London Ideas a Magazine About Urban Innovation

Issue Nº.1 London ideas A magazine about urban innovation

Inside this issue 3D-printed homes / Artificial Intelligence tackling crime / Peer-to-peer lending for builders / Celebrating Gaybourhoods / Autonomous boats in cities / Navigation tech for the blind / Building over stations, and more… The future of cities depends Introduction on their ability to innovate, Welcome to the first edition of London ideas. Like all cities, London’s future depends on its ability to innovate, re-invent and develop new ideas. re-invent and develop But new ideas don’t emerge from nowhere. They need fertile ground and a hospitable climate – as well as spaces where they can be nurtured, tested, discussed and promoted. As the capital’s dedicate think tank, it is Centre for London’s role to create such a space. We’ve created this magazine to champion new thinking that has the potential to transform London – and cities around the world – new ideas, not only to for the better. London ideas will be published twice a year. Alongside the magazine, Centre for London is also running a related series of regular events at which entrepreneurs and innovators present and discuss their ideas. Some of the ideas tackle their most pressing from our first event are featured in these pages. London ideas builds on the longstanding partnership we have with Capital & Counties Properties PLC, and I’d like to thank them personally for their ongoing support. We hope the thinking developed here will prove helpful to them, to the capital that we love, and to cities everywhere. challenges, but also to My thanks also go to CityLab for working with us on this project and helping us to share London ideas with a global urbanist audience. If you have an idea that you think we should feature, or you would like to present at (or just attend) one of our make them more successful, London ideas events, please do get in touch. You’ll find our contact details in the back pages of this magazine. Ben Rogers, inclusive and livable. Director, Centre for London

London ideas Foreword

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I am writing the Foreword for this inaugural issue of London ideas. This magazine – and its associated series of events – is the latest collaboration with Centre for London that Capco is proud to support. London ideas brings to life, in a single publication, some of the most fascinating and dynamic innovations from cities around the world. In this first issue, London ideas covers everything from 3D-printed homes in Milan to apps that combat air pollution, new Danish models for intergenerational living, and the many dimensions of mapping. We also look at how AI can help tackle crime in the capital – currently one of the city’s most worrying challenges. I am particularly enthused by the interview with the Big Thinker, MIT Professor Carlo Ratti, whom Capco welcomed to the University of Cambridge last summer. Carlo, a Visiting Fellow in the Future Cities programme we support, is among the world’s foremost thinkers on the smart city. His insights and ideas are like urban gold dust. Since the launch of Systems & Empathy: The London Recipe in 2014, and through nine editions of London Essays, Capco’s partnership with Centre for London continues to be a rich source of inspiration for our two great estates – iconic Covent Garden and the new neighbourhood emerging in Earls Court. Our planning, design and delivery teams work hard to incorporate the strategic and practical inspirations that flow from our partnership: 2017’s Growing Well workshops and 2018’s London ideas quick-fire presentations are two powerful examples of this. At Capco, we listen and learn. Diversity in all its dimensions is also central to London’s originality and success. London’s unique heritage, as the legacy of the Great Exhibition outlined in this edition testifies, has been forged over centuries by the collision of brilliant people and exciting ideas. We support London ideas wholeheartedly because innovation – and investment in those who make ideas real – is essential for any great metropolis to thrive. And, in these uncertain economic times, innovation is a more important factor in the capital’s fortunes than ever before.

Ian Hawksworth, Chief Executive, Capital & Counties Properties PLC

London ideas London ideas event, Covent Garden, May 2018 Contents London ideas recommends... 8 The data city as public experiment? 10 Housing innovation in London 16 Ideas from around the world 17 Interview with an innovator: Wayfindr 18 Why artificial intelligence must take on crimefighting 24 Three ideas for London 26 The sensory city philosopher: Carlo Ratti 40 The best idea London ever had 50 Make it happen 52

©Mona Chalabi ©Brendan Zhang ©Sohei Nishino In May, we held the first ever London ideas London ideas event. Here, our attendees recommend the people to follow as well as the podcasts, apps and websites that will keep your recommends... finger on the pulse of innovation.

Watch Follow Mona Chalabi London tube map Heidi Alexander A journalist and filmmaker who really loves In this excellent TED talk, designer Michael Bierut (Partner in the New Heidi Alexander, former MP and numbers, Mona Chalabi takes data and turns it into York office of Pentagram, Founder of Design Observer and a teacher at newly appointed Deputy Mayor of playful graphics. Currently Data Editor at the Guardian Yale) tells the story of the accidental success of one of the most famous London for Transport, responsible US, Chalabi makes sense of numbers even for those maps in the world – the London Tube map – and explains how it set the for delivering the Mayor’s whose eyes normally glaze over at the sight of a chart. standard for navigating metro systems in other cities. ambitious strategy. Keep one eye Her work shows that complex data can be both ted.com/series/small-thing-big-idea on her Twitter feed, which is set to understandable and funny. become full of the latest from TfL. monachalabi.com @Heidi_LDN @monachalabi on Instagram

Listen Skylines CityMetric’s Skylines podcast is fronted by Jonn Elledge and has a lively take on business, politics, transport, the built environment, Read and ideas for cities. As an arm of Citylab the New Statesman, Skylines is For original thinking and fresh journalism on the global in outlook but with a big biggest urban issues of our times, look no further than emphasis on London. CityLab. Covering design, transport and environmental

©TfL from the London Transport Museum collection citymetric.com/content/skylines- issues, CityLab is concerned with equity and quality of podcast life in cities across the world – essential reading for all urbanists. ©Mona Chalabi Download citylab.com Londonair 99% invisible Flâneuse Concerned about air pollution? 99% Invisible is a podcast about the The London Air app displays the unnoticed architecture and design Flâneuse: Women Walk the City latest air pollution levels recorded that shapes our world. Fascinating in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice at more than 100 monitoring stories about everything from why and London – part cultural history, stations in Greater London, and toothbrushes are the shape they are part memoir, Lauren Elkin’s book can send you notifications if the air (spoiler: not for our convenience) to explores the ways in which women quality drops below a certain point bike racks that exist mainly to deter writers and artists have found in your chosen area. Developed rough sleepers and clever ways to personal freedom and inspiration by the Environmental Research keep cars out of “citizen spaces” by walking through cities. Group at King’s College London. in Barcelona. Published by penguin.co.uk ©Roman Mars londonair.org.uk 99percentinvisible.org

8 London ideas London ideas 9 Above: Panorama of London, Claes Visscher, 1616

Right: Diorama of London, 2010 The data city as public

©Sohei Nishino Cities have long been imagined as “machines Cities have collected data in order to organise city for living,” and today's data technologies life for a long while: recording inhabitants, property, experiment? crimes, births, marriages and deaths. Such records are carry the promise of making them more often a byproduct of the running of the city, but can “intelligent” - more attuned to the lives of also reflect the activities of other bodies including the Jonathan Gray with Noortje Marres citizens; better able to ensure feedback and state, companies, charities, churches, journalists, artists and activists.2 Digital technologies multiply the sites the re-adjustment of relations between people, where data is made, where it is made sense of and made environments, and institutions.1 How might actionable. The clicks, pings, pushes and swipes of card data, and data culture, play a role in reshaping machines, phones, meters, sensors, and the growing repertoire of network-enabled objects associated with city life, for whom, and to what end? the Internet of Things make for a different kind of data than the formal records kept by bureaucracies. Multiplying accounts of city life They often record activities and are not always tied The life of a city may be understood from accounts to individuals; they are increasingly used to monitor, and artefacts such as maps, music, fiction, films, plans, model, estimate, allocate, optimise, nudge, manage and photographs, paintings, newspapers, conversations, display urban activities. reports, records, statues and street furniture. Such items reflect certain aspects of urban life and leave others out: the schematic abstraction of tube maps highlights sequences of stops for transport users; monuments relate public spaces to historical events; photographs

portray scenes in accordance with certain political ©London Datastore or aesthetic visions. The significance of such things Above: City Dashboard depends on who uses them and how.

London ideas 11 While the contexts of creating and using data may Machines for living differently? platform – centralising data collection while distributing what do data infrastructures draw together? What seem utterly practical and mundane, the visions and Many cities are in the process of being “smartened”, platform features through which data is collected.9 The capacities do they confer, and to what end? Could aesthetics associated with them can be sweeping, with data companies and social enterprises hosting self-declared contribution of such platforms is to enable data and data technology enable different forms of panoramic, sometimes even sublime.3 Just as balloon labs, incubators, meet-ups and startup initiatives. To this us to live otherwise (to make new friends, visit new participation in the city? In addition to smartening and flights and panoramas were said to enable new “scopic end, data from hospitals, schools, universities and other places); but they equally affect existing ways of doing, optimising cities, data is also being used as the basis for regimes” and perspectives on the city,4 today's data institutions is opened up and used beyond conventional requiring new policies and public oversight. other kinds of public experimentation. technologies provide apparently comprehensive settings. London’s Datastore8 offers hundreds of datasets Cities seem well positioned to use regulatory Many big data experiments treat parameters and insights into the particulars of urban living: a sudden for downloading which are used as the basis of publicly mechanisms to intervene in the activities of questions as fixed in advance. But data may also increase in “footfall” in a given street, a neighbourhood available apps and reports. Cities are also implicated multinational companies on the ground – as in the involve non-experts in research: considering what is where the lights stay on at night longer than elsewhere. in data-making coordinated from outside the city decision not to renew Uber’s license in London, or asked, which problems are deemed important, and They suggest ways of knowing intimate details of urban (through multinational technology companies or to restrict the activities of Airbnb in Berlin. But the which categories guide interpretation. Surveys and life at a distance, as millions of transactions are depicted national and international agencies) which render city real potential benefit to cities - the development opinion polls solicit citizens to take positions on the as constellations on sprawling maps or as pulses in dwellers as administrative subjects, national citizens, of alternative, public-minded frameworks and issues of the day through interviews, focus groups or animated video.5 Data work creates a culture that ends and consumers. methodologies for defining, designing and intervening the ballot box. Data technologies enable other means up not just in dashboards or boardrooms, but also in Social media platforms such as Facebook amass data in data - requires the involvement of civil society. This to elicit, articulate and evaluate public concerns at exhibitions and coffee table books. through what has been called the “double logic” of the is what we mean by public data experiments. different scales. The multiplication of digital data places serious As city dwellers, we do not always have the time and/ responsibilities on its producers, as well as on analysts Experimenting on or experimenting with? or “good enough” reasons to participate in governance and regulators, to avoid surveillance and discrimination. Proponents of the smart city invite us to envision through formal public consultations. Could data We need responsible practices to safeguard, secure and the city as a “living laboratory”, a term that has been technologies help realise alternative, more flexible and anonymise data (as well as to prevent its collection) 10 enthusiastically adopted around the world. This creative ways of engaging city dwellers? Data makes The Data as Public Experiment? City sto be seen as a matter of ethical concern, not just of metaphor frames our living environments and lives possible not only new ways of knowing and governing, compliance.6 But the undoubted need for precaution as open to experimentation and modification. But the but also new types of experiments in participation.13 shouldn’t make it impossible to be inventive with urban role of a city dweller is very different from that of a It may serve as a alternative device for responding data. Indeed, insofar as digital technologies make it laboratory subject: we make sense of our own lives to urban issues across space, time and social settings. possible to gather data pertaining to activities rather and actively participate in defining our world in ways Could data diversify how issues, things and people are than named persons, they may have the potential beyond the scope of analysts. Data offers opportunities involved in city life? to shift the focus from surveillance of individuals to for city dwellers to make sense of the city themselves: creating new different kinds of data collectives.7 to appropriate it creatively. Data can make visible Data and urban issues urban collectives in which we participate as inhabitants, There are many ways that data can be put to work passengers, visitors, or carers. Which other streets are Below: Selfiecity Right: Pulse Twitter Visualisation in the in civic settings besides borrowing from practices London Museum of London Cafe, 11 March 2018 organising play streets11 in London and what could we ©Noortje Marres in governance, management and commerce. In learn from them? some projects, official data is repurposed to change Urban data does not just represent city life, it also how people can relate to cities. For example, Code The Data City as Public Experiment? The Data renders it intelligible. The way in which digital for America’s Adopt-a-Hydrant14 project enables technologies render data (spreadsheets, databases) “community members to volunteer to take care should not be understood as merely making visible of local infrastructure like fire hydrants in severe behaviour as it is naturally “given”. Data infrastructures weather”. The site enables users to find hydrants in should be understood not just optically (as lenses or their vicinity and maintain them during extreme microscopes), but as scripting or framing devices, which weather conditions, such as snow storms. The project actively format the activities they purport to measure. is open-source, and the code has been used in other cities, giving rise to counterparts such as Adopt-a- In over-emphasising the capacities of data to denote Siren15 and Adopt a Drain.16 aspects of city, we may under-emphasise other capacities: what it can tell us and how it can bring On the one hand, such projects signal a worrying people together. Data technologies do more than reluctance on the part of some governments to merely monitor urban life. They may also shape it, take responsibility for running cities, advancing a inviting users to take on the role of participants and shallow “solutionism” compatible with austerity and play an active role in defining and taking action. For privatisation.17 But given how difficult it can be to force this reason, researchers suggest that data infrastructures the state to take responsibility, they also demonstrate can be considered in terms of their relations rather than the commitment of citizens to make cities liveable. as “things”.12 The 596 Acres18 initiative similarly repurposes official data to encourage city dwellers to (re-)appropriate Public experiments with urban data land, lots, and other spaces in the city, bringing them What then might urban digital data do for city into “resident stewardship”, by facilitating community dwellers? What counts and who decides? Who and organising efforts.

12 London ideas London ideas 13 These offer different ways of participating - in the Responsible Data initiative [https://responsibledata.io/]and the research, governance and ownership - using both Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society [https://bdes.datasociety. net/] centralised data platforms and open data commons. 7. See Marres, N. (2017). Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Both are at risk of appropriation; and the social, Research. London: Polity Press moral and political ends they serve may shift in the 8. https://data.london.gov.uk/ process of their implementation. It is consequently 9. A. Helmond (2015). The Platformization of the Web: Making Web vital to define the different forms of knowledge and Data Platform Ready. Social Media + Society, 1(2). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115603080 politics they make possible as precisely as we can. 10. See, eg., the European Network of Living Labs [https://enoll.org/] Data can allow for public experimentation, enabling 11. https://www.londonplay.org.uk/content/30290/our_work/recent_ work/play_streets/play_streets citizens to examine creative and responsive ways to 12. S. L. Star & K. Ruhleder (1996). Steps Toward an Ecology of make cities legible and liveable. The crucial question Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces. remains how, by whom and to what end such Information Systems Research, 7(1). Retrieved from: https://doi. experiments are organised. org/10.1287/isre.7.1.111 13. J. Lezaun, N. Marres & M. Tironi (2016). Experiments in Participation. In the face of growing concerns that digital data In U. Felt, R. Fouche, C. A. Miller, & L. Smitt-Doer (Eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Fourth Edition). Cambridge: MIT ©Living Lots NYC technologies first and foremost serve to consolidate Press. Above: Living Lots NYC project and amplify privatisation, surveillance, discrimination and exploitation enabled by platforms, the disability 14. http://www.adoptahydrant.org/ 15. http://sirens.honolulu.gov/ 38 Official data can be re-used to address different kinds Finally, data can enable different ways of experiencing activist slogan “nothing about us without us” 16. http://adoptadrainoakland.com/ of questions and concerns from those for which it cities. Experiments in “citizen sensing” explore public takes on a new and different resonance. Digital data 17. E. Morozov (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: Technology, was intended. In New York, data that was originally involvement in the use of digital sensors to attend to technologies require participation if they are to be Solutionism, and the Urge to Fix Problems that Don’t Exist. London:

gathered to monitor crime has been repurposed by environmental pollution, flora and fauna, and damp in implemented responsibly. More than that, they open Allen Lane. The Data as Public Experiment? City homes.35 Some of these projects aim to materialise data up the very methods and distribution of roles in how 18. http://596acres.org/ journalists and activists to highlight problematic 19. E. Didier (2018) Globalization of Quantitative Policing: Between 19 36 and discriminatory policing practices. In the UK, a beyond the screen, such as the Yellowdust project, we represent and intervene in what the city is and who Management and Statactivism. Annual Review of Sociology. 44. network of local data journalists has gathered data which translated air quality measurements into clouds and what it is for. Retrieved from: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/ from PDF documents in order to identify and report of yellow mist in Seoul, South Korea. “Data walks”37 annurev-soc-060116-053308 on cuts to council spending.20 In Manchester the invite participants to locate material signs of data Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the 20. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/blog/2017-12-19/is-your- 21 infrastructures shaping city life, such as credit-card Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where council-about-to-cut-a-vital-local-service TaxHack initiative has combined data on public 21. https://taxhack.wordpress.com/ procurement with company ownership information based bike lockers, and reflect on how data might be he is currently writing a book on data worlds, and Cofounder of the Public Data Lab. 22. http://insideairbnb.com/reports/how-airbnbs-data-hid-the-facts-in- in order to identify which city contractors use tax used differently (for example by simplifying access to jonathangray.org/ new-york-city.pdf havens. Activists used scraped data from Airbnb’s public facilities). kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/index.aspx 23. http://mybuildingdoesntrecycle.com/ website to show how official datasets had been publicdatalab.org/ 24. H. Verran (2015). Enumerated Entities in Public Policy and 22 Below: Yellowdust project in Seoul Governance. In E. Davis & P. J. Davis (Eds.), Mathematics, Substance “photoshopped” to remove unwanted listings. Noortje Marres is Associate Professor and Research Director and Surmise. New York: Springer, Cham. Retrieved from: https://doi. Other projects make their own data. In Chicago, in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the org/10.1007/978-3-319-21473-3_18 University of Warwick. Her recent books include Digital a map-based reporting system is being used to 25. https://www.opentreemap.org/ The Data City as Public Experiment? The Data Sociology (Polity, 2017). 26. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/15/citizen- 23 highlight the lack of residential recycling facilities. noortjemarres.net/ scientists-map-wildlife-hedgehog-housing-census-vital-difference Distributed data-gathering operations can be used to warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/ 27. https://friendsoftheearth.uk/bee-count/great-british-bee-count-2017- create what anthropologist Helen Verran describes as map References “enumerated entities: objects of concern that emerge 28. https://la-bike.org/our-work/bike-ped-count/ from diverse practices of numbering and counting.”24 1. See, eg. O. Halpern (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and 29. https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/12/03/disability-mapping- Reason Since 1945. Durham: Duke University Press Books openstreetmap/ Participatory initiatives enumerate aspects of city 2. Historians and sociologists of quantification explore how data is 30. https://gehlinstitute.org/tool/public-life-data-protocol/ life that may be overlooked or under-represented in made through bureaucratic, scientific and social practices of “sorting 31. J. Gray, D. Lämmerhirt & L. Bounegru (2016). Changing What Counts: official data, including urban ecology (such as trees,25 things out”. See, eg. G. Bowker & S. L. Star (2000). Sorting Things How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as hedgehogs26 and bees)2 7, cyclists and pedestrians,28 Out. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; and I. Bruno, F. Jany-Catrice & B. an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection? CIVICUS wheelchair accessible features,29 public space usage30 Touchelay (Eds.). (2016). The Social Sciences of Quantification. New and Open Knowledge. Retrieved from: http://papers.ssrn.com/ York: Springer abstract=2742871 31 and rough sleepers. 3. W. Davies (2015). The Data Sublime. The New Inquiry. Retrieved 32. See, eg. A. Cobham, J. Gray & R. Murphy (2017). What Do They Pay? from: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-data-sublime/ Towards a Public Database to Account for the Economic Activities Data can stimulate public imagination, facilitating the ©Yellowdust 4. L. Ford (2016). “Unlimiting the Bounds”: the Panorama and the and Tax Contributions of Multinational Corporations, London: City 32 exploration of different possible futures. The Public Balloon View. Public Domain Review. Retrieved from: https:// University. Retrieved from: https://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/ 33 34 Whose data experiments? Data Lab’s Save Our Air project explores how data publicdomainreview.org/2016/08/03/unlimiting-the-bounds-the- pdf_file/0004/345469/CITYPERC-WPS-201701.pdf What ways of knowing the city can data give rise to? can be used not just to identify pollutants but also to panorama-and-the-balloon-view/ 33. http://publicdatalab.org/ explore different ideas about who is responsible for Which forms of citizenship, sociability and subjectivity 5. See, eg., London in Motion [https://www.youtube.com/ 34. http://saveourair.publicdatalab.org/ tackling it. Data technologies can thus bring to light do they enable? As well as implementing and watch?v=QQV3UHsZ_u4] or Oyster Card Touch Ins & Touch Outs 35. Eg. Citizen Sense [https://citizensense.net/], Making Sense [http:// [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FrnF2HlBGg] making-sense.eu/]and the “Bristol Approach” [http://kwmc.org.uk/ issues of concern and raise wider questions of who improving administrative, economic and technical schemes, data projects can enlist citizens as sensors, 6. See, eg. M. E. Luka & M. Millette, M. (2018). (Re)framing Big Data: projects/bristolapproach/] should be accountable and how responsibility should Activating Situated Knowledges and a Feminist Ethics of Care in 36. http://yellowdust.intheair.es/ auditors, entrepreneurs, witnesses, hackers, users, be distributed between governments, citizens and Social Media Research. Social Media + Society, 4(2). Retrieved from: 37. http://www.datawalking.org/ private actors. curators, carers and investigators. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118768297 For recent initiatives see, eg. 38. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_About_Us_Without_Us

14 London ideas London ideas 15 Housing innovation in London United Kingdom Milan Paris Digital disrupting 3D-printed homes Policy which prescribes Victoria Pinoncely, Research Manager, Centre for London construction The construction sector – like all parts mixed communities The making of a building involves a string of our economy – is undergoing a period Should the law encourage mixed of experts who often have conflicting of rapid change. In London, around half communities? Since 2000, French interests and priorities. This often means of construction jobs face the potential government policy prescribes housing that buildings have to be designed from to be automated within 10-20 years. One mix. Each of the 131 municipalities of scratch, several times over. But now a new possible transformation was unveiled Grand Paris must ensure that at least initiative from Wikihouse – a non-profit this year in Milan: 3D Housing 05 is a a quarter of housing stock is social and open technology foundation – is trying prototype house constructed using a intermediate housing – or face a fine. This to change that. By automating and concrete 3D printer. Created by CyBe has encouraged the City of Paris to grow standardising knowledge about design Construction, it marks a milestone for 3D social housing stock from 13 per cent to solutions, Buildx generates live data to printing in construction. The machine will 20 per cent in the last two decades. calculate the cost, performance and set you back €349,000, so its potential environmental impact of a house. With could be limited to big budgets – for now. 3dhousing05.com one tap, ready-to-manufacture files can be sent directly to a factory. wikihouse.cc

It is generally agreed that techniques conjure visions of prefab market – remains on the margins in the UK’s housebuilding concrete towers, containers or US- housing. At the moment, only seven style mobile homes. But attitudes per cent of all construction output sector has been very slow are different in other countries: in in the UK is done offsite. At a time to innovate. Sweden, 84 per cent of detached when London is facing construction homes are prefabricated. As the workforce and affordability UK’s housing crisis deepens and challenges, housing innovation will Ideas from We still build homes using labour- intensive technologies of bricks and as the supply of new homes fails be necessary to build the homes the mortar, while innovation in other to respond to demand, architects, city needs. The Mayor’s Innovation sectors has been characterised by engineers and investors have been Fund has recognised this by offering working together on a new support for community-led housing, around the world rapid and radical change. But with demand for new housing high, and generation of manufactured for the development of offsite We take a look at housing solutions from around the world – some old, homes. These are built offsite using and precision manufacturing of supply low, traditional housebuilders some new – and find out how recent innovations in London compare. have had little reason to do things precision manufacturing techniques homes, and for new ideas to house differently while barriers to entry and are assembled onsite in a homeless people; but there is a long remain high: you can’t come up matter of months, if not weeks. way to go to promote innovation across the industry and scale it up. with a clever app to revolutionise This innovation has been driven housebuilding or do away with by constraints such as the shortage, A London Housing Expo – an land, construction and and cost, of traditional contractors. idea put forward by design studio planning challenges. Pocket, a developer specialising HTA – could showcase the many As these ideas from around the in micro-homes, embraced ideas and experiments bubbling Denmark Hong Kong world show, innovation is needed modular construction a few years up in London and abroad, as well Co-housing for families Building over stations ago to bring down costs; in May as drive their application in the across the housing cycle – from Co-housing is making a comeback. Hong Kong’s mass transit railway is one Australia access to land through new models they completed Europe’s tallest city. Like the Great Exhibition, London is experimenting with schemes of the world’s few profitable transport Virtual reality: bringing of co-living to better engagement residential modular tower in which Sharon Ament hails later on for young workers – like Collective Old systems. That’s because its operating community engagement with communities. Moreover, these Wandsworth. Each flat was built in this magazine, these inventions Oak – but the options for families are model is one of “rail + property”, based limited. Elsewhere, the model is thriving. on very high-density development around into the 21st century? types of innovation need to be and fitted offsite, then craned into could bring a sense of excitement, place at the rate of one storey per garner public interest, and create Take Lange Eng, Denmark’s largest co- built 100,000 homes and more than two Virtual Reality (VR) is no longer just for actively recognised and supported. housing community. Over 200 parents million square metres of commercial video-game-loving teens. The technology day. Earlier this year, across the more innovation in the process: and children live in 50 homes, connected space using this approach. The revenues is now being adopted by the construction New research by Centre for London Channel in Nantes, the Yhnova Crystal Palace, which hosted the by a community house, a weekly cooking generated help to keep fares low – less industry to improve design, safety and is looking at how innovations house was 3D-printed in a matter exhibition, was the world’s first rota, and play areas. Setting aside the than $1.00 in 2014 – and even return a training. In Australia, one developer went in housing construction and of days – a world first. large-scale prefabricated building. challenges of funding and building, dividend to the Hong Kong government so far as to produce Google Cardboard manufacturing could deliver co-housing could bring huge benefits as the system’s majority shareholder. Goggles and distribute them to the housing at speed, quality and Innovation as it is usually defined – to families in London: shared childcare, Could London replicate this model? We development’s community. The VR gave cooking, and onsite nurseries could save think so. Check out our 2017 report, Ideas people the opportunity to experience the quantity in the capital. Too often, the application of ideas in practice to meet the needs of society or the them a great deal of time and money. above your station: Exploring the potential space, and was also used alongside more non-traditional construction langeeng.dk for development at London’s Stations. traditional engagement tools.

16 London ideas Interview with an innovator: Wayfindr © Umesh Pandya What is the ambition for Wayfindr? work in simulation goggles – and that led to rapid Interview with an innovator with Interview I’d like a vision-impaired person to wake up in London prototyping and a testing of potential solutions. We had Geraldine Bedell talks to Umesh Pandya, knowing that by the afternoon they can get to a a pilot trial at Pimlico Tube station. the designer behind Wayfindr, which helps blind people meeting in New York independently – and that the journey will be seamless. It can be very difficult for Was the trial a success? navigate transport networks and other indoor spaces. blind and partially sighted people to get about, and Yes, but we quickly realised the problem couldn’t be especially to navigate transport systems. solved simply by a nice little app. The more we explored navigation apps for vision-impaired people, the more How did Wayfindr start? it became clear that this wasn’t a small problem: what I was working for digital product studio ustwo, where I was needed was a consistent standard that could be created a programme of work called Invent Time which implemented across all digital wayfinding systems. allowed our design and development teams to address We had to pivot. social issues using new and emerging technologies. Indoor navigation is coming. One estimate is that it After reading the RSBC’s (Royal Society for Blind will be a $21bn market globally by 2020/2021 and Children) Youth Manifesto, I ran a workshop with their worth $1bn in Britain. We turned our attention Youth Forum. It was immediately clear that getting to creating the first open standard for audio-based around the city was a huge issue – and navigating wayfinding. After the trial at Pimlico, we were invited transport networks was especially challenging. We to pitch to Google.org’s Global Impact Challenge, wanted to look at using emerging technologies to help. and we were subsequently awarded a $1m grant. London Underground then commissioned a full-scale How did you come up with a product? trial at Euston using an app that interacts with beacons We made journeys across London’s transport network in the station, allowing us to test and refine the open to simulate limited sight – I went back and forth to standards for audio navigation.

London ideas 19 How do you go about setting a new global standard? We lodged our standard with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN body for information and communications technologies, which has adopted it as ITU-T F.921. We have since had trials on the transport network in Sydney and in a mall in Barcelona, and we’re constantly refining and updating our standard using what we’ve learned. We’ve kept everything open source. We realised that if wayfinding was going to work properly for blind and visually impaired people, it had to involve not only charities representing end users, but also manufacturers of hardware and software, infrastructure developers, app developers, universities, other research bodies, and owners of venues.

So who is your customer? Wayfindr’s customer is no longer the end user, but all those organisations involved in providing indoor navigation technology. Our aim is to make sure that those technologies – which are undoubtedly coming – are inclusive for everyone. We are currently spending All this has the potential time talking to influencers and policymakers across Interrview with an innovater different organisations working on enabling all citizens to revolutionise the to move through their city. lives of blind people, What is the ambition now? The technology for indoor navigation – whether it uses removing barriers to Bluetooth or the next big thing – isn’t really in place yet, and it’s not our focus to develop this technology. But employment, to meeting too often accessibility is an afterthought. Our aim is to make sure that from hereon in, the Wayfindr standard friends and family, and is baked in at the start of any public or private indoor Interview with an innovator with Interview navigation infrastructure project, as well as improving to being fully involved in legacy systems. their communities. How do you go about that? In November 2017, the Big Lottery Fund supported Wayfindr with a £300k grant to support development of the Wayfindr Open Standard and to raise awareness of indoor audio wayfinding across the UK. Wayfindr has created the Wayfindr Community, a collection of organisations interested in developing accessible audio navigation solutions, to ensure that the Open Standard is used across the indoor navigation industry. All this has the potential to revolutionise the lives of blind people – removing barriers to employment, to meeting friends and family, and to being fully involved in their communities. ©Wayfindr What about you personally? I became CEO of Wayfindr in 2015 but stepped down last year, though I remain an advisor. I now work with charities, NGOs and social enterprises to create digital products and services.

wayfindr.net

20 London ideas City diversity is the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 Opinion Shaun Bailey, Londonwide Member of the London Assembly

Why artificial intelligence must take on crimefighting

The modern world is in many ways in a constant state recognition, decision-making, and translation between AI and machine learning could help our criminal Introducing AI into policing alongside other new of flux, a phenomenon largely driven by technological languages. AI systems replicate human functions, except justice system to overcome administrative barriers technologies will help solve many of the new and innovations. Policing and crime are no different: indeed, that they operate at much faster speeds. of this kind – so it is welcome news that the National emerging problems encountered by the police. It will one of the biggest criminal justice trends to emerge Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) is starting to consider give police forces the ability to monitor new areas of One possible application is for the police to use AI over recent years is the transition of criminality from this approach to evidence gathering.4 As Chief crime, such as social media. It will also help them to to cross-reference all their crime data in order to the streets to the digital realm.1 Even street gangs vare Constable Sara Thornton, the Chair of the NPCC, has stay ahead of criminals that wish to exploit emerging find geographical or behavioural patterns. When a now using social media to incite and organise violence. said: “If technology is the challenge, it’s also got to be technologies. Embracing technology and innovation in burglary is logged as a crime, for example, AI could part of the solution. So with the CPS we have set up a an ethical fashion could deliver a police service fit and In 2016/17 there were over 55,000 online crimes check for patterns in other sets of information. It may group to explore the clever tech that could help us – ready for the 21st century. Elected politicians should committed, up 20,000 compared to the previous year2 be that when a proportion of these burglaries took whether machine learning or artificial intelligence.” get fully behind such initiatives as a matter of urgency. – a huge increase of 57%. Fraud, now largely digital, is place, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) estimated to cost the UK economy £190bn every year.3 cameras detected the same vehicle in the vicinity The police need to avoid implementing AI piecemeal, Police resources are often stretched, and it’s clear that and this vehicle was registered to a known burglar. however. Innovative technologies must be integrated the police need to innovate and develop new counter- Information like this would save police time and help into every aspect of policing and implemented in an criminal technologies. But if technology creates new to solve crime. ethical manner that recognises the potential dangers problems for law enforcement, the good news is that it posed to personal liberties from Big Data. The References Human evidence gathering is sometimes flawed, can also provide new solutions. Metropolitan Police, as the UK’s largest and wealthiest 1. https://www.ft.com/content/56dae748-af79-11e7-8076- particularly when it comes to large quantities of data. 0a4bdda92ca2 force, needs to take the lead here and showcase what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a principal A number of high-profile rape cases have collapsed 2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5030097/One-online-crime- can be done. It should establish an implementation TEN-minutes-official-figures-reveal.html response to the changing nature of crime prevention. recently due to a lack of evidence disclosure. It’s group that consists of police officers, AI programmers 3. https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2017/11/13/experian-claims-fraud- AI can be defined as the theory and development of obvious how this can happen. Searching through and experts in police data as soon as possible to ensure costs-uk-190-billion-per-year/ computer systems to perform tasks normally requiring tens of thousands of messages across multiple that the Met is sufficiently future-proofed. 4. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/08/police-may- human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech communication platforms is no easy task. Using need-ai-to-help-cope-with-huge-volumes-of-evidence

24 London ideas London ideas 25 Above: Attendees at our first London ideas event, May 2018 Three ideas for London

In May, 70 urbanists joined Centre for London at the first London ideas evening. Five innovators stood in front of the crowd to put forward their ideas for the city, setting out the challenge, their idea and the potential impact it could have. From tackling pollution in the Thames, to making use of disused spaces through urban farming, the ideas addressed some of London’s critical challenges. Here we ask three of the innovators to explain their ideas again.

London ideas 27 London ideas event, Covent Garden, May 2018 A new way to fund housing Arya Taware, Founder & MD, FutureBricks

The problem But the UK needs smaller builders rates of interest and help solve the We aren’t building enough if we are to build more affordable nation’s housing crisis in the process. homes. The government believes residential properties. that 300,000 dwellings must be The potential delivered every year to meet the The idea FutureBricks can enable financing housing needs of the country’s My idea is a peer-to-peer-lending for the kind of housing projects growing population – but according that our country needs. In addition, 1 platform offering alternative to official figures, only 217,000 new finance to small and medium-sized our vision is to enable a financially homes were built in 2016-17. While house builders. It also opens up self-sustaining housebuilding this was an improvement on the property investment – currently an economy, reducing the need to numbers for the previous year, it exclusive activity accessible only to depend on larger institutions for is clearly difficult for many people those with significant capital and funding. We will also be tracing to get on the property ladder. In the right connections – to a much the socioeconomic impacts of February 2017, the government wider pool of investors. Through the these property investments on published a white paper,“Fixing local communities. A social impact 2 FutureBricks platform, anyone can our broken housing market” which invest as little as £1000 in property feature will allow lenders to track includes a plan for building homes development projects for secured the creation of jobs, as well as the at a faster rate and diversifying the returns of up to 12% per annum number of trees planted and the housing market. (capital at risk). At FutureBricks, amount of materials recycled – This white paper highlights the our mission is to democratise allowing them to watch not only decline of activity among small investments in property and, at the accrual of interest, but also the builders following the recession. the same time, help solve the UK’s social impact of their investments Small builders registered only housing crisis. via a personalised dashboard. 18,000 new homes in 2015, down Our user-friendly platform (it takes References from 44,000 in 2007. This is less than 3 minutes to register) has 1. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ important because these small to all the information on builders and politics/england-new-homes-housing- medium-sized builders (SMEs) stock-2016-theresa-may-building-real- projects that lenders need to make estate-sajid-javid-a8058091.html provide affordable housing, which an investment decision – including is what many first-time buyers want. 2. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ an investment summary, build cost, system/uploads/attachment_data/ SMEs have struggled to access developer profit and other key file/590464/Fixing_our_broken_housing_ development finance, particularly details. Prospective lenders can even market_-_print_ready_version.pdf since the 2008 banking crisis. The book a site visit to get a feel for the The Brickwork Group Ltd trading as Futurebricks is an obstacles include stricter regulations, project in which they are thinking of Appointed Representative of Resolution Compliance Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial a poor economic climate, and little investing. After a decade of record Conduct Authority (FRN. 574048). The Brickwork Group attention from the government. low interest rates, investors now Ltd trading as Futurebricks is registered in England and Many have struggled to stay afloat. havean opportunity to earn high Wales. Registered office: 4 Bloomsbury Place, London, WC1A 2QA.

30 London ideas An inter-city exchange programme for schools Mario Washington - Ihieme, Research Assistant, Centre for London

The problem exchange programme for pupils own community and experience There is a perception that there aged 14-16. The scheme, similar different cultures within the UK. It are significant differences between to existing French or Spanish could help pupils to develop their London and the rest of the UK. school exchange programmes, inter-personal and soft skills. More Research at Centre for London would see schools in London form than this, giving young people the earlier this year revealed that a partnerships with schools in cities opportunity to travel to a new part large proportion of Londoners and towns across the UK. Pupils of the country could help them to strongly identify with the city, but would be offered the opportunity develop a deeper understanding do not feel particularly British to study elsewhere as part of the of what it can mean to be British. or English. Census statistics have curriculum, and pupils from the An inter-city exchange programme similarly pointed to a lack of British host school to study in London. could contribute to a renewed sense identity in UK cities. This lack Pupils would stay with a local of national identity: the different of national connectedness is not family, and relationships between circumstances and attitudes that helped by the fact that there are pupils would be created a year young people encountered would few opportunities for people from prior to the programme beginning, encourage them to reflect on their one region to engage with those with school partnerships fostered own experiences and how these from another, and this is particularly through arrangements that enable shape their feelings about belonging. so for Londoners. Young people relationship building between All in all, this scheme could living in cities are unlikely to cross education institutions and local encourage a feeling of togetherness paths with those living in adjacent authorities. and belonging among the younger areas, let alone with those living generation, encouraging them to further afield – leading to an “us The potential build new friendships across the country, which could last a lifetime. versus them” dynamic. By taking part in this programme, young people from across the The idea country would have the opportunity My ideas is to create a 3-month to learn in a different environment, nationwide inter-city school meet peers from outside their

32 London ideas London ideas Celebrating London’s Gaybourhoods Simon Brooksbank, Co-chair & Co-Founder, Planning Out

The problem aspect of protecting gaybourhoods. gaybourhoods have been First of all, it is necessary to be Another is through placemaking, protected and celebrated through clear what a “gaybourhood” using imaginative street art and street art and street furniture. From is – a geographical area with furniture to create a sense of place rainbow-coloured zebra crossings recognised boundaries frequented and identity. This has already to the use of rainbow flags and by large numbers of people happened in West End areas like statues, these innovations have who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Chinatown and Theatreland, where given their districts a distinctive Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT). the urban form has been modified feel. Any street art in Soho Gaybourhoods often feature a to celebrate and protect the would have to be sensitive to the higher concentration of LGBT respective Chinese and theatrical surrounding area and involve good businesses, venues, community aspects of urban spaces. design, but a similar approach is certainly possible. facilities or cultural attractions. Soho is the most famous Even though we live in a society gaybourhood in London; and Old Elsewhere in the world, that is much more accepting of Compton Street, with its many LGBT successful placemaking has made homosexuality than it used to venues, is widely recognised as its gaybourhoods tourist destinations be, gaybourhoods have faced centre. Unlike nearby Chinatown in their own right, thus helping the significant challenges in recent and Theatreland – where street signs local economy. In London, such a years. Many have lost a significant have been modified to make people move could draw extra business to proportion of their LGBT venues. aware of these distinct places – Old LGBT venues, further protecting A study by UCL Laboratory, Compton Street is devoid of street the character of this aspect of Soho. art or furniture celebrating its published in 2017, found that in The LGBT influence on Soho is culture and heritage. Indeed, such the past 10 years 58% of LGBT an intrinsic part of what makes it is the extent of the closure of LGBT venues in London have closed.1 one of the most special and vibrant venues and the lack of distinguishing The reasons are complex but, as neighbourhoods in London. street furniture in Old Compton society changes, gaybourhoods Imaginative and distinctive urban Street that you could almost be should remain an important part design would not only protect the forgiven for not realising that you of the social framework of our LGBT character of Soho, but also are walking through a gaybourhood cities, providing spaces where celebrate it. LGBT people can meet and be at all. So, my idea is to use street and themselves, and where LGBT street furniture to celebrate the culture is celebrated. area’s cultural heritage.

The idea The potential References Exploring ways to keep LGBT In cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago, 1. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/research/ venues from closing is an important lgbtqi-spacev

34 London ideas London ideas event, Covent Garden, May 2018 Ideas rise in crowds, as Poincaré said. They rise in liquid networks where connection is valued more than protection.

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, 2010 The sensory city philosopher:

Section heading Section Carlo Ratti CityLab’s Laura Bliss heads over to Cambridge Massachusetts to meet Carlo Ratti, an Italian engineer, architect, educator, and inventor to see what new innovations his team are cooking up.

©Daniele Ratti

London ideas 41 If you ever have two If there’s a thread that links this The same goes for another hours to kill in Cambridge, all together, it is Ratti’s fascination recent and high-profile Lab project, with, and optimism about, the “Underworlds”, which sent robotic Massachusetts, skip the dynamism of urban life in an ever waste-samplers into the sewers of museums and take a seat more connected era. “The digital Cambridge. The probes (one fat, looking onto the sidewalk. and physical worlds are converging,” one short, nicknamed Mario and Left: Roboat. A fleet of autonomous boats in Amsterdam’s Ratti told me. “What interests me is: Luigi for their pipe-hopping canals, monitoring the environment, providing transportation and Listen for laughter and plans how do we use all of this potential personalities) scanned sewage enabling self-assembling bridges and other urban infrastructures. being hatched; watch for lots to create new kinds of dynamics?” samples in near real-time, which Below: Living Nature. “La Natura dell’Abitare”, a garden pavilion of texting and Google Maps- It’s people-watching, plus. MIT microbiologists examined where all four seasons coexist with each other at the same time. for signs of viruses and substance Through his research, innovation, orienting. At least that’s what abuse. With that, they built a city- and writing, Ratti evangelises the wide health map1 that public health Carlo Ratti recommends. concept of a “real-time city”, where officials could tap into. The proof of “It’s like you do in Paris,” physical and social networks are in Courtesy of Carlo Ratti concept conducted in Cambridge constant interplay, knitted together he said. “Just observe the was so successful that the project by a layer of digital sensors. In spun off into Biobot, a startup life unfolding before you”— Ratti’s future metropolis, streets, partnering with cities around the online and in real life. buildings, and objects sense and US to hunt for traces of opioid respond to the movements of the abuse using similar sewage- smartphone-equipped masses using People-watching may have been mucking robots. a slightly wistful tip. On a daffodil powerful algorithms. But while afternoon made more spectacular other “smart city” acolytes preach Biobot is now publicized as an 2 by an earlier forecast of rain, the social-engineering capabilities innovative, tech-based response Interview with a big thinkier Ratti was stuck inside a glass- of such technologies, Ratti’s is a to a pressing public health crisis. walled conference room at MIT’s more playful approach: make But when it started, Ratti told Department of Urban Studies tweaks, and let them ripple. me, it was more open-ended. “It wasn’t supposed to solve anything. and Planning, taking team Just before our interview, Ratti had It was more like, what we can meetings, client phone calls, met with fellow Lab members to discover?” he said. “And actually, it and media interviews. review their progress on the Roboat, turns out there is a lot of valuable Courtesy of Carlo Ratti one of their latest endeavours. Later Then again, this was the Senseable information in sewage.” City Lab, the MIT think tank this summer, in a collaboration with always foresee. Design, therefore, crafted on data-driven maps and tennis shoes. He bridles at any where Ratti, an Italian engineer, technologists in Amsterdam, they’ll should not seek to control. Instead, predictive algorithms. But in Ratti’s one label to describe his work.

Interview with a big thinkier with Interview architect, educator, and inventor, deploy prototypes of the world’s it should tap into the natural human mind, when sensing technology is “It’s sort of like the guy says in is the director. It’s where some of first fleet of autonomous boats. flows you might witness from the deployed for a top-down purpose, the film by Truffaut, Jules et Jim: the world’s sharpest minds come These would not only transport If you have data and you nearest city square or riverbank. it closes off the chance for people be curieux aux profession – curious to observe and tinker with 21st- goods and people on Amsterdam’s to meaningfully engage with their by profession,” he told me. sense what’s going on, That’s a distinction between Ratti’s century cities. canals sans captain, but also gather surroundings. “You wind up lacking work and many other “smart city” It’s his horizontal, participatory remote environmental data and you can make a change, feedback loops,” Ratti said. “If you Composed of six investigators projects you hear about, which vision of the future of cities – reassemble into bridges on command, have data and you sense what’s and dozens of researchers, the lab and the system responds. tend to use technology as a not to mention his glitzy, media- Transformers-style. A model roughly going on, you can make a change, studies human interactions within That’s a true smart city. “solution” – or sometimes, more friendly projects – that have the size of a large suitcase sat on the and the system responds…that’s a urban spaces, and how digital darkly, as a means of control. The made Ratti influential as an urban opposite wall, all translucent plastic true smart city.” information and interfaces can and glittering motherboards. ability to gather data at a massive innovator and theorist. Over the shape and illuminate them. Ratti scale to observe, predict, and After gathering civil engineering past ten years, his work has landed Roboat is a typical Lab project and his team work across a range For Ratti, urban design isn’t about connect people has transformed degrees in both Paris and Turin, him on “best and brightest” lists in a couple of ways – first, in that it of subjects – trees, sewage, bikes, directly addressing problems. The the urban landscape, thanks in Ratti earned his PhD in architecture from Fast Company, Wired, Esquire, is another entry into the “Internet and on-demand vehicles – while way he sees it, cities just don’t work particular to the sensing, data- from the University of Cambridge. Forbes, and numerous architectural of Things”, those blinking, scanning, also publishing papers, testing that way. He sees architecture and gathering, and analytical powers of A Fulbright scholarship brought magazines. He has delivered multiple WiFi-connected objects that robots and artificial intelligence, civic innovation as parts of a city’s IBM, Cisco, Google, and other IT him to MIT in 2001, where he has TED talks, and has authored more increasingly blanket our homes, cars, and occasionally spinning off its larger social and infrastructural giants. Witness the telephone poles more or less stayed ever since. On than 500 scientific publications. and public spaces. And second, the work into startups and business webbing. Whether it’s a high-rise, kitted out with pollution detectors the day we met, Ratti was dressed Recent books, including Open- Roboat isn’t designed to solve ideas. Ratti also leads the Carlo a vehicle, or a boat-based probe, and gunshot noise scanners; the part of perpetual grad student: Source Architecture and The City anything, per se. It’s more like Ratti Associati, an international introducing new objects into the Wi-Fi kiosks designed to spread wire-rimmed glasses, slightly of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, a proposal, with lots of different design and innovation firm whose urban landscape can cause network- Internet access and city services; mussed hair, jeans frayed at the Hackers, and the Future of Urban use cases. real-world projects play with wide shifts that designers can’t housing and social welfare policies bottom by thin-soled, low-top Life, are manifestos that call for interaction via sensors and data.

42 London ideas London ideas 43 and lay out a vision of how digital telephone poles outfitted with and 20th century urban planning. is our response in society – policies, achieved without a private income years ago, where archaeologists peg interfaces can make cities more nesting drones4 that communicate “People would come up a solution, taxation, and so on – and how we I do not know,” she wrote.7 the first emergence of urban life. open, engaging, and democratic with driverless vehicles. Another and they thought it was just going to make sure we end up on one side “Even then, cities emerged to bring Yet Ratti insists that the gaps are places to live. The latter book project, Scribit5 aims to manufacture be implemented and that was that,” or another,” Ratti said. “We have to us together, to allow us to exchange closing, not widening, for people imagines the metropolis of the a drone capable of drawing any Ratti told me. Block by block, byte be vigilant.” Not just regulators, he goods, ideas, and chromosomes,” trying to access these digital coming centuries as fully sensory pre-programmed design, pattern, by byte, digital networks can restore added, but the citizens themselves. he said. That’s the magic of the city. interfaces. He told me how, when and responsive, with digital and or image onto wall surfaces. What urbanism to its more iterative roots, The new data privacy standards To Ratti the optimist, the machines he first came to MIT in the early physical networks and interfaces excites him most about these works, where residents help build the cities introduced this month in the EU of the digital era – big data, remote 2000s, some of the older professors “overlapping with, and including, Ratti told me, is that he often gets they live in, he believes. should bring a stronger measure sensing, artificial intelligence – are were ruffled by his use of cell-phone its inhabitants,” wrote the critic and a chance to see how the public of egalitarianism to data control, beginning to unlock its codes. At least, in theory. In old interviews data to study urban activity. “Some scholar of visual culture Richard J. will react. he said. from the early 2010s, Ratti praised of them said: ‘Not everyone has Williams in his review3 of the book. Carlo Ratti is a professor and director Already, smartphones, the Obama campaign’s savvy use Nonetheless, in the present a cellphone, so why don’t you do of Senseable City Lab at Massachusetts The work of Carlo Ratti Associati connected vehicles, and “smart” of Facebook and Twitter to engage American context, it feels something that tries to close that Institute of Technology (MIT). speaks to that future: for design energy systems churn out an and energise voters. Now, in the simplistic to expect that “citizens” divide instead?’” he recalled. Soon, Laura Bliss is a staff writer at CityLab. expos around the world, the group unprecedented amount of data era of Trump, in the wake of the will organise themselves around there will be more cellphones than has built a climate-controlled about how we live, move, and Cambridge Analytica Facebook technology to build a more humans on the planet.8 “garden pavilion” in which all consume resources; Ratti foresees a data scandal, I asked him if desirable social order. Political four seasons can be experienced, a future where that data is open and widespread access to big data across polarisation is increasing, as “supermarket of the future” where accessible to all, so that all may social networks doesn’t look a little is economic segregation and products come digitally labelled, participate in building “smarter” more nefarious. He responded inequality, gaping issues that and a gazebo with motion-detecting cities. He dispenses with the notion that both can be true: that the Ratti’s research is not designed I like to see our work as cascades of water for walls. A that one planner or starchitect same technology, and the same to address. “I don’t think that the something that contributes

yet-unbuilt project is a proposal could possibly hold the answer to a types of data, can be used to have answer lies in any of the smart to the production of Interview with a big thinkier for the future of Italian highways, more efficient, liveable environment opposite results – empowerment devices or computers or networks mutations, accelerating featuring a network of —the “great man”6theory of 19th or manipulation. “The difference we currently have,” said Michael Batty, Emeritus Professor of the transformation of Planning at University College the present into how Below: The Supermarket of the Future London’s Centre for Advanced it ‘ought to be’. Spatial Analysis. “The issues are behavioural not technological; they involve social networks primarily. This is not the major It’s the long-term impacts that preoccupation of Carlo’s group.”

Interview with a big thinkier with Interview count, Ratti told me. “I like to And since the Senseable City Lab see our work as something that mostly develops one-off projects contributes to the production and research questions, it’s hard of mutations, accelerating the to point to long-term, lasting transformation of the present into References results or evolutions in human/ how it ‘ought to be’,” he told me 1. http://underworlds.mit.edu/ urban interactions. Ratti likes to later via email. “You could say that 2. https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/04/the- talk about the civic engagement designers are like the mutagens,” race-to-learn-whats-really-happening-in- implications of his work, but he the-opioid-crisis/555191/ he said, using the term for the becomes a little less convincing 3. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/ agents that cause mutations in when he does. Writing about the books/review-the-city-of-tomorrow-carlo- DNA, evolving life over time. ratti-matthew-claudel-yale-university- book Open Source Architecture, There is no one finite outcome. press Flora Samuel, currently Professor 4. http://www.carloratti.com/project/anas- of Architecture and the Built smart-road/ Environment at the University of If he had to do it all over again, 5. https://www.dezeen.com/2018/04/04/ Reading, took issue with Ratti and Ratti told me he’d go into biology, carlo-ratti-scribit-writing-robot-turns- walls-into-digital-canvases-milan-design- his co-author Matthew Claudel’s to study how the convergence of technology will shape human life at week/ lack of detail about how the world 6. https://managementstudyguide.com/ the cellular level. As it is, he views might, for example, scale up the great-man-theory.htm concept of a “WikiHouse” – i.e. cities as akin to living, breathing, 7. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/ blueprints for a reproducible circulating organisms – even books/open-source-architecture-carloratti-matthew-claudel#survey-answer structure that anyone can “edit” and especially as computers are integrated into them. He harkened 8. https://www.cbronline.com/uncategorised/ and build, accessible to all tiers smartphones-humans-2021-according- back to Mesopotamia, some 8,000 of society. “How this is to be report/ ©Delfino Sisto Legnani

44 London ideas London ideas 45 Courtesy of Carlo Ratti Living Nature. “La Natura dell’Abitare”, a garden pavilion where all four seasons coexist with each other at the same time. The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing.

David Brooks, in a 2011 New York Times column, “Where Are The Jobs?” The best idea London ever had Sharon Ament, Director, Museum of London We ask a leading Londoner to reflect on London’s history and tell us about the best idea they think the city ever had.

For something so fantastical and engineered by Joseph Paxton. Exhibition as a vehicle for peace reminder of how much women’s ephemeral, the Great Exhibition The Exhibition, which ran for six and internationalism, grounded bodies were controlled. of 1851 has left a remarkable months, was self-financing and as it was in the beliefs that free The others are the dinosaurs, national legacy, both intellectual highly profitable, and epitomised trade and economic competition designed to the specifications and physical. The great museums the energy and creativity of could overcome nationalism and of the then scientific theories of South Kensington were founded our greatest industrial age. It territorial ambition, and that of Sir Richard Owen. These from its profits; a whole chunk was international; it showcased science and technology could reconstructions of prehistoric of Sydenham was named after the latest technologies, ideas, improve lives. I am certainly creatures now inhabit an island its building; it inspired a series inventions, and artistic creations; all for science, technology, and in Crystal Palace Park. Sir Richard’s of international world fairs; and it was spectacular and galvanising. internationalism over theory about the physiology it showcased the talents of great territorial ambition. For me, the great beauty of the of dinosaurs was wrong: his engineers and artists. It even idea was the decision to invest the The whole thing was rather reconstructions remain a testament had dinosaurs! profits in establishing institutions egalitarian, with innovative to the ever-changing process of It seems we British like a good that furthered its aims and demand-driven ticket pricing: science itself, in which hypothesis day out looking at amazing stuff. principles, and which now line the it cost five shillings to visit on and theory is tested and changed Other moments of extrovert aptly named Exhibition Road. Saturdays, with a more popular over time with new evidence. The Great Exhibition optimism have followed in the form More than 12 million people visit weekday shilling ticket. 6,039,722 This glorious group of life-size of national gatherings that excite the Science Museum, the Natural people visited the Great Exhibition, but wrongly configured creatures awe and wonder: the Festival of History Museum and the V&A a third of the entire population of tantalises our imagination and Britain 100 years later was a worthy every year, and the museums’ Britain and nearly three times that embodies the fluidity of ideas. successor, the Millennium Dome international and scholastic output of London. It was so successful that Opposite the Albert Hall, perhaps less so. is phenomenal. Imperial College, George Cruikshank lampooned it the Albert Memorial shows the Royal College of Art and the in a cartoon showing Manchester The 1851 Great Exhibition the man himself, Prince Albert, Royal College of Music all became devoid of people, all of them (proper title Great Exhibition with an Exhibition catalogue in part of this nexus of institutions in presumably in London. of the Works of Industry of All his hand, its statistics enshrined South Kensington. Nations) developed out of A huge array of objects was shown in the stonework alongside him. discussions between Prince Albert, The body set up to distribute the – and to this day, two particularly Wandering back down Exhibition Consort of Queen Victoria, and profits along charitable lines still resonate with me. One is a Road you can see the institutions members of The Royal Society of exists. The Royal Commission for technologically advanced corset founded to embody the Great Arts. The designer and inventor the Exhibition of 1851, which aims made by Madame Roxey Ann Exhibition’s ideals, as well as Sir Henry Cole, who would become to “increase the means of industrial Caplin, a staymaker of Berners the many students, visitors and the first director of the V&A, was education and extend the influence Street, London – who, with her academics who visit them every instrumental in bringing everything of science and art upon productive husband, invented and patented day – making it, to my mind, together with lightning speed and industry” still gives grants, operating many improvements to corsets London’s greatest idea. on a grand scale. out of Imperial College London. between 1838 and 1860. This is now in the collection of the Museum Right: George Cruikshank’s etching It took nine months to build the A colleague of mine, Alex Werner, of London and is an extraordinary ‘All the world going to see the Great extraordinary Crystal Palace, has written about the Great Exhibition of 1851.’ © Museum of London

50 London ideas London ideas 51 To make your idea actually happen, you Just go for it! We need to make sure it’s had no idea what not only your idea. Find your motivation. RevolYOUtion London New initiatives are Loads of people come would morph into. We hardly ever achieved up with ideas but few went from a group of in isolation, so try to actually get made but teenagers wanting to involve people who are if you find something do positive things in our as invested in the idea you’re passionate about community to building as you. solving, you’ll work an entire movement. Finn Williams, harder and faster. Rasheeda Page-Muir, CEO & Co-Founder, Scarlett Montanaro, Co- Managing Director, Public Practice founder, Crack + Cider RevolYOUtion

We ask six innovators for their tips and words of wisdom they’d give someone who had an Make it happen idea, but not a plan on making it a reality.

Love what you do, I You won't get up on Keep good records. know that sounds a bit the hard days to do Learn from the mistakes cliché, but it’s probably something you're not of others, it saves you the only way you will bone passionate about, the pain of having to be able to weather all and there will be days make all the mistakes the things people will when all you hear is yourself. Go to courses. throw in the way. If you no. Passion outlasts. Attend networking can remain excited, you Kate Glazebrook, CEO events. Take up offers can generally handle & Co-Founder, Applied of help and most of the stress of it. all, commit. Tessy Britton, Director, Cheryl Ndione, Participatory City Founder & CEO, Purple Moon Drama

52 London ideas London ideas 53 About London ideas London ideas is a magazine about urban innovation by Centre for London and generously supported by Capital and Counties Properties PLC. Published twice a year, it champions innovations that could transform London – and other cities around the world – for the better. Running alongside the magazine, Centre for London is holding a series of events at which entrepreneurs and innovators present and discuss their ideas.

Find out more and to get involved: centreforlondon.org/project/london-ideas/

The team Editors Jo Corfield Head of Communications [email protected]

Ben Rogers Director [email protected]

Contributing Editor Geraldine Bedell

Design & Illustration Megha Hirani Senior Designer [email protected]

Events Kate Spiliopoulos Head of Events [email protected]

Centre for London Centre for London is the capital's dedicated think tank. A politically independent charity, our mission is to develop new solutions to London’s critical challenges and advocate for a fair and prosperous global city. Through research, analysis and events we generate bold and creative solutions to improve the city we share. Find out more at centreforlondon.org

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