Thirdly, technological change is happening exponentially and this will impact what we do, how we live, how \u2013 if \u2013 we work and how we tackle the above problems.\u00a0 Some view the challenges and changes with fear, thinking they will only exacerbate problems.\u00a0 They could do, anything can be mismanaged (such as a planet) for example.\u00a0 I foresee that technology is actually the only way we are going to get ourselves out of the mess we have created, the only thing that can act on the vast scale needed to re-balance an out-of-kilter Gaia.<\/p>\n
When we take these three factors into account, we can see that the future of urban landscapes has to be so much more than the addition of the odd pocket-park here and there.\u00a0 Landscapes have to mitigate the environmental factors, make huge mega-cities liveable for a population increasingly disconnected from nature and provide meaningful lives in an era when many of us may not work in the way we are used to.<\/p>\n How will cities become smart and use this to better the environment?\u00a0 If we are looking to increase the amount of urban landscaping significantly, then the first issue to tackle is cost of maintenance.\u00a0 No one wants to pay for maintenance and often, no one does.\u00a0 How many planted landscapes do you see smothered in weeds, wrecking or negating the designed purpose?\u00a0 Or municipal plantings and car-parks where plants inevitably die and are never replaced, leaving huge gaps.\u00a0 Shrubs hedge trimmed into amorphous shapes because that\u2019s the quickest way to \u201cmaintain\u201d them.\u00a0 It\u2019s a poor standard and it\u2019s all we\u2019re going to get – no-one is going to pay for trained horticulturalists to do something better.<\/p>\n Yet there is an interesting possibility \u2013 automation is likely to remove nearly 50% of jobs in the next decade, especially low-skilled or repetitive ones.\u00a0 In the landscape trade, there are already semi-autonomous strimmers and grass-cutters on the market, how long before we have horticultural robots maintaining our landscapes?\u00a0 All the technology is already here, prices are falling and an uplink to an AI would identify every weed known, give the correct procedures, know how and when to prune every plant in common cultivation. Robots would work long hours without tea breaks!\u00a0 If basic maintenance getters a lot cheaper, we can have more landscape and such robots would<\/em> be cheaper, eventually.\u00a0 Living walls would be a prime candidate, with a simple maintenance cradle (much like a 3D printer head) that crosses the wall with a maintenance bot on it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen so many potential living wall projects fall at the maintenance-cost hurdle.\u00a0 In such a scenario, displaced maintenance crew can retrain as bot-supervisors or true horticulturalist for private clients.<\/p>\n We’re going to have to do more than just make maintenance affordable; rather, that is the factor that releases the possibility to do more urban landscaping.\u00a0 Many of the elements we need to put in place are already in existence and being used, but we need to join the dots and think holistically.\u00a0 For example, green roofs are seen as a separate trade from green (I prefer living) walls.\u00a0 Instead, we need to be talking of biological membranes (biomembranes) for buildings, a whole-system concept, where the living skin regulates the internal environment, filters pollution in both directions, dealing with generation of energy, cooling, clean air and water. Living walls that currently use potable water for irrigation when they could be cleaning up the used greywater that all buildings generate is another example.<\/p>\n Systems that provide services that are of consequence to the functioning of a building, street, or neighbourhood need careful management and control, much of which will become automated.\u00a0 In just the last year, for example, new irrigation controllers have come on the market which not only are connected to you via internet, they also connect to the nearest weather station and adjust their regime according to the conditions.\u00a0 I use these for living walls; I do not advocate any irrigation for horizontal landscapes in temperate climates.\u00a0 But things will move beyond this, with AI monitoring ground moisture levels and moving harvested rainwater from one holding system out to another part of the city where it is needed. \u00a0And urban farming – especially vertical – will be a large part of mega-city greening, although it might not be on display. \u00a0Sophisticated hydroponic systems are springing up in warehouses and roof-top polytunnels all over. \u00a0Such food can and should be organic, local, healthy, nutritious.<\/p>\n A smartly connected landscape means we can maximize the benefit it gives to the people who live, work or pass through it.\u00a0 With the majority of people living in urban mega cities, we have to create an environment that is fit for ultra-dense urban living.\u00a0 As these metropolis\u2019 grow, people will have less and less daily contact with Nature, which is not good for our deeper wellbeing.\u00a0 Biophilia is our innate need for contact with the natural world: plants, trees, flowers, insects, sunlight, water, earth.\u00a0 A concrete jungle is not a substitute for the real thing but we mostly won\u2019t have time to \u201cget out there\u201d and experience wild Nature.<\/p>\n I think inner city pollution will blow over \u2013 excuse the pun- in the next 5-10 years as we start a massive switch over to electric transport, most of it driverless.\u00a0 In fact, drone taxis are already under development and as buildings and living habitats reach skyward we can expect the landscape to move with them.\u00a0 It will become commonplace to have high-level dronepads \u2013 even private ones.\u00a0 Some people might not even go down to the ground much!\u00a0 So landscapes and biophilia must come to them.\u00a0 Fortunately, there is a rash of building-integrated vegetation going on and I see this trend increasing.\u00a0 Incidentally, if you wanted more good reasons for using bots to maintain planting, imagine working on living walls or trees that are 50 stories up!<\/p>\n As for the wider environment and the looming crisis of climate change, I can only hope that emerging nanotechnologies give us the tools to clean up our act and neutralise the positive feedback loops we are creating.\u00a0 Scientists are already working on nanotechnologies which capture and convert carbon into useful materials and one day such microscopic machines may roam our land and seas, removing plastics and other dangerous waste.\u00a0 If this is done at a molecular level, we turn problems into resources.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be printing our houses (already being tested) compounds made from waste materials but without the current worries of using say, bricks made from recycled plastic which off-gas VOCs.\u00a0 We can only hope these technologies emerge before it\u2019s too late to save the climate in a state that we can survive in.<\/p>\n So the next 10-15 years are going to see change at an unprecedented rate and it may not all be a smooth ride.\u00a0 I am excited by it however and think that there is much to be done to ensure that we create new urban environments worthy of habitation and that we take care of all environments and indeed the whole planet.\u00a0 Smart cities are coming and at their best they could loosen our imaginations and liberate us from a monotonous life of work and stress.\u00a0 Let\u2019s make that the scenario that happens\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UPDATE September 2022:\u00a0 Given the increasing urgency of climate change and the overwhelming stresses this will place on our civilisation for the near, medium and long-term future, I now doubt this scenario will ever come about.\u00a0 A glimpse of what might have been, maybe, had we taken climate seriously and managed to move through that<\/p>\n![\"A](\"http:\/\/www.marklaurence.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Weedy_Shrubs-800.jpg\")
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