Planned Cities: Metropolises from Scratch

Woven City is a planned city. In addition to the new metropolis at the foot of the Fuji-San, there are other exciting cities such as Brasilia, Bedford Park, Songdo City or Neom.

When it comes to “smart cities”, Songdo City is considered a showcase project. Foto: Istockphoto – CJNattanai

Sometimes a great idea becomes reality – other impressive planned cities over the years:

2003: Songdo City (South Korea)

When it comes to “smart cities”, Songdo City, 40 kilometers west of the capital Seoul, is considered a showcase project. Since the start of planning in 2003, a pioneer city has been built on six square kilometers of land. It attracts experts and scientists from all over the world. The special feature of Songdo City is the networking of all user data. Visitors and the approximately 70,000 inhabitants of the city are connected to a central IT system. Be it keys to ones apartment, health insurance, bank cards, or the use of public transport – everything runs via multifunctional chip cards.

Bedford Park in London has long been regarded as the protoype of garden cities and suburbs. Photo: Getty Images – Hulton Archiv

1875: Bedford Park (England)

Bedford Park in West London has long been regarded as the prototype of garden cities and suburbs. In 1875 Jonathan Thomas Carr bought 24 hectares of land and began planning aesthetic and affordable houses and green spaces. The term “garden city”, however, goes back to the model of planned urban development designed by Ebenezer Howard in England in 1898. It served as a counter-draft to the densification and uncontrolled growth of new districts on the outskirts of existing cities.

In the geographical center of the country, the new national capital Brasilia was constructed in the wilderness of Brazil over a period of around four years. Photo: IStockphoto – Rafael Serathiuk

1960: Brasília (Brazil)

In the geographical center of the country, the new national capital Brasília was constructed in the wilderness of Brazil over a period of around four years. When it was gazetted in 1960, it was considered a masterpiece of urban planning. Its creators, urban planner Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, divided the city into four sections: Living and working, culture and sport. Because of its significance for the history of architecture, the center of the city, which covers some 6,000 square kilometers, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

In Neom, the superlative city of the future is to be built. Photo: Neom

2017: Neom (Saudi-Arabia)

In Neom, the superlative city of the future is to be built where desert and mountains currently plunge into the Red Sea. With a budget of around 500 billion dollars, the Saudi royal family has been planning a new world standard on 26,000 square kilometers since 2017. The planned city, to be built by 2030, will be accessible to 40 percent of the world’s population in less than four hours by air. Among other things, new technologies, new branches of industry, healthcare, education, as well as climate and environmental protection shall be researched and developed there.

At the foot of Japan’s sacred mountain, the future town called Woven City will be built. Photo: Squint Opera

Woven City (Japan)

The car manufacturer Toyota wants to test the city life of the future with the Woven City project at the foot of the Fuji-san. The town is said to have 2,000 inhabitants at first, but later expansion is not ruled out. Star architect Bjarke Ingels worked on the construction concept for eight months with the Toyota leadership. In the city, roads are to be divided into three mobility areas. The first for fast transport, autonomous and emission-free vehicles. The second type becomes an urban promenade, the third part becomes a park with paths only for pedestrians.

DEKRA DIGITAL’s Managing Director Dr. Kerim Galal. Photo: DEKRA

Three
questions for …

DEKRA DIGITAL’s Managing Director Dr. Kerim Galal

The Woven City combines many future topics and technologies. It rethinks mobility, is fully connected, sustainable, and supports its residents with robotics and AI. How do you look at this concept from a DEKRA innovation perspective?

This concept perfectly illustrates the world in which DEKRA’s core competencies will be applied in the future. Security and safety are the glue that hold such a “smart city” together. This is why we at DEKRA are intensively engaged in precisely these topics. We leverage digitalization and trend technologies such as IoT, AI or Big Data to drive innovation – especially in the areas of cyber security, functional safety and new forms of mobility.

A smart city is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. How do you ensure that autonomous vehicles or robots are safe and not hacked?
In order to protect fully-­digitized and connected vehicles, appropriate certifications, following the UNECE WP.29 regulations, are required. This concerns cyber security management and software updates. With our “Cyber Security Hub” we are pooling these competencies within DEKRA. In this way we support automotive OEMs on their way to developing fully automated, fully digitalized and above all else safe cars.

In the Woven City, pedestrians and e-scooters share a single space. How can traffic and road safety be guaranteed here?
When cities introduce new mobility concepts, new safety standards must be developed. Our standard for micromobility, for example, is holistically structured – from the technical design through to the ultimate disposal and recycling of e-scooters. Here, we have applied existing DEKRA expertise to new business areas. In this way we guarantee that micromobility will be safe in the future, support cities, mobility providers, and help to combine different interests as a neutral partner.