Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city
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0:01 - 0:04I thought I would start with a very brief
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0:04 - 0:06history of cities.
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0:06 - 0:08Settlements typically began
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0:08 - 0:11with people clustered around a well, and the size
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0:11 - 0:14of that settlement was roughly the distance you could walk
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0:14 - 0:16with a pot of water on your head.
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0:16 - 0:20In fact, if you fly over Germany, for example,
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0:20 - 0:21and you look down and you see these hundreds
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0:21 - 0:24of little villages, they're all about a mile apart.
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0:24 - 0:27You needed easy access to the fields.
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0:27 - 0:30And for hundreds, even thousands of years,
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0:30 - 0:33the home was really the center of life.
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0:33 - 0:35Life was very small for most people.
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0:35 - 0:40It was the center of entertainment, of energy production,
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0:40 - 0:42of work, the center of health care.
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0:42 - 0:46That's where babies were born and people died.
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0:46 - 0:49Then, with industrialization, everything started
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0:49 - 0:51to become centralized.
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0:51 - 0:53You had dirty factories that were moved
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0:53 - 0:55to the outskirts of cities.
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0:55 - 0:59Production was centralized in assembly plants.
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0:59 - 1:03You had centralized energy production.
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1:03 - 1:06Learning took place in schools. Health care took place
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1:06 - 1:09in hospitals.
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1:09 - 1:11And then you had networks that developed.
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1:11 - 1:15You had water, sewer networks that allowed for this
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1:15 - 1:17kind of unchecked expansion.
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1:17 - 1:21You had separated functions, increasingly.
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1:21 - 1:24You had rail networks that connected residential,
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1:24 - 1:27industrial, commercial areas. You had auto networks.
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1:27 - 1:31In fact, the model was really, give everybody a car,
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1:31 - 1:33build roads to everything, and give people a place to park
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1:33 - 1:36when they get there. It was not a very functional model.
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1:36 - 1:39And we still live in that world,
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1:39 - 1:41and this is what we end up with.
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1:41 - 1:43So you have the sprawl of LA,
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1:43 - 1:45the sprawl of Mexico City.
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1:45 - 1:48You have these unbelievable new cities in China
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1:48 - 1:50which you might call tower sprawl.
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1:50 - 1:53They're all building cities on the model that we invented
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1:53 - 1:57in the '50s and '60s, which is really obsolete, I would argue,
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1:57 - 1:59and there are hundreds and hundreds of new cities
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1:59 - 2:01that are being planned all over the world.
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2:01 - 2:03In China alone, 300 million people,
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2:03 - 2:05some say 400 million people,
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2:05 - 2:08will move to the city over the next 15 years.
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2:08 - 2:10That means building the entire, the equivalent
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2:10 - 2:13of the entire built infrastructure of the U.S. in 15 years.
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2:13 - 2:14Imagine that.
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2:14 - 2:16And we should all care about this
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2:16 - 2:19whether you live in cities or not.
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2:19 - 2:22Cities will account for 90 percent of the population growth,
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2:22 - 2:2780 percent of the global CO2, 75 percent of energy use,
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2:27 - 2:30but at the same time it's where people want to be,
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2:30 - 2:31increasingly.
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2:31 - 2:34More than half the people now in the world live in cities,
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2:34 - 2:37and that will just continue to escalate.
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2:37 - 2:41Cities are places of celebration, personal expression.
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2:41 - 2:43You have the flash mobs of pillow fights that —
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2:43 - 2:46I've been to a couple. They're quite fun. (Laughter)
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2:46 - 2:49You have — (Laughs)
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2:49 - 2:51Cities are where most of the wealth is created,
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2:51 - 2:53and particularly in the developing world,
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2:53 - 2:55it's where women find opportunities. That's
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2:55 - 2:59a lot of the reason why cities are growing very quickly.
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2:59 - 3:01Now there's some trends that will impact cities.
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3:01 - 3:04First of all, work is becoming distributed and mobile.
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3:04 - 3:06The office building is basically obsolete
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3:06 - 3:08for doing private work.
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3:08 - 3:12The home, once again, because of distributed computation --
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3:12 - 3:14communication, is becoming a center of life,
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3:14 - 3:18so it's a center of production and learning and shopping
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3:18 - 3:21and health care and all of these things that we used
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3:21 - 3:24to think of as taking place outside of the home.
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3:24 - 3:27And increasingly, everything that people buy,
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3:27 - 3:30every consumer product, in one way or another,
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3:30 - 3:32can be personalized.
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3:32 - 3:34And that's a very important trend to think about.
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3:34 - 3:37So this is my image of the city of the future.
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3:37 - 3:39(Laughter)
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3:39 - 3:42In that it's a place for people, you know.
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3:42 - 3:44Maybe not the way people dress, but --
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3:44 - 3:46You know, the question now is, how can we have all
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3:46 - 3:49the good things that we identify with cities
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3:49 - 3:51without all the bad things?
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3:51 - 3:53This is Bangalore. It took me a couple of hours
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3:53 - 3:57to get a few miles in Bangalore last year.
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3:57 - 3:59So with cities, you also have congestion and pollution
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3:59 - 4:02and disease and all these negative things.
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4:02 - 4:03How can we have the good stuff without the bad?
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4:03 - 4:06So we went back and started looking at the great cities
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4:06 - 4:08that evolved before the cars.
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4:08 - 4:11Paris was a series of these little villages
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4:11 - 4:15that came together, and you still see that structure today.
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4:15 - 4:16The 20 arrondissements of Paris
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4:16 - 4:18are these little neighborhoods.
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4:18 - 4:20Most of what people need in life can be
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4:20 - 4:22within a five- or 10-minute walk.
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4:22 - 4:25And if you look at the data, when you have that kind
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4:25 - 4:28of a structure, you get a very even distribution
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4:28 - 4:31of the shops and the physicians and the pharmacies
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4:31 - 4:33and the cafes in Paris.
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4:33 - 4:35And then you look at cities that evolved after
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4:35 - 4:38the automobile, and it's not that kind of a pattern.
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4:38 - 4:40There's very little that's within a five minute walk
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4:40 - 4:43of most areas of places like Pittsburgh.
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4:43 - 4:46Not to pick on Pittsburgh, but most American cities
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4:46 - 4:49really have evolved this way.
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4:49 - 4:52So we said, we'll, let's look at new cities, and we're involved
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4:52 - 4:55in a couple of new city projects in China.
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4:55 - 4:57So we said, let's start with that neighborhood cell.
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4:57 - 4:59We think of it as a compact urban cell.
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4:59 - 5:02So provide most of what most people want
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5:02 - 5:03within that 20-minute walk.
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5:03 - 5:07This can also be a resilient electrical microgrid,
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5:07 - 5:10community heating, power, communication networks,
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5:10 - 5:12etc., can be concentrated there.
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5:12 - 5:15Stewart Brand would put a micro-nuclear reactor
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5:15 - 5:17right in the center, probably. (Laughter)
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5:17 - 5:19And he might be right.
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5:19 - 5:22And then we can form, in effect, a mesh network.
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5:22 - 5:26It's something of an Internet typology pattern,
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5:26 - 5:28so you can have a series of these neighborhoods.
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5:28 - 5:31You can dial up the density -- about 20,000 people per cell
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5:31 - 5:33if it's Cambridge. Go up to 50,000
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5:33 - 5:35if it's Manhattan density. You connect everything
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5:35 - 5:39with mass transit and you provide most of what most people
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5:39 - 5:41need within that neighborhood.
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5:41 - 5:45You can begin to develop a whole typology of streetscapes
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5:45 - 5:48and the vehicles that can go on them. I won't go through
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5:48 - 5:50all of them. I'll just show one.
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5:50 - 5:53This is Boulder. It's a great example of kind of a mobility
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5:53 - 5:56parkway, a superhighway for joggers and bicyclists
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5:56 - 5:59where you can go from one end of the city to the other
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5:59 - 6:03without crossing the street, and they also have bike-sharing,
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6:03 - 6:05which I'll get into in a minute.
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6:05 - 6:08This is even a more interesting solution in Seoul, Korea.
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6:08 - 6:10They took the elevated highway, they got rid of it,
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6:10 - 6:14they reclaimed the street, the river down below,
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6:14 - 6:17below the street, and you can go from one end of Seoul
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6:17 - 6:22to the other without crossing a pathway for cars.
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6:22 - 6:26The Highline in Manhattan is very similar.
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6:26 - 6:30You have these rapidly emerging bike lanes
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6:30 - 6:32all over the world. I lived in Manhattan for 15 years.
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6:32 - 6:35I went back a couple of weekends ago, took this photograph
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6:35 - 6:40of these fabulous new bike lanes that they have installed.
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6:40 - 6:44They're still not to where Copenhagen is, where something
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6:44 - 6:46like 42 percent of the trips within the city
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6:46 - 6:49are by bicycle. It's mostly just because they have
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6:49 - 6:51fantastic infrastructure there.
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6:51 - 6:54We actually did exactly the wrong thing in Boston.
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6:54 - 6:59We -- the Big Dig -- (Laughter)
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6:59 - 7:02So we got rid of the highway but we created a traffic island
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7:02 - 7:06and it's certainly not a mobility pathway for anything
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7:06 - 7:07other than cars.
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7:07 - 7:10Mobility on demand is something we've been thinking
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7:10 - 7:11about, so we think we need an ecosystem
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7:11 - 7:15of these shared-use vehicles connected to mass transit.
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7:15 - 7:18These are some of the vehicles that we've been working on.
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7:18 - 7:22But shared use is really key. If you share a vehicle,
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7:22 - 7:24you can have at least four people use one vehicle,
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7:24 - 7:26as opposed to one.
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7:26 - 7:31We have Hubway here in Boston, the Vélib' system in Paris.
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7:31 - 7:35We've been developing at the Media Lab this little
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7:35 - 7:40city car that is optimized for shared use in cities.
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7:40 - 7:43We got rid of all the useless things like engines
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7:43 - 7:45and transmissions. We moved everything to the wheels,
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7:45 - 7:47so you have the drive motor, the steering motor,
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7:47 - 7:49the breaking all in the wheel.
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7:49 - 7:52That left the chassis unencumbered, so you can do things
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7:52 - 7:55like fold, so you can fold this little vehicle up
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7:55 - 7:59to occupy a tiny little footprint.
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7:59 - 8:02This was a video that was on European television last week
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8:02 - 8:06showing the Spanish Minister of Industry driving
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8:06 - 8:09this little vehicle, and when it's folded, it can spin.
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8:09 - 8:13You don't need reverse. You don't need parallel parking.
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8:13 - 8:15You just spin and go directly in. (Laughter)
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8:15 - 8:18So we've been working with a company to
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8:18 - 8:20commercialize this. My PhD student Ryan Chin presented
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8:20 - 8:24these early ideas two years ago at a TEDx conference.
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8:24 - 8:28So what's interesting is, then if you begin to add
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8:28 - 8:31new things to it, like autonomy, you get out of the car,
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8:31 - 8:34you park at your destination, you pat it on the butt,
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8:34 - 8:36it goes and it parks itself, it charges itself,
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8:36 - 8:39and you can get something like seven times
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8:39 - 8:44as many vehicles in a given area as conventional cars,
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8:44 - 8:47and we think this is the future. Actually we could do this today.
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8:47 - 8:49It's not really a problem.
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8:49 - 8:53We can combine shared use and folding and autonomy
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8:53 - 8:56and we get something like 28 times the land utilization
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8:56 - 8:58with that kind of strategy.
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8:58 - 9:00One of our graduate students then says, well,
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9:00 - 9:04how does a driverless car communicate with pedestrians?
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9:04 - 9:07You have nobody to make eye contact with.
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9:07 - 9:08You don't know if it's going to run you over.
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9:08 - 9:11So he's developing strategies so the vehicle can
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9:11 - 9:15communicate with pedestrians, so -- (Laughter)
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9:15 - 9:17So the headlights are eyeballs, the pupils can dilate,
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9:17 - 9:19we have directional audio, we can throw sound
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9:19 - 9:22directly at people.
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9:22 - 9:24What I love about this project is he solved a problem
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9:24 - 9:28that hasn't, that doesn't exist yet, so -- (Laughter)
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9:28 - 9:29(Laughter) (Applause)
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9:29 - 9:34We also think that we can democratize access to bike lanes.
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9:34 - 9:35You know, bike lanes are mostly used by young guys
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9:35 - 9:39in stretchy pants, you know. So -- (Laughter)
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9:39 - 9:42We think we can develop a vehicle that operates
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9:42 - 9:45on bike lanes, accessible to elderly and disabled,
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9:45 - 9:49women in skirts, businesspeople, and address the issues
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9:49 - 9:51of energy congestion, mobility, aging and obesity
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9:51 - 9:54simultaneously. That's our challenge.
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9:54 - 9:56This is an early design for this little three-wheel,
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9:56 - 9:59it's an electronic bike. You have to pedal
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9:59 - 10:03to operate it in a bike lane, but if you're an older person,
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10:03 - 10:07that's a switch. If you're a healthy person,
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10:07 - 10:08you might have to work really hard to go fast.
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10:08 - 10:10You can dial in 40 calories going into work
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10:10 - 10:13and 500 going home, when you can take a shower.
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10:13 - 10:17We hope to have that built this fall.
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10:17 - 10:20Housing is another area where we can really improve.
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10:20 - 10:25Mayor Menino in Boston says lack of affordable housing
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10:25 - 10:27for young people is one of the biggest problems
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10:27 - 10:29the city faces.
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10:29 - 10:31Developers say, okay, we'll build little teeny apartments.
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10:31 - 10:34People say, we don't really want to live in a little teeny
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10:34 - 10:36conventional apartment.
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10:36 - 10:40So we're saying let's build a standardized chassis,
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10:40 - 10:43much like our car. Let's bring advanced technology
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10:43 - 10:49into the apartment, technology-enabled infill,
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10:49 - 10:53give people the tools within this open-loft chassis
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10:53 - 10:56to go through a process of defining what their needs
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10:56 - 10:59and values and activities are, and then
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10:59 - 11:02a matching algorithm will match a unique assembly
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11:02 - 11:06of integrated infill components, furniture, and cabinetry,
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11:06 - 11:10that are personalized to that individual, and they give them
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11:10 - 11:13the tools to go through the process and to refine it,
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11:13 - 11:16and it's something like working with an architect,
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11:16 - 11:19where the dialogue starts when you give an alternative
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11:19 - 11:22to a person to react to.
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11:22 - 11:28Now, the most interesting implementation of that for us
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11:28 - 11:30is when you can begin to have robotic walls, so
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11:30 - 11:33your space can convert from exercise to a workplace,
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11:33 - 11:35if you run a virtual company.
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11:35 - 11:38You have guests over, you have two guestrooms
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11:38 - 11:40that are developed.
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11:40 - 11:44You have a conventional one-bedroom arrangement
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11:44 - 11:46when you need it. Maybe that's most of the time.
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11:46 - 11:48You have a dinner party. The table folds out
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11:48 - 11:52to fit 16 people in otherwise a conventional one-bedroom,
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11:52 - 11:53or maybe you want a dance studio.
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11:53 - 11:55I mean, architects have been thinking about these ideas
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11:55 - 11:59for a long time. What we need to do now,
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11:59 - 12:04develop things that can scale to those 300 million Chinese
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12:04 - 12:07people that would like to live in the city,
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12:07 - 12:09and very comfortably.
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12:09 - 12:11We think we can make a very small apartment
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12:11 - 12:14that functions as if it's twice as big
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12:14 - 12:18by utilizing these strategies. I don't believe in smart homes.
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12:18 - 12:20That's sort of a bogus concept.
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12:20 - 12:22I think you have to build dumb homes
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12:22 - 12:25and put smart stuff in it. (Laughter)
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12:25 - 12:31And so we've been working on a chassis of the wall itself.
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12:31 - 12:34You know, standardized platform with the motors
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12:34 - 12:36and the battery when it operates, little solenoids
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12:36 - 12:40that will lock it in place and get low-voltage power.
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12:40 - 12:42We think this can all be standardized, and then people
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12:42 - 12:46can personalize the stuff that goes into that wall,
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12:46 - 12:48and like the car, we can integrate all kinds of sensing
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12:48 - 12:52to be aware of human activity, so if there's a baby or
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12:52 - 12:57a puppy in the way, you won't have a problem. (Laughter)
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12:57 - 13:00So the developers say, well this is great. Okay,
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13:00 - 13:02so if we have a conventional building,
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13:02 - 13:05we have a fixed envelope, maybe we can put in 14 units.
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13:05 - 13:07If they function as if they're twice as big,
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13:07 - 13:09we can get 28 units in.
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13:09 - 13:11That means twice as much parking, though.
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13:11 - 13:14Parking's really expensive. It's about 70,000 dollars
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13:14 - 13:18per space to build a conventional parking spot
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13:18 - 13:19inside a building.
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13:19 - 13:22So if you can have folding and autonomy,
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13:22 - 13:25you can do that in one seventh of the space.
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13:25 - 13:27That goes down to 10,000 dollars per car,
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13:27 - 13:29just for the cost of the parking.
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13:29 - 13:33You add shared use, and you can even go further.
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13:33 - 13:36We can also integrate all kinds of advanced technology
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13:36 - 13:38through this process. There's a path to market
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13:38 - 13:42for innovative companies to bring technology into the home.
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13:42 - 13:45In this case, a project we're doing with Siemens,
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13:45 - 13:47we have sensors on all the furniture, all the infill,
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13:47 - 13:49that understands where people are and what they're doing.
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13:49 - 13:53Blue light is very efficient, so we have these tunable
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13:53 - 13:5524-bit LED lighting fixtures.
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13:55 - 14:00It recognizes where the person is, what they're doing,
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14:00 - 14:04fills out the light when necessary to full spectrum white light,
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14:04 - 14:10and saves maybe 30, 40 percent in energy consumption,
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14:10 - 14:13we think, over even conventional state-of-the-art
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14:13 - 14:16lighting systems.
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14:16 - 14:19This just shows you the data that comes from the sensors
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14:19 - 14:21that are embedded in the furniture.
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14:21 - 14:24We don't really believe in cameras to do things in homes.
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14:24 - 14:28We think these little wireless sensors are more effective.
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14:28 - 14:30We think we can also personalize sunlight.
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14:30 - 14:33That's sort of the ultimate personalization in some ways.
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14:33 - 14:36So we, we've looked at articulating mirrors of the facade
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14:36 - 14:40that can throw shafts of sunlight anywhere into the space,
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14:40 - 14:42therefore allowing you to shade most of the glass
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14:42 - 14:45on a hot day like today.
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14:45 - 14:47In this case, she picks up her phone, she can map
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14:47 - 14:52food preparation at the kitchen island to a particular
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14:52 - 14:55location of sunlight. An algorithm will keep it in that location
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14:55 - 14:58as long as she's engaged in that activity.
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14:58 - 15:03This can be combined with LED lighting as well.
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15:03 - 15:05We think workplaces should be shared.
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15:05 - 15:07I mean, this is really the workplace of the future, I think.
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15:07 - 15:09This is Starbucks, you know. (Laughter)
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15:09 - 15:11Maybe a third — And you see everybody has their back
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15:11 - 15:14to the wall and they have food and coffee down the way
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15:14 - 15:17and they're in their own little personal bubble.
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15:17 - 15:20We need shared spaces for interaction and collaboration.
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15:20 - 15:22We're not doing a very good job with that.
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15:22 - 15:25At the Cambridge Innovation Center, you can have
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15:25 - 15:28shared desks. I've spent a lot of time in Finland
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15:28 - 15:31at the design factory of Aalto University,
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15:31 - 15:34where the they have a shared shop and shared Fablab,
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15:34 - 15:35shared quiet spaces,
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15:35 - 15:37electronics spaces,
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15:37 - 15:40recreation places.
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15:40 - 15:43We think ultimately all of this stuff can come together,
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15:43 - 15:47a new model for mobility, a new model for housing,
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15:47 - 15:49a new model for how we live and work,
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15:49 - 15:52a path to market for advanced technologies,
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15:52 - 15:54but in the end the main thing we need to focus on
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15:54 - 15:57are people. Cities are all about people.
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15:57 - 15:59They're places for people.
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15:59 - 16:01There's no reason why we can't dramatically improve
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16:01 - 16:04the livability and creativity of cities like they've done
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16:04 - 16:08in Melbourne with the laneways while
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16:08 - 16:12at the same time dramatically reducing CO2 and energy.
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16:12 - 16:15It's a global imperative. We have to get this right.
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16:15 - 16:21Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city
- Speaker:
- Kent Larson
- Description:
-
How can we fit more people into cities without overcrowding? Kent Larson shows off folding cars, quick-change apartments and other innovations that could make the city of the future work a lot like a small village of the past.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:41
Csaba Lóki commented on English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Krystian Aparta commented on English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city | ||
Alice Dang edited English subtitles for Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city |
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 12/10/2015.
Csaba Lóki
Hi Krystian,
it's great that you've uploaded a completely new, better and restructured version of the English script! Unfortunately you might have overlooked the fact that the original - maybe not perfect - version have already been translated to several languages (including Hungarian). Your upload resulted in ruining these translations. They are out of sync and need to be completely restructured. I suppose you had a good reason to do that but please don't forget about others' work. Any ideas how to handle the situation?
Br.
Csaba