Worldwide experiments are being made with driverless cars.Singapore already has driverless trains. .On the MRT stations you can see plans for the future. Get out at Farrer Park (not to be confused with Farrer Road) and above you is City Square Mall. It looks much like any other modern mall. However, you can read posters inside and out telling you how the building collects and recycles water and a host of other ideas, which were innovative at the time they were inaugurated.
ERP
Electronic Road pricing.
Definitely an improvement. You don't have to keep buying payment stickers. The money you owe is deducted from a card, with automatic time of day, day of week or seasonal increases and reductions made automatically, so no hunt for machines and change or shops open and stocking coupons and no fines for getting it wrong.
Singapore's seasonal decorations for Diwali on the underground train. In the UK in England and Wales special trains run with a character dressed as Santa on mainlines and special lines, particularly steam trains. But holograms could also be added on trains, perhaps sponsored in major cities by Madame Tussauds.
MRT station Downtown Line display of vision of the future by local schoolchildren.
An exhibition on the smart city of the future at one of the stations showed a phone kiosk turned into ta miniature office where you could sit down, type into a computer and print off a document. You would have to pay, like using a business centre in a hotel. But you could even do without an office if you were constantly travelling, and use an office briefly when needed, the way we used to use public phones on a pay as you go basis.
So many people want to do their homework on cafes, write their novel over a cup of coffee, or even have a business meeting in a pub or cafe, it's time that rooms or areas were set aside, perhaps business booths, separate from others who might overhead.
Instead of restaurants banning phones, they might offer seating with phone plugs. We already have internet cafes, but they are basically internet, with a cup of coffee. Instead we could have something more like a miniature meeting room.
Cars and Vehicles
Rock stars have caravans kitted out like mobile homes combined with rehearsal rooms and offices.
?Why aren't cars and taxis set up like offices on the move.
Conferences have press rooms with refreshments, even if it's only water or coffee, and desks with computers. Tables for meetings are set up for sales to be made behind booths.
How do you expand your city? That depends on the terrain. Down to basements one and two with . underground walkways and malls sheltered from the weather. Up to skyscrapers with linkways from one to the next. Rooftop gardens. Greenery providing warmth or cooling, or soothing, or shade or even food. Parks or swimming pools in the sun with a view on rooftops.
The latest planning departments in Singapore are specifically designing satellite cities, with inputs from adults and students and children and the disabled. For example, to see how long it takes a person in a wheelchair to cross from a busy road from a car park to a shopping mall.
All over the world, all sorts of ideas are emerging and being pooled. For example:
Shanty towns being painted in rainbow colours.
Water supplies.
Unemployed Mafia type gangs and hooligans stopped from destroying business by employing them or their wives and children to work in the business.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker, trainer.
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