Time to play catch-up
Jay Elwes
If cities can blend new technology into their infrastructure, the potential rewards are vast. Seema Malhotra, above, gives some examples of the innovations adopted by Barcelona to reduce waste. Their simplicity makes them all the more appealing.
What these examples show is that technological complexity is not always the issue—Barcelona’s streetlights brighten when a motion sensor detects movement. The motion sensor is hardly a new invention: this is the clever re-purposing of existing technology.
Other technologies are new twists on an old form, and these will be much more disruptive— the electric car, for example. Their uptake will pose huge challenges and as Iain Stewart says, the tendrils of that problem extend far and wide: who will install the electric car infrastructure? And further ahead, if vehicles become self-driving, how will the enormous data flows be managed? And what about driving abroad—will there be global standards? And then there’s insurance: if your autonomous car crashes into mine, whose fault will it be?