We live in a fascinating age in which technology is present in everything. This has a direct impact on the way we design, live in, and understand cities, particularly with regards to the convergence of the physical and the digital. The most obvious example is in the evolution of the Internet, which has metamorphosed into an Internet of Things. This metamorphosis has ended up making cities “intelligent”—they’ve become ‘smart cities’. That’s a term I don’t really like to use, as it puts technology at the heart of the whole definition and concept. I prefer to use a more human term that priorities peoples’ needs: ‘senseable cities’. In this conception, the most important consideration is how to anticipate and fulfill the needs of the people who live in a given city. The city thus becomes a sensitive city, in which the optimisation of urban spaces can only be carried out by taking social considerations into account from the very start.

In 1966, the architect Cedric Price asked the following question, which I think is very apt: “Technology is the answer, but what was the question?” This question was as important at the time he asked it as it is today. That’s why it’s interesting to approach it through the lens of ‘senseable cities’. Technology certainly can help us live better, but how do we use it in a more responsible way? How can it be used to meet the greatest challenges of this century, from climate change to discrimination? Technology is a tool, but it has to coexist with big societal issues. For example, technology could be used in policy to start conversations about the kind of future we want in cities.

Absolutely! It’s important to have their input, and to constantly ask for their opinion on the kind of city that they want to see in the future.

It’s already happening today with the Internet of Things. Thanks to sensors, for example, buildings are starting to respond to us, almost as if they’re living things. You’ll note that designers and architects are always thinking about how to render our surroundings more intelligent and organic so we can better communicate with them. We’re very involved in these kinds of considerations. We developed the “Dynamic Street”, an experimental project created in partnership with Toronto SideWalk Labs. We created a modular street that could be reconfigured according to footfall, time of day, and use. To make cities truly interactive, we have to continue with more of these kinds of city experiments in partnership with startups and residents.

Apps like these create new possibilities, new habits, a new kind of language. I think the key thing is to get feedback—which is a word that’s really key in the creation of ‘senseable’ cities. I actually think that ‘feedback’ is the defining word in the creation of the smart city. In this field of work, we have to draw inspiration from nature’s ability to rapidly integrate feedback. Technology needs to be able to collect citizen feedback just as quickly and use it as a principal element in the evolution of cities.

It’s a question of democratic education. And all education is based on participation. Cities have to keep their citizens involved and allow them to take part in debates. In Latin, there are two words used to describe cities: ‘urbs’, or the physical city, and ‘civitas’, or its citizens. We have to return to this model in order to bring equilibrium back to cities—and we have to do it via the people.

I don’t think so. The goal of that project was to show people the importance of their own energy. This was a major undertaking from an education standpoint, as it got people thinking about the efficiency of the human body, and of the energy it produces and uses. But in a day, the ‘human machine’ uses less energy than a computer does.

This energy mostly serves a vital function: it makes the body work and keeps it alive. However, some of that unused energy can be collected, transformed, and used to power outside objects, as here in the case of the boat. But scaled to the size of a city, you’d need a lot more people than the city could possibly hold in order to power it with human energy.

That said, it’s true that we use human energy every day in soft mobility. You see it already with walking and cycling. But that tends to evolve. With bicycles, for example, human energy is being combined more and more with a new source of energy (electric) in order to help save some of the former. It’s hybrid energy. The convergence of the natural and the artificial.

I imagine multiple systems interwoven together. Today, thanks to smartphones, we already have access to so much information and choice around mobility. The future lies in these growing options. And I think we’re just at the beginning. We need to be conscious of the fact that there’s a powerful dynamic at work here: behind every choice of transport, there’s a person and a way of getting around. Which over time will create an infinite number of combinations that will be centralised in all the multimodal transport apps out there.

We know that information and communication technologies use up energy. The question we need to ask ourselves is: how are we using it? We can waste energy by using technology to post Instagram photos—or instead, we can use it to reduce traffic jams in cities… The optimisation that technology allows for can help reduce carbon emissions, even if it’s partially responsible for them.

To paraphrase the great architect Yona Friedman, I’d say it’s a city created “with the people, by the people, and for the people.” Everything starts with people. Also, I’d say architects and designers have to strive for greater convergence between the natural and the artificial, and find a way for these two worlds to work together in a more efficient way.

Interview by Vincent Thobel, L’ADN journalist

L’ADN is the media on innovation that every day analyses the best concepts of the new economy on the web and in magazine format.

Copyrights: Sara Magni, David Pike, CRA

I try to articulate the scientific and the rational—almost like prospective studies—through things that are based more on intuition and paying attention to little hints of things to come: behaviours that may seem a bit strange in the present, but that hint at the future and that can fleshed out into a prospective scenario. To bring this material or vision to life, we tend to turn to slightly more artistic formats; that’s why you’ve got the term ‘design’ in ‘design fiction.’ Role play, art exhibits, magazine posters, fiction writing… the idea is to articulate things that until now, have never been articulated. Humans don’t change fundamentally; it’s the environment that evolves, and in this respect, the behavioural dimension is very important.

That depends on the subject we want to address, as well as the audience, bearing in mind that the goal is to get you to experience something that will end up resonating with you. For certain audiences, an overly-speculative scenario just won’t work. In my work, I tend to gravitate towards things that are probable. I like to anchor my work in prospective scenarios that are more tried-and-tested.

What’s interesting is the ability to articulate things that we’ll experience in the long term through what can be done concretely.

Speculative work can be good for opening up minds, but it’s hard to tie it back to daily life, or even more so, for example, to a company’s road map. By basing things on what’s probable, it’s easier to envision something more realistic that may actually happen, and if you can take that seriously, you can be better prepared to face it.

There’s one subject in mobility that I find highly interesting, which is somewhat overdone and yet not completely resolved: automation systems. I think there’s still much more to be imagined in that area. I think that’s how technology works. But what about our practices? Another subject is mobility’s place in cities. The point of design fiction is to try and understand how we place a given practice within its context and within society at large. In designing urban mobility, these two things overlap, and there are many things we’ll need to invent that address how people live in urban settings—so, around how we get around.

All our ways of living in relation to transport use are being turned so upside-down that the real vehicle of change may be humans rather than technology. The ways that people want to get around is becoming a big trend. It’s interesting to think that perhaps sociology has as much of a place in this question as technology does. Understanding people’s needs and desires is just as crucial as the development of new technologies.

Climate change is now something that shapes almost all future scenarios: we can’t push it aside. I do a lot of work on what’s known as ‘low tech’, which I believe is going to be a long-term trend. What’s striking is that when you dig deeper into ideas around mobility, you have this diverse variety of responses to climate change that range from very low-tech to very elaborate. And depending on the sociological lens or prospective scenario you’re looking at the question through, the answer won’t be at all the same, and even the practices around mobility will be very different. If you look at mobility through the lens of climate change, there are so many ideas that come up and just as many possibilities depending on prevailing sociological forces, thus bringing us back to this very sociological dimension of mobility.

To me, mobility is part of a much bigger subject. I see a lot of new practices—I think of mobility as a moment that becomes about more than just getting from point A to B. Mobility might become a kind of ‘bubble’ in which we do other things… And all this could be made possible by autonomous driving systems. The idea of mobility that’s paired with ‘concentration practices’ is a very interesting area to explore.

In terms of energy, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get past our sociological barriers, but I’m convinced that in the future, people will choose to live in a given place based on its political orientation. Certain cities might want to develop shared resilient energy systems; perhaps there will be as many smaller utopias and ways of living as there are cities. I definitely see how we might have decentralised energy systems in cities where that would be important, while other cities might develop more technological solutions because their populations care more about that kind of thing.

We’ll invent new ways of being, but with local particularities.

The decentralisation of energy, the ability to decarbonise energy production and to put a kind of energetic autonomy in place… that’s a probable scenario, but not necessarily in all areas.

Work, of course—but vehicles might also become a space for leisure. A place where you can do karaoke, play board games, video games… I imagine space for parties, real spaces for entertainment where we’d spend time together with multiple people. Like a kind of reinvented Blablacar, but without drivers and where everyone travels together at the same time to play. The journey time would serve to create or reinforce social ties. For people with very busy schedules, autonomous systems could give us some space to breathe—where you could, say, give yourself a manicure. I envision a kind of ‘wellbeing bubble’ in which you can take time for yourself. The question here is how to turn travel time into free time for things we don’t have time to do. In terms of ideas, this opens up a vast field of possibilities and innovation.

For those who work, VR might allow you to feel like you’re at the office—or at least provide a space to concentrate in that would help you ignore what’s around you. We’ll no longer be getting into cars, but into another world. Virtual reality holds very great potential.

Interview by Sarah Sabsibo, L’ADN journalist

L’ADN is the media on innovation that every day analyses the best concepts of the new economy on the web and in magazine format.

Copyrights: Brice Coustillet, Ryoji Iwata – Unsplash