cyclable, in a way, more breathable, and just more livable overall.

MUSICAL TRANSITION
STEVE HENDERSHOT

Cities have long been a testament to the power of proximity, of density, of the innovation and human flourishing that can take place when people are together. Yet we knew even before the pandemic that hyper density can bring about plenty of problems, as well—both social and environmental.

As an urban citizen myself, I can’t wait to see the next wave of innovative projects that will shape our cities for the next generation. So here’s to the next urban renaissance—and to all those project teams leading the charge.

NARRATOR

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