Urban Space with Instant and Ubiquitous Access Technologies

doi:10.4236/jtts.2011.13005

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Journal of Transportation Technologies, 2011, 1, 31-33

doi:10.4236/jtts.2011.13005 Published Online July 2011 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jtts)

Urban Space with Instant and Ubiquitous Access

Technologiesi

Critical Question: How Could Emerging Ubiquitous Access Technologies Help us to Achieve a

Sustainable Global Urban System in a Ubiquitous Technology Space?

Tschangho John Kim

University of Il l i nois at Urbana-C ha mpaign, Champaign, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

Received April 9, 2011; revised May 7, 2011; accepted May 16, 201 1

Abstract

According to the United Nations, the world will need to build new cities and/or expand existing cities to ac-

commodate about 1.6 billion additional urban residents by 2030. This rapid trend is the result of many com-

plex socio-economic and political factors, and poses unprecedented challenges to the functioning of cities

and the quality of life for urban dwellers. The resources needed for accommodating new urban dwellers will

be enormous. Can emerging information, communication and ubiquitous access technologies help us to

achieve a sustainable global urban system in a ubiquitous technology space, mitigating the consumption of

scarce resources?

Keywords: Ubiquito us Access Technology, Ubiquitous Technology Space, Sustainable Global Cities, Future

Infrastructure

1. Introduction

The ability of individuals to interact and participate in

activities relies on location information and access to it.

As interactions among individuals become more com-

plex as in urban areas, there has been and will be ever

growing need for location and access information. These

information will play vital roles in providing effective

collaboration for personal and social productivity, and

ultimately affect the socio-economic and behavioral pat-

terns in an urban area.

A plethora of information and communication tech-

nologies (ICTs) are available, and alternative new tech-

nologies are emerging. Ubiquitous access technologies

are relatively new sets of concepts, practices, and stan-

dards. The emergence of the technologies need to be

understood within a broader context of both paradigm

changes in computing technologies—from centralized to

distributed, mobile, and ubiquitous computing—and the

advancement of ICTs including ubiquitous geographic

information (UBGI), radio-frequency id entification (RFID),

location-based services (LBS), global positioning sys-

tems (GPS) and sensing technologies.

The advancement of ICTs in last decades brought a

negative impact on society, the digital divide. Before the

division, most people would share much of the same

information. But now people without access to ICTs can

be isolated living in non-intersecting worlds with distinct

sets of socio-economic patterns. Ubiquitous access tech-

nologies will positively impact society on a large scale if

it becomes pervasive, by allowing more people in more

places to have access to more powerful tools. These tech-

nologies could motivate people to interact with one an-

other and digital apartheid typically segregating space

and places could be integrated.

The problems caused by greater dispersal of urban ac-

tivities, which have led to increased distances from home

to jobs, shops, schools and leisure facilities, can be miti-

gated by pervasive use of ubiquitous access technologies.

Congestion caused urban Americans to travel 4.2 billion

hours more and to purchase an extra 2.9 billion gallons

of fuel for a congestion cost of $78 billion in 2005. In

addition to this cost in time and money, traffic that is

slowed by congestion causes a great deal of pollution.

These emissions kill 30,000 people each year1 in the

U.S., and car collisions kill an additional 40,000 in 2007.

1http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac.html [Accessed on October

5, 2010]

32 T. J. KIM

2. Foreseeable Scenarios

Pervasive use of these technologies could save resources

in the forthcoming decades of global urbanization. By

2010, more than half th e world’ s populatio n live in urban

areas and the world population will reach 8.2 billion by

2030 with more than 60 percent of this total expected to

live in urban areas. This means it is necessary to build

new cities over the next 25 years, or to expand the ex ist-

ing metropolitan areas to become megacities to accom-

modate 1.65 billion additional urban residents. This rapid

trend are the result of many complex economic, social,

demographic, and political factors and pose unprece-

dented challenges to the functioning of cities and the

quality of life for urban dwellers. The resources needed

for accommodating new urban dwellers will be enor-

mous. An important question is can an urban area be

sustainable?

The full deployment of ubiquitous access technologies,

coupled with other ICTs, would reduce energy consump-

tion, and would decrease particulate emissions and con-

gestion in cities by finding and providing an optimized

path between origins and destinations, through delivering

and receiving such path information services wirelessly,

thus mitigating unnecessary travel. These behavioral

changes can also reduce the side effects of travel such as

greenhouse gases, accidents, and superfluous transporta-

tion infrastructure. The advancement of mobile and sta-

ble sensing and access technologies, along with new

widespread economic activities generated and governed

by information networks, provide scientists and engi-

neers with powerful tools for preparing and supporting

innovative urban strategies that promote sustainability

and informed decision-making. These promise increased

convenience, awareness, transparency, and access to in-

formation, as well as social opportunities that break with

traditional power structures yet reduce the consumption

of scarce resources by receiving and delivering services

anywhere at any time in a ubiquitous technology space.

3. Challenges

Scientists and engineers, and particularly urban planners

and geographers, have been searching for ways to dra-

matically transform the way the urban environment is

designed, managed, and run. As policy for urban man-

agement moves from a centralized, top-down approach

to a decentralized and bottom-up perspective, our con-

ception of urban systems needs to be changed [1]. The

instant and ubiquitous access technologies could greatly

increase the ability of scientists to create transformative

changes in the consumption of scarce urban resources

and energy use to reduce pollution with minimum social

costs. Defining urban sustainability as acceptable levels

of social costs associated with the daily activities and

physical movements of people and goods, then the key

social costs that burden the economy at large are related

to the use and misuse of scarce urban land, the decay of

environmental quality, traffic accidents, and traffic con-

gestion. Instant and ubiquitous access technologies could

be key in helping us to achieve a sustainable global ur-

ban system in a ubiquitous techno logy space.

Advances in science and technology, particularly in

the past century, have significantly contributed to the

evolution of cities and welfare of citizens [2]. In recent

decades, many important new discoveries spearheaded

by evolution of ICTs have contributed enhancing the

quality of life for millions of individuals. However, the

potential for science and technology to ameliorate or

solve the problems of the world's multiplying cities has

not been realized. A much broader and interdisciplinary

research is needed on how the range of existing techno-

logical and scientific research findings can be translated

into actions at the national, regional and local leve ls.

The main research agenda for future urban settlements

is to conserve scarce resources by utilizing the ubiqui-

tous access and the emergence of pervasive ICTs and to

identify ways for existing cities to grow in a more sus-

tainable and intelligent manner. The rapid convergence

of ubiquitous and cloud computing technologies, and

ICTs is raising the possibility of a dramatic transforma-

tion in the way we perceive and move about the urban

environment, and how we interact with each other in

urban spaces. Facing the following paradigm shifts from

the traditional urban space to the ubiquitous technology

space would be challenging tasks for scientists and engi-

neers:

 From street-oriented to information-oriented,

 From economy of scale to economy of scope,

 From centralized information to distributed infor-

mation,

 From standardization to customization,

 From efficiency-oriented to quality-oriented,

 From regularity to flexibility, and

 From distance-oriented to time-oriented.

4. Unanswered Questions

Toward answering the underlying critical question of

how could emerging ubiquitous access technologies help

us to achieve a sustainable global urban system in a ubiq-

uitous technology space, a host of challenging questions

should be answered. Examples of such questions are:

1 Would the instant and ubiquitous access technolo-

gies and other ICTs become centripetal or centrifugal

forces that affect the shape of urban areas?

T. J. KIM

2 Will the ubiquitous technologies change research

domain for human settlements, particularly in urban ar-

eas, and if so how?

3 Will the scarce urban resources be saved, and if so,

how much?

4 What will be changes in individual behaviors and

what will be implication of such changes on collective

behavior in urban areas?

5 What would be implications to the pub lic policy?

6 Will the ubiquitous access technologies enhance the

function of city or eliminate face-to-face interactions and

make cities obsolete?

7 Will ubiquitous access technologies help with re-

duction of the use fossil oil and enhance the environment,

and if so, how much?

5. Capacity Building

The improvement of existing cities, as well as planning

for future urban settlements, needs to become a new pri-

ority discipline in which expertise is developed by inter-

disciplinary collaborations among a wide range of disci-

plines, including the physical sciences, urban planning,

engineering, human health, ecology, economics, geog-

raphy, architecture, sociology, po litical science and com-

puter science. This part of the white paper is heavily

drawn from the statement by seventy-two of the World's

Scientific Academies2.

Cross-disciplinary Education and Training: The nature

and complexity of challenges of urban settlements in-

herently require integrated efforts among education, re-

search, and operational institutions. A new set of cross-

disciplinary curricula will educate a cadre of future so-

cial scientists, engineers and urban planners. Inter-disci-

plinary research is necessary not only to produce new

2Science and Technology and the Future of Cities, A Statement by

Seventy-Two of the World’s Scientific Academies, June 1996, from

http://www.interacademies.net/?id=3551 [Accessed on October 5, 2010].

knowledge, but to build the capacity to assess, absorb,

and use technology and experien ce developed elsewhere.

Non-technological Institutional Elements: A new set

of challenging non-technical issues includes legal frame

works, including property ownership and the protection

of intellectual property, effective and flexible standards,

institutions for efficient mobilization of capital resources,

tax and regulatory structures which are conducive to in-

novative solutions to urban challenges.

International Cooperation: The sustainability of cities

in the decades to co me requires a better understand ing of

the complex interactions among environmental, eco-

nomic, political, social and cultural factors at local, re-

gional, and global levels. Global urban problems cannot

be solved in isolation. Developing and sharing informa-

tion and technologies will be necessary since innovative

solutions developed in one city can be applied to other

cities. International assistance should be provided for

capacity building of local scientific and technological

expertise. The worldwide scientific community should

work together and with political and managerial decision

makers to identify and implement innovative solutions

for meeting the challenges faced by the rapid global ur-

banization trend and the emerging ubiquitous access and

other related technologies.

6. References

[1] Michael Batty, “Cities and Complexity,” The MIT Press,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005.

[2] Tschangho John Kim, Matthew Claus, Joseph S. Rank

and Yu Xiao, “Technology and Cities: Processes of

Technology-Land Substitution in the 20th Century,”

Journal of Urban Technology, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2009, pp.

63-88.

[3] Harvey J. Miller, “Societies and Cities in the Age of In-

stant Access,” Springer, Berlin, 2007.

iThis is a revised version of a white paper submitted to the National

Science Foundation as a possible future research for 2020 in the Social,

Behavioral and Econom ic Sciences. All other white papers submitted to

NSF in 2010 can be seen in http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/all.cfm.