A presentation about a range of utopian projects for moving about cities above and below the surface via tunnels. orbital travel, supersonic airliners and vertical take off and autonomous 'sky taxis'.
5.
The power of the section
“In the section you can tell compelling stories
which not only talk about the building, but of a
whole society”
Architect Max Gerthel
“While attention is traditionally given to the
plans of urban civilization and top [down] views
of human history, this schematic cross-section
view of the world opens a lens on the planet
as an urban projection, pattern and process of
overlapping change across different layers and
level of space... “
Processes ...isolated in plans, or divided in
conventional categories from above, can be
better understood and revealed from the side,
as being associative and integrative— often
overlapping, intertwined and entangled”
Pierre Bélanger (my emphasis)
7. But
slow
to
react
to
myriad
of
proposed/imagined/experimental/
exis0ng
volumetric
mobility
systems.
1.
Hyperloop:
Radical
0me-‐space
compression
for
kine0c
elites
12. 2. Fantasies of
subterranean
auto-tunnels
Elon Musk tweet
“Traffic is driving me nuts.
Am going to build a tunnel
boring machine and just start
digging...”
hGps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI
33. Ultimate ‘disruptors’?
More than 30 prototype
‘ski-taxi’ urban mobility
systems in development
Various technological and
engine configurations;
software systems; levels of
autonomy; financial
backing; and levels of
credibility
40. ‘Uberising’
the
elite
helicopter
in
São
Paulo:
“[Voom]
is
showing
preGy
clearly
there
is
a
need
for
urban
air
transporta0on
in
ci0es.
Even
with
a
conven0onal
helicopter
—
which
is
a
bit
more
noisy
and
higher
in
costs
than
a
CityAirbus
will
be
—
even
with
this
concept
and
the
right
approach
you
can
deliver
an
opportunity
for
ci0es.”
41.
42. Uber
Elevate
e.g.
Bell
4
Seat
Sky
Taxi:
trials
in
2020;
commercial
flights
in
‘2023’
43.
44. Trials
also
in
planned
(inevitably!
allegedly!)
In
Dubai
45. London
scenario:
Ini0ally
160
sky
taxis
and
10
ver0ports
geared
towards
allowing
kine0c
business
elites
to
bypass
congested
ground
corridors
(especially
routes
between
finance
districts
and
interna0onal
airports)
58. Questions/ Issues: 1. Political and performative
power of technophiliac/ masculinist fantasies
Fragmented, patchworks: Ultimate ‘bypass’ through ‘premium network spaces’?
Technophiliac and capsular fantasies of three-dimensional bypass and transcendence for
neoliberalisation’s techno-kinetic elite. As with ‘smart’ cities and ‘eco’ city projects,
politically constitutive without having to be built. Technocratic fantasies which work to
depoliticise, aestheticise, fetishise and technicise mobility politics
59. 2. Back to the future:
Retrofuturism and the
Blade Runner effect
60. 3. Futuristic imagineering as ‘worlding’: Overlap with global city
boosterism, branding and spectacle; elite urban vanity projects;
competitive, urban experimentation; urban plutocratisation; and political
economies of technological change and data capture...
61. 4. What of
mobility justice and critical
mobilities research?
But what of system-builders, mobility justice,
standards, cross-subsidies, labour,
technological diffusion, infrastructural
planning, state mobility policies, safety,
effects on existing labour processes and
infrastructures?
Contest the masculinist and elitist
technophilia and its depoliticising effects
Work to support social mobility innovations
which exploit undoubted potential, especially
of UAV systems, for ecologically and socially
beneficial, and ethical, innovations...
66. ‘Geography’ as a Flat Plane: ‘Geopolitics is a flat discourse. It largely
ignores the vertical dimension and tends to look across rather than to cut
through the landscape. This was the cartographic imagination. Vertical
inherited from the military and political spatialities of the modern
state” Eyal Weizman