10 Technologies for Accessible, Affordable Cities

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Major cities are facing major crises. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, almost one billion people with disabilities will live in cities, representing 15% of total city dwellers. With urban landscapes awash with inaccessible subways, shops, and bathrooms, the UN has declared that poor accessibility represents a major challenge for cities. At the same time, most cities around the world are struggling to provide safe, respectable,ย affordable housingย for their citizens, with rent accounting for more than 50% of some incomes. 

The World Economic Forum recently warned that โ€œa world in which only a few can afford housing is not sustainable.โ€ At a time when the future of urbanism is increasingly being defined by new technologies designed to enhance the everyday life of the user, architects and urbanists must remember that a smart city is an accessible city, and also an affordable city. As discussedย at the beginning of our monthly study on accessibility, it is important to note that a truly accessible city is one where people of all abilities, incomes, races, genders, and religions, can live and thrive in an urban environment centered on the human experience. 

This is not to suggest that technology does not have a role to play. In fact, as we are about to see, both architects and end-users are being exposed to a wide variety of smart innovations to further advance the cause of universal design, from navigating the city for a wheelchair user, to building homes in urban centers for anย affordable housingย market.

Accessibility

AccessMapย –ย Accessibility for Mobility

AccessMap. Image ยฉ AccessMap
AccessMap. Image ยฉ AccessMapMapping apps are not a new phenomenon for cities. However, in the hilly city of Seattle, where many neighborhoods have no pavements and 10% to 20% slopes, the University of Washington has developed an app allowing pedestrians with limited abilities such as wheelchair or crutches to map accessible routes.ย AccessMapย can be programmed to avoid steep inclines, and instead seek even terrain with crossings, to the userโ€™s preference.

Wheelmapย – Crowdsourced Accessibility

Wheelmap uses crowdsourced information to rate accessible areas of cities. Image ยฉ Brokenlifts.orgLicensed under CC BY 2.0
Wheelmap uses crowdsourced information to rate accessible areas of cities. Image ยฉ Brokenlifts.orgLicensed under CC BY 2.0Where AccessMap focuses on Seattle, developed and maintained by a dedicated team,ย Wheelmaptakes the same principle and creates a worldwide, open-source platform for wheelchair accessibility. The map works similar to Wikipedia, where anybody can contribute and mark public spaces according to criteria of Green (fully accessible), Yellow (partly accessible), and Red (not accessible). Using OpenStreetMap as a base, the platform shows 157 types of places, and is available in 25 languages. The service is available as a web application, and for smartphones as an app.

BlindSquareย –ย Accessibilityย for the Visually Impaired

While AccessMap and Wheelmap aim to make cities accessible to those with mobility issues,ย BlindSquareย seeks to accomplish the same goal for the visually-impaired. The app uses GPS to locate users, and gathers information about their surroundings. Activated through voice commands, the app helps the blind and visually-impaired to navigate cities, find cafes, and can also be tailored for public transport to highlight next stops and street crossings.

Reading Madridย – Accessible Signage

Reading Madrid. Image ยฉ Avanti Avanti Studio & Design for All Foundation
Reading Madrid. Image ยฉ Avanti Avanti Studio & Design for All Foundation
 

Cities across the world are embracing accessible signage, with initiatives such as Legible London, WalkNYC, and Rio on Foot. Furthering this trend isย Reading Madrid, a combined effort by Applied Wayfinding and local Spanish firmsย Paisaje Transversalย (urban strategy),ย Avanti Avanti Studioย (Design for All),ย Urban Networks, andย Paralelo 39ย (urban designers and architects), under the guidance of Dimas Garcรญa. The project aims to improve legibility, safety, and autonomy in cities through a system of wayfinding cubes, and strategically-placed interactive fixtures. Read more from our in-depth analysisย here.

Stretch|Colorย –ย Accessibilityย for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Stretch/Color. Image ยฉ Eric Bronson/Michigan Photography
Stretch/Color. Image ยฉ Eric Bronson/Michigan Photography
 

Architect and professor Sean Ahlquist, along with MSU playwright Dionne Oโ€™Dell, has createdย a sensory theater experienceย for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) challenges, designed to enhance the ability of those with ASD to interact with the world around them. Emerging from an initial 2D project titled Stretch|Color, the latest adaption features a 3D developed structure serving as a focal point for a play written by Oโ€™Dell. The creators believe it holds new possibilities in the realm of sensory performance, enhancing the user’s experience of schools, museums, and public places throughout cities. Read our article on the projectย here.

Affordability

PRISMย – Housebuilding App

Bryden Wood,ย Cast, and theย Mayor of Londonย have launched a newย appย to speed up the capitalโ€™s homebuilding. The freely-available app, titled PRISM, is aimed at the design and construction of high-quality, factory-built homes to address the current demand of 50,000+ houses per year. London will be the first city in the world to make use of a freely-available app of this kind, sharing precision housing knowledge and leveraging technology to revolutionize the design process. The designers believe that making the app opensource will encourage greater collaboration, and will allowย this innovation to be used and further developed by the global community. Read more about the technology from our previous articleย here.

Vulcanย – 3D Printed Housing

3D printingย offers tremendous economic and efficiency savings for the future of housing in cities. ICON, a construction company based in Austin, Texas, has recently partnered with New Story, a non-profit focusing on housing, toย create a 3D printer that can build houses for $4000. The printer, called the Vulcan, is capable of printing a 650sqft, single-story home out of cement in 12-24 hours. Learn more about the projectย here, or read our in-depth analysis in 3D printing as a solution to affordability in citiesย here.

IKEA’s Urban Village Projectย – Prefabricated Housing

Infill Village Europe. Image ยฉ EFFEKT Architects for SPACE10
Infill Village Europe. Image ยฉ EFFEKT Architects for SPACE10
 

Known for simple, well-designed, flat-pack furniture,ย IKEAย is proposing expanding their DIY-model to a much larger scale: entire city centers. Democratic Design Days is an annual event whereย IKEAintroduces its upcoming brands and collaborations, this year featuringย The Urban Village Project, a collaboration betweenย SPACE10ย andย EFFEKTย Architects. With an overarching goal of improving our quality of life,ย The Urban Village Projectย includes a multi-faceted approach. Shared living communities provide a variety of options for different types of families and living situations: from a single person, to a group of roommates, to multi-generational families, the housing is designed to be adaptable within a modular building system. Learn more from our article on the projectย here.

iBuildย – Empowering Self-Builders

iBuild allows citizens to take control of the building process. Image ยฉ iBuild
iBuild allows citizens to take control of the building process. Image ยฉ iBuildiBuild is a citizen-centric app that facilitates the home self-construction process.ย Highlighted by the World Bankย as a potential solution toย affordable housingย in emerging countries such as Indonesia, the technology sources contractors to get quotes for projects, purchase materials, and track the progress of construction projects. The goal of the app is to empower citizens to take control of the construction process, improve transparency, and collect data to inform policymaking.

IBM Blockchainย – Decentralized Building

Blockchain has the potential to create decentralized, cost-effective ways of exchanging land and property. Image ยฉ Pushish Images / Shutterstock
Blockchain has the potential to create decentralized, cost-effective ways of exchanging land and property. Image ยฉ Pushish Images / ShutterstockAlso identified by the World Bankย as a disruptive technology with the potential to address housing affordability, Blockchain has been touted as the future of business. A secure, transparent, efficient digital ledger has the potential to streamline the land titling process, and provide a tamper-proof method of documentation for the transfer of land. With almost 20% of urban slum dwellers having no formal tenure on their homes and no way for finance for home improvement, Blockchain offers the potential for networks of community workers to survey and map land/property ownership in a transparent, decentralized, cost-effective way.

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This article was first published in Arch Daily and is republished with permission.

This article uses information sourced from the United Nations, The World Economic Forum, The World Bank, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Medium.

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