The year is 2040, and the urban environment has become a tale of two cities. These cities are living embodiments of two vastly different realities: each is expanding rapidly, with skyscrapers that pierce the skies, yet one is struggling and unsustainable while the other is flourishing and resilient. KONE, a leader in elevator and escalator industry, has conducted research to understand how to create urban cities that are livable for both today and future generations. Two extreme scenarios, each depicting a different path for cities, have emerged from the research: the “Gray Scenario” and the “Green Scenario”.
The “Gray Scenario” city is struggling and sprawling. Its hungry energy consumption and pollution emissions are creating a climate-unfriendly urban environment that is treeless and surprisingly hot. This has resulted in food deserts, flash floods, and social divisions between luxury condos and old, crammed tenements. Residents in the Gray Scenario city suffer from dramatic weather fluctuations, with hot seasons and cold seasons that affected the comfort of living in their city.
In contrast, the “Green Scenario” brings a low-carbon, highly efficient solution to these issues. This city is clean, walking-friendly and filled with green walls and vertical farms. The collaboration between different building types (residential and mixed-use) creates a diverse and connected community rich with local businesses, neighborhood networks, and physical mobility. The Green Scenario city embraces smart technology that is both user-friendly and affordable, making it an inclusive and ultimately better place to live.
The good news is that we can prevent the “Gray Scenario” and build a livable city for future generations. This can be done by focusing on modernizing existing buildings, as well as preserving them to represent the unique character of our cities. We need to start planning at the local community level and use anonymized data to gain insight into people’s movements and changing needs. Smart devices and digital collaborations can help make cities more efficient, while technological breakthroughs such as robots, AI and sustainable constructions can guarantee that we are doing our utmost to reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
KONE’s approach to this ideal livable city is to equip an existing building with energy-efficient elevators. This can reduce energy consumption by up to 70%, while KONE elevators today use 90% less energy than their ’90s counterparts. Installing these elevators also cuts noise and vibration, plus allows for features like smartphone elevator calls. Buildings being built in the coming decades will use lighter materials, target carbon neutrality and reduce their embodied carbon.
KONE is taking a measured and collaborative approach among its global partners in creating solutions that make flow of urban life environmentally sustainable. Led by Amy Chen, their Chief Innovation Officer, and Minna Pirkkanen, Head of Modernization Offering at KONE, the mission is to make sure that the climate-aware cities of the future are inclusive of the needs of their residents, including those with physical disabilities, and reduce the current global cities’ carbon footprints. The goal of KONE and its stakeholders is to create a future-proof city where people’s primary needs can be met on foot or on bike and make sure that the cities of our dreams become a reality.
