Glocal Insights 7 | Urban Innovation: Ecology, Mobility&Farming

Ecology, mobility, agriculture... “Urban Innovation” transforms the mode of production and circulation in various fields, and also changes and creates social relations. On April 20th at Mix-place in Shanghai, the 7th panel of UC "Glocal Insights Panel Series" were held around this subject. The panel was strongly assisted and supported by Utrecht University and the SSU Foundation in the Netherlands. Guests, students and audiences held lively discussions on vertical cities, bike sharing, taxi hailing, urban farming, etc. we also make acknowledgement to NYU Shanghai, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Shanghai Clover Nature School and Yang Design for their intellectual support.

Bike sharing: hype or hope?

Ir.Anoud van Waes

innovation researcher and PhD Candidate at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development in Utrecht University

Bike sharing is an emerging global phenomenon that is rapidly growing in cities worldwide. More and more cities adopt bike sharing systems seeking to improve accessibility, equality, health, liveability, and reduced CO2-emissions.

Four distinct bike sharing business models can be identified and be mapped along two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes between return trips versus single trips. “Two-way” bike sharing systems require the user to return back to the location where it has been picked up, while “one-way” systems allow users to pick and drop the bike at different locations. The second dimension along which bike sharing can be distinguished concerns parking. In some systems, it is compulsory to park the bike in a designated station, while in the more innovative free-floating systems, a shared bike can be parked like any other private bike.

The recent boom in bike sharing is caused by a new generation of bike sharing systems which does not require physical docking-station infrastructure like its predecessor models. These one-way freef-floating models are enabled by the combination of digital locks, GPS and smartphone apps. Mobike and Ofo are example companies that operate in Chinese cities and also expand overseas to Europe and North America.

Despite potential benefits of this new model of bike sharing, they also bring up new challenges. Cities such as Shanghai and Amsterdam face problems related to, for example, parking and regulation. There are many different providers of free-floating bike sharing systems, all of which try to quickly capture a large new market. Consequently, they enter the market with a large number of bikes, which has led to an oversupply of bikes in many cities. For example, in Chinese cities the widespread diffusion of free-floating bikes led to unused bikes piling up at central locations such as train or metro stops, clogging up public space.

As bike-parking is often not strictly regulated, free-floating bike sharing systems can lead to parking capacity issues. In densely built city centers where public space is scarce this has a large impact, which has led to a (temporary) ban in some cities (such as Amsterdam and San Francisco). In response, cities are implementing different policies to regulate bike sharing and control the spatial impact. For example: urban authorities can allow a maximum number of bikes parked in certain geographical areas and establish a mandatory minimum use per bike per day. Geo-fencing is a technology that sets virtual boundaries around areas where uses are allowed to park.

Under the right conditions new bike sharing models can contribute to resilient cities. To learn about these conditions, learning by doing is necessary. The Smart Cycling Futures project facilitates experimentation and learning from bike sharing innovations in practice in so-called urban living labs. A living lab is an urban area where multiple actors (governments, practitioners, entrepreneurs) collaborate and experiment with innovation to learn about the use, requirements, policies and impact. Such a collaboration requires data-sharing. In this way, governments can co-create the future of bike sharing.

Vertical Cities - a Sustainable Utopia?

Joana Kleine Jäger 

Utrecht University - MSc Sustainable Business and Innovation

By 2050, three-quarters of the world’s population will live in urban environments, which are around 6.5 billion people. At the same time, space for living is limited, which will necessarily lead to social, economic, and environment issues.

For counteracting these issues and provide livable space for everyone while preserving natural land, a sustainable development of cities, especially megacities, is inevitable. Vertical Cities, a relatively new concept of building entire cities in a very tall and complex manner and integrating various functions and services, present a way of creating more sustainable cities.

This concept presents a holistic solution and is particularly functional as one city should be located in one single building, including hotels, working space, and even farming. Still, so far it is only an idea and there is not a single real vertical city build. Nevertheless, some buildings come close to this idea. 

Architect Kenneth King is the main initiator and supporter of the Vertical City concept. Following him, especially in China vertical cities are an important concept due to heavy pollution, congestions, and degradation. Main arguments are a growing population and environmental destruction. The advantage of vertical cities is that they only occupy 1.5% of the land worldwide, whereas the remaining part can be used for open space, growing food, and places for recreation. Also, energy can be saved and a growing population be supported. 

As already outlined, there are a few buildings coming close to a Vertical City, such as the Shanghai Tower. This tower contains of a core vertical transportation system and is surrounded by floors with parks and sky lobbies.

Another building is designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and is based in Singapore. Here, living and social spaces should be combined with nature via a nine km long green belt surrounding those complex.

„De Rotterdam“, which was also designed by OMA, consists of three interconnected, tall, glass towers. Those are used for different purposes, such as a hotel, offices, conference facilities, shops, restaurants, apartments and cafes.

Another tower, which is not yet built, is an idea of the German architect Frank Jendrusch. He aims to build the Edison Tower with 296 floors in Hamburg. These kind of projects are called TOWERPLANTS and have an automatic energy supply, an own infrastructure, and include cable free elevators.

As a real vertical city is not yet existent, it is interesting to examine whether they support a sustainable development. As orientation I used the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11, addressing sustainable cities and communities. This goal aims to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable".

Based on that, I developed 5 main categories of importance for the sustainability of vertical cities. Firstly, sustainable transportation includes the reduction of the use of fossil fuel and should be less dependent on cars. As Vertical cities are constructed densely, no long commuting is required. Inside the cities, a walk of maximum 15 minutes brings you from on to the other end of the building. External transportation, e.g. to the next vertical city, parks, or other destinations, relies on mass transit without CO2 emissions. Vehicles and deliveries should only take place at the lower levels, the rest should be operated by elevators. Overall, the mode of transportation of vertical cities can lead to enormous emission savings while being safe, affordable, and accessible. 

The second challenge identified is Integration and participation. Vertical city can counteract problems such as the growing income and public service gaps between rural and urban areas. Due to efficient concentration, the access to public services can be improved. For instance, Vertical cities show an efficient concentration of jobs, services, and housing. Moreover, the idea of a participatory government system is included. On the other side, when many diverse people live in a dense space, either segregation between different cities can occur, or alternatively it can come to cultural clashes. Furthermore, there is the possibility of people feeling claustrophobic in those towers, where only a few excuses to leave them exist. 

Thirdly, Cultural and Natural Heritage need to be considered. Due to the usage of zoning into a core, buffer, and development zone, natural heritage can be preserved and environmental protection enhanced while people can access green spaces. In contrast, regarding cultural heritage, when solely having vertical cities, a lot of culture might get lost, such as historical cities or traditions - a real downside of the concept. 

Moreover, looking at Disasters and Vulnerable Situations, vertical cities aim to reduce these risks. They are advantageous for a range of disasters, such as intense rainfall, sea-level rise, droughts, or heatwaves. On the other side, thinking about fires, storms, or earthquakes, the concept of vertical cities need to be further improved to be safe.

Lastly, Environmental Influences need to be considered. In a sustainable city, good air and water quality as well as a good waste management system is crucial. Vertical cities can minimize energy losses and decrease energy usage with help of a central energy system. Also, the air can be purified by indoor plantings and thus pollution reduced. Still, there is a risk of lacking inside air circulation.

Additionally, vertical cities claim to be fully self-sufficient and be able to integrate vertical farming. Here, the problem occurs that vertical farming is not yet economical viable on the scale. Also, it can be assumed that individual cities are to a certain extent always dependent on resources and food production from other regions.

Overall, vertical cities are presented as holistic approach towards a sustainable city development. The concept definitely shows some improvements, but it can be questioned if developing vertically instead of horizontally is the one solution for a sustainable urban development. I think more importantly, the mindset and general behavior, which is partly also integrated into the vertical city concepts, need to be tackled. 

New urban mobility phenomenon and impacts in China- some observations of bike sharing and taxi hailing

     Dr Chia-Lin Chen

     Lecturer at Department of Urban Planning and Design, XJLTU.

Two innovative products for mobility, bike sharing and online taxi-hailing, have brought about urban mobility phenomenon in Chinese cities, which are initially expected to fill in the gap of traditional public transport provision with more diverse choices for door-to-door journeys. The novelty of Chinese bike-sharing lies in its dockless and cashless business models which revolutionized the conventional dock-based bike sharing systems provided largely by local municipalities. Similarly, new online taxi-hailing in China is fledging with wide-ranging service offering and various business opportunities for peer-to-peer ride sharing which was initially pioneered by Uber. With some latest figures and observations, trends and issues are discussed to explore what impacts generated for Chinese cities and the society.

Bike-sharing

By 2018, a total number of deployed shared bikes over China has reached 20 million. It appears to have remarkable impacts on transport mode share. Since the inception of shared bikes, car usage has dropped especially in populated areas within big cities, while cycling has doubled its market share (Mobike, 2017). Although transportation service is increasingly personalized, public transport service catchment has therefore expanded, as shared bikes flexibly feeder into public transport interchanges such as metro, bus and rail stations.

However, due to a plethora of bike providers and insufficient management, a number of alarming issues emerge. Bike siltation and temporal mismatch generate huge waste of resources and environmental impacts. Disorderly parking hinders ground transportation especially pedestrian movement and negatively affects the streetscape and walkability. Moreover, bikes are found to be occupied immorally under inadequate supervision and tracking. Furthermore, it is also reported that the inferior quality of the newly deployed bikes is prone to endanger life. A common fallout is found that users could be continuously charged during technical crashes.

Online taxi hailing

China is the first country that legitimized online taxi-hailing in 2016. The leading company, “didi”, has expanded its service area into around 60 cities across China. Didi develops its integrated service among multiple travel modes and personalizes services to meet diverse demands. Nowadays, over 1.3 billion persons have used “pinche” (carpool) service provided by “didi”.

Road transportation seems to be more efficient due to a quicker response to requests, particularly in central areas of big cities where traditional taxi service is always in shortage. The range of services has diversified. For example, “shunfengche”(pick-up service along the journey) has become a popular commuting choice as people are more receptive to ride-sharing than before. Besides, platform operation prevents customers from bargaining, normalizing the relationship between private taxi drivers and customers. Finally, the popularity of online taxi door-to-door service results in more competitors (such as “Shenzhou”, “Dida”, “Yidao”, “Luyoutongxing”, “Aipingche”, “Weiweipingche”, “Yihaozhuanche”) marching into the market, which creates diversified choices for users and thus alleviates the previously widened gap between supply and demand to some extent. Whereas the fierce business competition through short-term subsidies once generated an unrealistic perception that online taxi hailing is a high-income job, which attracted more private cars join the market and reversely may led to more congestions on road.    

Although online taxi-hailing has been popular, a recent study shows that online taxi-hailing only accounted for 3% of the overall daily travel mode share in Shanghai in 2017, which indicates that there is a danger to overly draw on online taxi-hailing big data to interpret the spatial-economic impacts of Chinese cities. More mixed methods and diverse sources would be required. Likewise, whether online taxi-hailing could have impacts on congestion alleviation needs further research, as “shunfengche” may decrease private car usage while “zhuanche”(premier car) induces more drivers. Effective mechanisms and regulations for dealing with violations caused by those private taxi drivers are lacking. Further, new restriction on migrant drivers in big cities causes serious job losses for didi drivers especially in Shanghai where more than 90% of didi drivers are not local and reflects a long-standing issue of status (Hukou) discrimination in China. Another issue is safety e.g. sexual harassment. A recent incident from didi shows that women become the vulnerable group of unregulated and unsupervised system of online taxi-hailing.

These latest practices have shown that private-led innovative business models have significantly led to much more flexible personal travel patterns，while whether all lead to a more sustainable future has been widely criticized and requires serious debates and examinations. Notably, the conflicts between the maximized personal freedom and negative externalities (worsened public space and more road congestion) loom large. The notion of urban innovation should be understood and implemented within a comprehensive framework. These innovative business models could not sustain without counterpart innovativeness in various fields such as policy, institution, management, governance to ensure a sustainable, fair, and high-quality service. Multi-faceted communication and coordination is important to shape mutual trust between users, drivers, operators, and the government. The key to mobility transformation should go beyond individual modes and their market shares to look for a sustainable travel suitable for all ages either rich or poor, a good demand-supply balance of provision, and an enjoyable built environment.

Shanghai Community Garden in Action

Chen Yatong

     Clover Nature School Assistant Director, Community Operations Officer

The concept of community garden is from Europe and North America, which can date back to19th century. in china, it started after 2008. In shanghai, our organization developed the first community garden in an open city block. Now we have about 30 gardens in Shanghai. Our goal is to build 2040 community gardens by the year of 2040. We see the functions on the community garden, mean to connect people together, educating children about how plants are been grown, how foods were produced. Our founder is a faculty in Tongji University, Liu Yuelai, He teaches landscape architecture. Most of my colleague, 25 of them are landscaping architecture. But they work for the NPO, making much less money, because they are idealists.

Our first community garden calls ZhongChengZhiGu Railway Garden. It was a railway track space before. We built a fruit forest there because of its large scale. Compared to our gardens which locate in urban center, this is less humanly impacted. People can grow lots of different foods, crops, vegatables. They can share their produces, we hold many classes, professional workshops there. We held the first permaculture training course of Shanghai in 2016 in this garden.

Knowledge & innovation community garden was developed on a construction junkyard. It wasn't located in the community, The developer was not happy with junkyard, how it look, impacts the neighbors. So they found us, we helped to design and operate that space, so it turned into a community garden, with some square garden farm, open spaces, some spots for citizens to develop their own gardens. They also had an indoor space where people can hold workshops, seminars, etc. Nowadays, everything is open for guests to sit there and be in nature, the residents nearby also founded some ping-pong table. We have a sandbox, they have chunk land, they just want to be in nature all the time. We have volunteers there to tend the gardens. So it's working well in that space.

Most of our gardens are located in old neihgborhood,with 20-30 years history. What we need in this process is that, from the design stage, to the actual building stage, we invited the neighbors , especially by children and their parents to participate. Because in Europe and North America, you probably have chances to make stuff of your own hand, whether in school or home. But in China, you don't have so much opportunity to do similar stuff. Community gardens provide us opportunity where you can handcraft, project and grow your own food. It's a very good experience for residents.

Some gardens they have more garden boxes in different shapes, some gardens are not limited to the green spaces. We also help to recreate their public space including passway. We would ask people's demand that they need in their space, maybe some hangers actually in set of planting space.

This one in ZhengtongXinyuan, what we did was a whole package. We help them to develop their garden, with different facilities including rain capture facility, kids make together, they learn how to clean the water, we turned their building space around as well. We also help them to add some design pictures on each floor, neighbors can bring their decoration items to decorate their floor spaces.

In this garden, it's on the roof, before the transformation it was just plane concrete space. After this project we started to develop more and more roof community gardens, we can stay have a unique function, so people can not only to grow stuff there, but also have parties, have community events.

This project is located in Anshan Sancun, near Tongji University. First project we invited the residents to construct every tiny feature of this garden. For example, this pond there cost some money , at the first try the residents were not skilled enough, so after the construction, there was a leakage water. We have to redo it and purchase materials again, but we think it's worth, in the future we just have to read develop hour as schedule, our teaching module should be more carefully, so people can know to do this stuff correctly.

This project is unique in its own way. The previous projects were paid by the government, This one is paid by the residents themselves, they co-founded a some small pocket of money, they found us, want to transform this very small space, just on the walkway. Because there are branches of people love to plant, but they don't know to make it beautiful, so they want us to help them. So we did this tiny project. All the little things are built on their own. After been finished, they wrote us thanks letter, it was the first thank letter we received, to us it's most treasure gift from our client. I think that's the reason why we want to do more this type of thing.

This garden you can see beautiful area, It represent some challenges we face in community garden. We have to put fences around, otherwise sometimes people will steal plants around the yard. Originally we want to be more open space, but now we have to fence more carefully, have more management. In the first community garden we countered some stealing behavior. We put up posters, we wrote there, if you want to take the plant home, don't worry, we'll teach you to plant your own part, and give you some seeds, provide you some pots, don't steal it out of garden. Later on, was less of this behavior. It's a working process.

In the future, we are not be limited to community garden. We help farmers market as well, as a way to connect people, to educate children how to sell that. During our workshop, we always teach people to grow stuff more environmental friendly, so we don't use any chemical fertilizers exercise in garden. Also we teach people how to make a composed and permanent using the kitchen left overs. All these works are to to retrieve the forgotten vitality of urban land in "urban permaculture".

Q & A 

Q: What’s the difference between Shanghai and other places (eg.: Europe) in urban innovative practices?

Harry: Basically everything is different: the scale, the speed, the process and the quality. For example, building a skyscraper may take 2 years in Shanghai but over 5 years in the Netherlands. The only common thing is you build for people and make it sustainable and pleasant to live.

Chai-Lin: I would like to add more about differences in speed from the perspective of urban transportation. In Europe, there were trains and then cars. It allowed a process of adaptation. But in China, in a relatively short time, they just come all together: high-speed trains, cars, bikes and etc. For example, bikes are good, but too many bikes are against walkability. So the critical problem in China is, with all innovative elements competing with each other, to find the balance.

Q: How to combine the three perspectives (theoretical, technological and social) in urban innovation based on your experience?

Gabriele: The bottom up approach they are using is the starting point of urban innovative practices. Here I want to mention another trend “smart city”, which is still abstract for most citizens as it was a topic originally brought up by technology companies. After years of keeping citizens out, now finally there are some projects from bottom up to develop “smart cities”. So the “bottom-up” element should be the base of all urban innovative practices, whether they are low-tech or high-tech.

Chai-Lin: The three cases of the different perspectives are in fact naturally merged and connected. Vertical city makes space compact instead sprawl. Then some open space will be released and used in a diversified way: Clover Community’s approach personalized each garden with contributions from the residents. With so many different types of space, how we can connect them? There comes the mobility case to make each space accessible.

Q: How to combine top-down and bottom-up approaches?

Gabriele: The two approaches are not necessarily conflicting to each other. Take “smart city” as an example again, in US, some governments educate citizen on concepts including “data”, “privacy” and etc. and then ask them for advice. Some small-scale pilot projects will be built based on that.

Event planned by Wilda Xie, Ao Song; Recorded by Ao Song, Wilda Xie; Translated by Ao Song, Wilda Xie; Image Source from Arnoud, Joana, Chia-Lin Chen, Yatong Chen; Photographed by Ao Song; Edited by Han Tu.

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