Signals of the Future: from Banning Flights to Dining in Space
Here’s last month’s clutch of signals of the future. I spot issues that might impact on how we build and live in cities in the future. Last month I looked at France banning short-haul flights, how far we can take predictive maintenance, and why people might want to dine in space.
Train not Plane
In a world-first, France is banning domestic flights to destinations that can be reached in two-and-a-half hours by train. This will hit flights from the cities of Bordeaux, Lyon, and Nantes to the capital Paris.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, created by President Macron in 2019, had asked for the ban to be applied to flights where a train journey of under four hours was possible. Despite criticisms that the move falls short of what is needed, it is a significant and symbolic step.
Moving passengers from plane to train will certainly be important for tackling climate change and will also have an impact on cities and real estate.
Major train stations are usually sited bang in the centre of cities. Passengers will be more able to walk, cycle, hop-on public transport, or take a short taxi ride to their destination. Economic activity moving from the periphery to the city centre might help revitalise urban retail and struggling shopping streets.
This shift will also accelerate changes to stations themselves as key city-centre assets. We are already seeing stations becoming more permeable with increased ways to get in and out. Many are better integrated with transit and have approaches that make sense for the pedestrian. Choices for eating and shopping (particularly convenience) have got better. And some stations, like Madrid’s Atocha, are bringing greenery in. E-ticketing, digital wayfinding, and predictive algorithms should start to ease pressure points and reduce queueing.
Expect major stations to not only be a shop window to their city but also be fully integrated into the surrounding area with spaces to work and places to hang out.
France’s new policy to restrict domestic flights builds on a huge investment in the high-speed rail network there and across continental Europe. Change is on track. Here in the UK, however, the government halved taxes on short haul flights last month and has just told train companies to get rid of free Wifi on trains. As far as the future’s concerned, we’re travelling in the wrong direction.
Predictive Maintenance
I visited a Schneider Electric Innovation Hub at UKREiiF this week. They were most excited about ‘predictive maintenance’ — monitoring how machinery and systems are performing and when they need repairing.
Gathering data and applying analytics can save on maintenance, extend the life of costly kit, and prevent catastrophic failures. And AI analyses vast amounts of data from sensors, maintenance records, industry norms, and environmental factors, to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and anticipate maintenance needs.
It’s not just machines. Predictive maintenance is being applied to people. With data from wearables, genetic makeup, medical history, and environmental context, health professionals can discern patterns, identify anomalies, and intervene in a timely way to improve health and reduce hospitalisations.
And through ‘smart cities’, predictive maintenance is being applied much more widely on managing sewerage pipes and electricity grids, on reducing noise and improving air quality, on preventing accidents and tackling crime.
Identifying problems before they occur seems fine for machines. Anticipating the future for people or neighbourhoods — and taking ‘corrective action’ — is much more problematic and is a conversation we need to be having.
Dine in Space
Want to eat a Michelin-quality meal at the edge of space? You can now book a ticket, from French company Zephalto, to ascend 25 kilometres in a stratospheric balloon. The views of the earth and the stars, along with being wined and dined in a pressurised capsule, will set you back €120,000.
This is a signal of a number of trends: the selling of ever-more exclusive experiences; pop-up dining in unusual places; and the desire to leave the planetary problems we have produced behind.
Whilst this isn’t quite space tourism — the diners won’t experience weightlessness — the wealthy do seem very eager to go off planet. I’m not a fan of billionaires splashing millions on these vanity projects. Surely the money and innovation would be better directed solving problems on the ground?
Lots of people, however, are working towards space colonisation. NASA says: The urgency to establish humanity as a multi-planet species has been re-validated by the emergence of a worldwide pandemic, one of several reasons including both natural and man-made catastrophes…”
Will this be the real estate of the future? I hope not. These extra-terrestrial settlements would be unbearably claustrophobic. And while satellites and earth-observation can help hugely to improve how we live on — and with — our planet, there is something grubby and immoral in wanting to fly away from the mess we have created.
