future cities

The concept of the studio this week was sustainable futures, and we were asked to look at our future scenario and explore what sustainable issues would be faced. Looking at the idea of taxes on vehicles in the city reducing traffic, as a group we first looked at how this would happen, and how it would be implemented. We identified that cars would not instantly be removed from the city, and that to ensure lesser public backlash, the government would need to do this in stages. The first stage would naturally be taxes on larger vehicles entering the city, which would encourage smaller cars only in the city. The a tax on cars in general would encourage the use of scooters and motorbikes in the city. We thought that over time, this would change the public opinion to the point where people no longer even thought of taking cars into the city. so then the next step would be to tax scooters and motorbikes as well, ultimately removing them from the city. So then the city would be used by buses, service vehicles and taxis. Well what if the bus system was so good taxis were not needed? There certainty wouldn't be any traffic in the city to slow down buses. We then though what would happen if buses only used the underground tunnel systems (if they were expanded of course), and service vehicles also were confined to these tunnels. This was were we took our 'timeline' (or our funnel slowly removing cars from the city, see below) to, and we really looked at what the effects of this would be on the city of Brisbane.

Well firstly, because there would be no cars, the streets of the city would be opened to pedestrians, in much the same way Queen street currently is. This is a very obvious conclusion, however it would effect the city, and the city would need to change to deal with this.
The second result we thought of relates to the public, retail business related parts of the city. These business rely on stock coming in, but due to the absence of traffic in the city, and limited underground service areas, they would ultimately move to the edges of the city. However they would not be viable if the were spread out on a horizontal plain as the currently are, and would need to move vertically, creating vertical public space (see below)

How this would work is in issue that would need to be addressed. Would vertical sky walkways between buildings become common place? Or would something else happen? Also what would happen to the centre of the city. Without retail space it would come to consist of largely residential and commercial space. Because of the ring of retail space surrounding the city, perhaps the city would then grow denser and taller, rather then wider.  As more and more people came to reside in the inner city, building design would need to change. People wanting   a backyard might be able to get that, but on the 30th floor of a building. Vertical farms, sky gardens and mixed housing type buildings could all find a place within the inner city. Buildings like Daniel Libeskinds Condominium (below) could find a home in the inner city.

More interesting perhaps, is what would happen on the edges between the car free residential 'inner-city' and the vertical public space of the 'outer-city'. This is where, as a group, we will be working towards developing an 'architectural fiction'. This edge just so happened to be right on the site that we have been given for our assignments this semester, and this provides very interesting opportunities for both assignments.