Time as a resource: Smart City

Introduction

The Euclidean zoning used in urban planning divides the area into zones based on permitted uses, ignoring housing supply and liveable aspects. The zoning systems were designed with basic premises that people will buy cars and will prefer to travel to workplaces. This resulted into construction of wider roads and eventually roads got flooded with car, and prime locations in city had to accommodate parking spaces for car. Just imagine, millions of people spend their time on commuting to work place, not only this is a waste of productivity but also waste of resources in terms energy and negative externality like road congestion and resulting pollutions.

Bangalore city is one of the worst affected city in the world and resulted due to land zoning system followed for urban planning as stated above. People in Bangalore spend 243 hours on average every year for commuting to work place. (Business Today, 2020). The average commute time in Beijing is 52 minutes one way (South China Morning Post, 2015). And average american drive 25 miles to their workplace spending one hour on the road each day (Fatherly.com, 2020). Story is same for most of the modern cities. Time as a resource is well understood when you experience it in first hand. In fact, I started getting the benefit of having extra 2 hours in a day when I moved from Bangalore city to Singapore where I had 2 hours of daily commute hours to my  workplace. This additional 2 hours allowed me to spend some quality time with family members and to pick up new hobbies.

How to Address

As per United Nations’ estimate, 55% of world’s population lives in cities (The World Bank, 2020) and drives 80% of the economic activities in terms of GDP. This population is growing at the rate of 2 to 3% year on year. Cities will play larger and larger roles in tackling climate change, they will contribute sustainable growth if managed well in terms of reducing carbon foot print, increasing productivity and allowing innovation to come through. Population of individual city can range from few hundred thousands to couple of millions (larger size city in the world has population as high as 30 million). We do not have luxury to displace millions of people to completely re-design the cities addressing infrastructure and housing issues. Instead, we need to apply right interventions through policy changes to address challenges discussed above related to overcrowding of roads, associated negative externality and improving productivity. Key considerations in my opinion are: (1) Affordable housing closer to workplace, (2) minimize/remove cars running on fossil fuel and (2) discourage vehicle ownership and provide access to various mobility options. Using alternate energy for cars will address the pollution/CO2 emission from the cars, but it will not address the road congestions and time spent on wheels while driving to workplace. The business model of “giving access to resources in contrary to owning them” has been successful in case of Uber where car-owners are enabled to ride-share, and Airbnb which enables home-owners to share their home space with travellers. Keeping these above considerations in mind, the following policy measures (not limited to) can be planned for cities:

1. Affordable Housing. Creating affordable housing within city limit, closer to workplace will address most of the challenges discussed above. Developers should be encouraged to build micro-units suitable for young professions with affordable rates and at closer proximity to workplace. This will open up alternate mobility options such as cycling, walking to consider while commuting to work, which will reduce road congestions and air pollution challenges in cities.
2. Cleaner-energy models. Gradually converting all cars and public transports to cleaner-energy models. This also can be done by provide more and more incentives for EVs. Country like Singapore has policy in place to incentivize EV users (straitstimes.com).
3. Ride-sharing. Re-adjusting existing infrastructure and incentivising high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) in terms of dedicating more lanes for ride-sharing, reducing road tolls will not only promote ride-sharing in cities but also will reduce the number of vehicles on the roads. This will in turn free-up lanes in the city those can be repurposed for other uses.
4. Autonomous vehicle. As technology make advancements, autonomous vehicle will potentially reduce number of accidents happening daily due to human error. This will also free-up commuters’ time spent on the wheel and keeping a watch on road conditions. City needs to provide various mobility options for it’s citizens to choose from. Promoting ride-sharing culture along with autonomous vehicles will have a larger benefits for a city. This combination will address both: road congestion problem resulting into CO2 emission, and land scarcity caused by parking lots covering the prime locations in a city. Singapore among other countries has come-up with policies to promote use of autonomous vehicle to address road congestion and land availability in city area (www.smartnation.gov.sg).

Conclusion

Technology has been a big enabler in making our cities smarter and efficient. Internet of Things (IoT) is able to address many of the challenges a city is facing in areas of assets management, energy distribution, water supply, sewage and others, by providing real-time insights; and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models being used to predict, take course corrections before an incident happens. Shared economy we discussed above can leverage Blockchain technology for peer-peer transactions. A smart contract between the asset owner and the consumer will initiate payment once transaction is executed successfully without any intermediary.

Technology alone can’t solve the problem and bring larger-scale social change, it requires collective participations from individuals as well. Some of the behavioural changes expected are as follows but not limited to:

• Ride sharing culture otherwise known as “Shared Economy”, getting access to resources vs owning it.
• Use what you really need. Manage with micro-units which can be easily converted into multipurpose usage rather than holding into larger housing unit and not optimally using the space.
• Be accountable and be responsible while using resources and even shared resources. Taking short shower can save few liters of water, turning off the air conditioners and keeping windows open during morning and evening hours will reduce energy usage and CO2 emission.

Reference:

1. Steele, Lauren. “Americans Spend 6% Of Their Lives in Cars.” Fatherly, 2 Oct. 2020, http://www.fatherly.com/gear/how-much-time-do-american-families-spend-in-their-cars/.
2. “Bengaluru People Spent 243 Hours on Average in Traffic in 2019, Time They Could Use to Watch 215 Episodes of GoT.” Business Today, 30 Jan. 2020, http://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/bengaluru-people-spent-243-hours-on-average-in-traffic-in-2019-time-they-could-use-to-watch-215-episodes-of-got/story/394951.html.
3. “Beijing Workers Have Longest Daily Commute in China at 52 Minutes Each Way.” South China Morning Post, 27 Jan. 2015, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1692839/beijingers-lead-chinas-pack-longest-daily-commute.
4. Urban development Overview” World Bank, 2020 http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview.