How Data Science, Dual-Use Infrastructure and Better Planning Can Build Cities That Waste Less

Cities have a space problem.

Land is expensive. Roads consume enormous areas. Roofs sit beneath sunlight while rainwater is sent immediately into drains. Walls absorb heat. Car parks bake in the sun. Streetlights illuminate roads at night and spend much of the day standing idle.

Perhaps the problem is not simply that cities consume too much.

Perhaps cities ask too little of what they already have.

A roof should first keep a building dry. But it can also generate electricity and collect rain.

A wall should enclose a building. But it can also generate power, provide shade or support vegetation.

A streetlight should illuminate a road. But in the right location it can also carry solar generation, environmental sensors, communications equipment or, where measured wind conditions justify it, a small turbine.

A car park can store cars while a solar canopy shades them and produces electricity.

A drainage corridor can carry stormwater while functioning as planted public space and temporary flood storage.

This is the Two-Job City:

Every urban asset should perform its primary job well—and then be tested for a useful second job and possible multiple tertiary uses.

Every urban asset should perform its primary job well—and then be tested for a useful second job and possible multiple tertiary uses.

The important word is tested. The principle is not to cover cities with fashionable technology. It is to make existing urban space work harder while consuming fewer additional resources.

That requires a second idea:

data before concrete.

The future city should not simply be designed, built and defended afterwards. It should be forecast, mapped, simulated, piloted, measured and changed.

1. Plan Before Scarcity: The Model of Yusuf عليه السلام

One of the clearest examples of long-range resource planning in the Qur’an appears in the story of Yusuf عليه السلام.

Egypt faces seven productive years followed by seven severe years.

Yusuf عليه السلام does not wait for scarcity to arrive.

He uses abundance to prepare for it:

“You will plant grain for seven consecutive years, leaving in the ear whatever you will harvest, except for the little you will eat. Then after that will come seven years of great hardship which will consume whatever you have saved, except the little you will store.” — Qur’an 12:47–48. (Quran.com)

“You will plant grain for seven consecutive years, leaving in the ear whatever you will harvest, except for the little you will eat. Then after that will come seven years of great hardship which will consume whatever you have saved, except the little you will store.”

— Qur’an 12:47–48. (Quran.com)

The next verse then anticipates recovery after the crisis. Qur’an 12:47–49

This is agricultural planning, not a modern zoning code.

But the underlying logic is remarkably useful:

observe → forecast → conserve → prepare → endure → recover.

A city expecting hotter summers should not wait for heat emergencies before creating shade.

A district expecting population growth should not wait for schools and transport to become overloaded.

A flood-prone neighbourhood should not continue treating every roof, road and car park as a surface from which water must be expelled as quickly as possible.

If future electricity demand will be driven by cooling, planners should ask today whether buildings can reduce heat gain before simply installing more air conditioning.

The lesson is not that forecasts are infallible.

The better principle is:

When a future constraint is reasonably foreseeable, today’s city should leave room for it.

When a future constraint is reasonably foreseeable, today’s city should leave room for it.

That means governments should stop producing one “official future”.

What if population growth is low?

What if peak summer temperature rises?

What if rainfall becomes less frequent but more intense?

What if commuting patterns change?

What if commercial districts lose office demand but gain residential demand?

A resilient city is not one whose planners predicted everything correctly.

It is one that can continue functioning when they did not.

2. Begin With People and Protect the Public Way

Urban planning can become fascinated with objects.

But the starting layer of a city should be human need.

People need shelter, movement, safety, access,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)