The Flow of Urban Life

What will the rapid spread of technology through our living and working environments mean for the architecture of the future? Will all urban builds look space-age futuristic? According to well-known architect Fernando Romero, a growing focus on sustainability means we will continue to repurpose and refurbish legacy architecture while imagining new cityscapes.

With technology advancing so rapidly, it isn’t always easy to imagine the workplace of the future. What we can imagine is that it will be an experience rather than just a destination, says workplace strategist Leeson Medhurst. What will that mean? Imagine VR headsets with gestural interfaces, team meetings in the metaverse, green screen environments and more.

Can we measure quality of life by based on city infrastructure or are there other yardsticks that people value? Urbanist Kristen Jeffers says that while there are common factors that make urban environments livable for most people, it’s important to be inclusive and to design cities with variations of “humanness” in mind.

With 55% of the world living in urban environments and that number set to grow, it’s clear that climate change will affect our cities. The good news according to climate-resistance specialist Aditya Bahadur, is that there are ways to harness technology, big data and AI to mitigate the most damaging effects of extreme events.

How does a large, sprawling hub like Mumbai ensure that more than 21 million residents can commute to work, school or for leisure? In this episode Additional Commissioner, Ashwini Bhide explains how Mumbai’s metro expansion project will ensure safe, comfortable, and efficient commuting, create opportunities for expanded economic activity and ultimately contribute to women’s participation in the workforce.

The next time you leave your house, head to the office, drop your kids off at school or go to the supermarket, ask yourself, do your surroundings help or hinder your day?

Everything in our cities has been designed by someone for someone. The question is, has it been designed for you?

Now more than ever, data and smart technology is informing the way we live, work and build. Our capacity to imagine and create better connected, more resilient future cities is rapidly improving. But what does this mean in practice? In this episode, two experts look at answers to these questions and offer unique perspectives on future iterations of the built environment:

Tessina Czerwinski, Program Director for Smart and Sustainable Cities at KONE

Greg Lindsay, futurist, journalist and senior fellow at MIT's Future Urban Collectives Lab and partner at Futuremap

Sam Hughes uncovers how the future office will transform our physical spaces, how we interact with our colleagues, and the type of work we do. We hear from Torben Østergaard, Architect and Partner at 3XN, Mahwesh Khan, Research Associate at IMD, and Etti Seppä, Business Design Expert at KONE.

Sam Hughes is joined by Anders Sörman-Nilsson, a leading futurist and the founder of the think tank Thinque, to discuss how innovations in the digital world could transform our physical spaces.

Services play a key role in making our cities pleasant, productive and healthy places to be. Innovations such as on-demand delivery robots and autonomous vehicles could help us live more sustainably while providing services that offer real value to residents. This episode explores how robots can have a positive impact on our lives.