CITY SCIENCES: MCH 2018

Day 1. PRESENT AND FUTURE CITIES
 Module Introduction
 Present and Future Cities
 Urban Revolution
 Global Urban Processes

 

Lecture 1: Present and future Cities

Nowadays, more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities and this figure is expected to increase by 10% by 2030, according to World Bank data. Cities are responsible for 67% of the total energy consumption in the world and more than 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Every month, around the world, a constant flow of 5 million people moves from the countryside to the city. Cities are a global phenomenon and pose big challenges but also great opportunities.

Urban areas have become the basic environment for personal and social development, engines of economic activity, spaces for innovation and centers for the provision of services, yet they are also places where rampant unemployment, segregation and poverty spread.

The need for accessibility to basic services such as health, education, entertainment, security, etc. will be
met with greater difficulties in certain parts of the globe, and the growing population needs will specially
demand energy, proper waste management and transport services, as well as housing. The principles for
sustainable and balanced development have been widely discussed in principles and ideas included in
documents such as "World Commission on Environment and Development", "the Global Agenda 21" and
"United Nations Sustainable Development Goals".

In trying to approach the issues that affect cities and their future development world-wide, a careful
characterization of the cities of our time must be taken into account when trying to address some of their
challenges.

The first consideration is related with the complexity of the urban context. The city is made up of citizens,
infrastructure and services. The particular combination of these pieces conditions the behavior of each city.
Additionally, city dwellers behave like living organisms, as the metabolic approach suggests, they react,
sometimes unexpectedly, against some interventions. The difficulty of describing and predicting the mobility patterns of the inhabitants of a given city, is just one of the examples of the complexity that scientists must face when studying the urban context. The asymmetry in citizens’ behavior is paradigmatic when trying to study the effect in the use of private transport when increasing or reducing the price of a given public transportation system. Additionally, management models must be site-specific to respond to the morphological and typological conditions of each city.

The second consideration to take into account is related to the progressive digitalization of the world. Today more than ever, data allow us to better interpret reality. We are progressively moving towards a more ‘sensitive’ society. Our use of smart phones, credit cards, or internet navigation, gives away more information than never. Smart meters are deployed in most of the supply chain (water, gas, electricity, etc...), sensors can measure pollutant concentration at virtually any point of the city and they can monitor the saturation of urban roads in real-time. The target today is to integrate all of these data platforms for the use of the municipality, and more interestingly, for the use of the general public. The call for open data is not only an exercise of municipal transparency, but also an incentive to a healthier economy and more accurately addressed services. The availability of data is shaping cities with new products and unexpected business opportunities.

In short, cities have always been a space for human development and they will be made use of even more
intensely in the coming years. The growing urbanization of the planet poses enormous challenges to extremely complex problems that require multidisciplinary teams in an approach that is beginning to take
shape. A transdisciplinary and integrated discipline is needed to combine the knowledge of traditional
sciences -in the fields of urban planning, energy, mobility or services- allowing for the creation of models
that anticipate complex urban consequences of any intervention. It is the time of cities. It is the time for city
sciences.

The XXI century will happen in cities. City regions are more relevant than countries. London is more
important than the UK, Lima than Peru, or Seoul than South Korea. These sovereign cities compete to attract or maintain existing investments: business networks, international organizations, sports and cultural events.

 

But cities compete to attract not only tourists or money, but talent. Talented people with a complete
understanding of their environment will inherit this changing world.

Alejandro de Miguel Solano, module coordinator, will introduce the topics of each class, in an attempt to stimulate in the students the desire to know more details of each one of the subjects dealt with in each thematic session. This session will overview both the academic content of the module and the organizational basis of the course and will prepare the basecamp for further exploration of the different topics included in this module.

 

Lecture 2: Urban revolution

For over 50 years, there has not been such an intense debate and intervention in cities. This is the most
profound urban revolution since the advent of International Style in the mid-twentieth century.

Cities will attract 2.5 billion of inhabitants by 2050 as stated in 2014 by the Population Division of the UN
Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Thereby, cities will need an intensive housing development in
the coming years. The key of this growth is being sustainable.

Cities are the natural ecosystem for architects but cities are a complex system difficult to be understood.
This class will provide the main tools to manage the complexity of the city of today, backed by the author’s
accumulated experience in the field in the past twenty years.

Digital disruption will provide new opportunities at city scale to effectively address emerging challenges like
globalization, demographic and climate change affecting our built environment. In a globalized world, Digital Cities need to continually offer the easiest, most accessible places to live, learn, work, travel and play.

Through real examples of innovative development, Flavio Tejada will explore the increasing relationship  etween technology, real estate investment and the making of future cities.

 

 

Lecture 3: Global urban processes

Why should anyone care about the ‘global city’? Certainly, the application to the analysis of real problems
of renewed concepts is key. A global approach is needed to address the challenges and practicalities of
urbanism in the new generation of global(ising) cities.

The speed in which cities evolve and shift can leave professionals paralyzed in astonishment, however it is
not yet the time to act. Today it is the time to think, it is of utmost importance to focus on theoretical research and the integration of the various geographical and social scales that make up the territory and the city. The experimentation and research on the process of creating the contemporary landscape must be addressed from a multi-faceted and both global and local way, in an effort of comprehending all stakeholders and situations involved.

Tono Fernández Usón will focus his lecture on depicting the current situation of the complex current urban context in the different scales that integrate the city and the territory, from a global perspective, after his experience developing urban projects in South America and India.

 

Day 2. ICT IN CITIES

 Urban flows and digital footprints
 The city as an innovation platform
 The digital transformation: upgrading citizens experience and city management

 

Lecture 1: Urban flows and digital footprints

In a complex world of unlabeled data and humongous datasets, effective visualization helps users analyze
and reason about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable.
The session focuses on the spatial analysis of urban and social dynamics through the application of Geographic Information Systems. Gustavo Romanillos Arroyo is currently part of the research team of
INSIGHT (Innovative Policy Modeling and Governance Tools for Sustainable Post-Crisis Urban Development) and TRANSBICI projects, from which he launches the initiative Huellaciclistademadrid.

 

Gustavo Romanillos Arroyo will be speaking about how to visualize the relation of Airbnb's irruption in cities with mass tourism and the collapse of historical city centers.

 

Lecture 2: The city as an innovation platform

How will cities of the future be? Can we begin to imagine them? Is it possible to build them or, on the contrary, are they and will they remain a utopia?

Where many people are, there are many ideas, so our job is to connect them with the digital infrastructures
of the city. In this way, we can aspire to design public services not from bottom to top, but in a collaborative
fashion.

Another feature of the future digital cities as an innovation platform: open source. Open source
infrastructures, whether software, electronics, networks, data, laboratories, public space or buildings have 4 distinctive features: being understandable, accessible, reconfigurable and community-based.

 

There is much talk about energy sources: oil, renewable ... but we often forget to consider the new raw
material of the digital economy: the data. Cities are based on a great gold mine: our data, those who give us power as consumers and those whose loss also leads to the loss of our privacy.

Linked to the above, we think that there is no innovation and no common good if we do not launch the
"innovation of the common good".

 

This abstract is a translated excerpt from ‘Ciudades Digitales del Bien Común’ by Daniel Sarasa Funes. The author will be in class speaking about his insight on the topic.

 

Lecture 3: The digital transformation: upgrading citizens experience and city management

Agriculture, the industrial revolution and the development of the internet used to model our cities. Today we
are living in an era where information is shaping how mayors, technicians and private companies manage
the city.

 

In this lecture, we will cover concepts such as SCADA, GIS, digital twin, big data, artificial intelligence, visual computing, internet of things and digital administration. We will learn the process of technology
implementation in the cities of today.

In this session, Javier Dorao Sánchez will speak about data based smart cities, business models and the digital transformation model of big cities.

 

Day 3. URBAN SUSTAINABILITY
 Urban environmental issues
 Urban air quality fundamentals
 Climate change in cities

 

Lecture 1: Urban environmental issues

Today, cities are confronted with the task of minimizing their energy, water and food inputs, while keeping
their heat and air and water pollution low at the same time.
This session aims to provide an overview on the environmental challenges that cities face, essentially
covering air quality and waste management, and will set the road map for the two forthcoming sessions.

 

Lecture 2: Urban air quality fundamentals

Air quality is an important issue with direct implications on urban planning, mobility and public management
in general. Meeting air quality standards in urban environment is essential but also very challenging since
both population and emissions concentrate on urban environments. Effective measures and strategies to
improve air quality in the city must take into account the influences of most of the pollutant emission sectors. Additionally, potential negative impacts on productive activities as well as social and economic costs play an important role.

 

While traditional information networks allow very accurate concentration levels of major pollutants regulated at the level of air quality (RD 102/2011), its complexity, infrastructure requirements and high cost make high density monitoring virtually impossible. This introduces the problem regarding the need to ensure the representativeness of the readings in relatively large areas of the city. Given the lack of homogeneity in the distribution of broadcasts, the existence of parameters affecting the dispersion of pollutants and the uneven population distribution it becomes very difficult to ensure that the measured values are representative. By contrast, the use of simple devices incorporating electrochemical sensors based on metallic or low-cost technologies and open as Arduino code oxides, allow to significantly increase the density monitoring, opening interesting consequences.

Lecture 3: climate change in cities
This class discusses the relationships between climate change and air quality and presents new trends and paradigms to deal with both atmospheric issues in urban areas to maximize synergies and minimize tradeoffs.

The tools and principles presented in the previous lecture are applied specifically to Madrid to illustrate the
proposed approach. This is intended to engage students in the discussion by proposing and assessing
alternative policies and measures to tackle urban emissions to minimize negative health effects and
contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

With Rafael Borge we will learn that science-driven knowledge is a critical component of sustainable development, taking into account the importance of air quality and waste management for the development of a human city.

Day 4. SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY
 Sustainable mobility
 Mobility Trends
 Do the right mix

Lecture 1: Sustainable mobility
Satisfying the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability to satisfy the needs of future generations, is a key motto of modern sustainable mobility. This model enables movement with minimal environmental and territorial impact.

Lecture 2: Mobility Trends
On average, people make 3,5 trips and spend 1 hour per day in commuting. Depending on external and
internal features people choose one or another transport mode to move around the city.

This session aims to provide an overall perspective on the mobility cycle in cities. The session will cover
from the modal decision phase based on route choice to mobility modelling and management and the effects of mobility in shaping cities.

Lecture 3: Do the right mix
The vision Europe shares in relation to sustainable transport for both passengers and freight from a
continental to an urban perspective goes towards a single European transport area. Urban mobility should
match economic growth, quality of life and environmental protection in all cities across Europe, by changing the mindset of citizens from car dependent to health and environment focused.

Andrés Monzón de Cáceres will lecture on the relevance of sustainable mobility and share his insight on optimizing mobility networks and infrastructure, evaluating mobility and its effects to properly plan transport and territory. In the class, he will also be lecturing on European policies and strategies to achieve a more sustainable future.

 

 

Day 5. ENERGY IN CITIES
 Energy in cities
 Introduction to energy use
 Smart grids and DC grids

Lecture 1: Energy in cities
In the global effort to fight climate change, cities have some of the greatest potential– and the greatest imperative — to make a difference. With an increasing global migration into the world’s urban areas, which are expected to support at least two-thirds of the total human population by 2050, experts have argued that cities have no choice but to transition toward low-carbon systems if they’re going to remain sustainable.

Energy will need to be a primary focus of that effort. From the expansion of renewable energy sources to
the adoption of cutting-edge energy efficiency and storage technologies, cities have the opportunity to
drastically reduce their carbon footprints.

Lecture 2: Introduction to energy use
Energy is crucial for our lives. Modern society and quality of life are based on the extensive use of energy.
Today, the objective of reducing the power consumption without losing quality of life is at stake. Therefore,
a proper exploitation of clean energy resources is becoming more necessary with each passing day. A
handful of conventional electrical generative sources (gas, hydroelectric, nuclear…) together with a wide
generation based on wind, solar, bio-mass and other sources will provide our future energy.

Lecture 3: Smart grids & DC grids
Traditional generation of electricity was undertaken by very few generators that will serve many customers.
The current electricity grid is based on AC distribution. This generation of electricity is based on rotating
machines that produce an AC current being the high power plants located far from the cities. This technology is mature and today’s efforts are focused in the integration of the small, distributed and non-easilypredictable renewables electricity generators such as wind and solar (Smart Grids) into a system with many more customers.

An interesting alternative arises for the cities: the massive use of small photovoltaic panels (PV) in every
roof allows the generation of energy at the point it will be used. The energy generated by PVs is DC and
there is a chance of saving a lot of energy if it is directly used by the home appliances, skipping the standard conversion to AC.

Oscar López García will lecture on the world-wide production of energy, extracted or captured directly from natural sources. Later, he will explain the conversion or transformation process for the final consumption by the end-user. In this class, students will also learn about the war of electric generation portrayed by Edison and Tesla, and the progressive shift from AC to DC grids, amongst others.

 

Day 7. UNIVERSAL ACCESIBILITY
 Universal accessibility basics
 Universal accessibility workshop
 Universal accessibility projects

Universal accessibility basics
Universal accessibility refers to broad-spectrum ideas meant to produce buildings, products and environments that inherently meet the living requirements of all citizens without exclusion.

 

An open discussion with the students’ participation about what universal accessibility means will be held to
prepare the field for further exploration of this concept.

In this context, José Antonio Juncà Ubierna will build the framework on what universal accessibility is and its importance in cities.

Universal accessibility workshop
The workshop will consist on a field trip around the Moncloa Campus. In groups, students will be provided
with wheelchairs and will be blind-folded. The trip will start inside the ETSAM, where students may
experience the main challenges for accessibility indoors. Afterwards, students will move outside in a short
trip to the sport center across Juan de Herrera street, experiencing all the inconveniences suffered by
millions in our current cities every day.

With the guidance and materials provided by José Antonio Juncà Ubierna students will experience first-hand how surfaces, textures, colors, sounds or slopes have much more relevance than expected.

Universal accessibility projects

Universal accessibility is focused on how to create, recreate, innovate and improve cities paying attention to human diversity – from children to elderly people - to people with different abilities. This session will cover main projects all around the world following this framework.

José Antonio Juncà Ubierna will present here some of the referential guidebooks on the subject, many of which he has written himself or helped to create.

 

MODULE COORDINATION

Alejandro de Miguel Solano
Alejandro de Miguel studied architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (UPM), where he graduated with honors. He holds a Master in City Sciences by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He has been a Visiting Teacher at several universities in Spain.

His current professional activity is based in London, where he focuses both on UK-led and international
masterplan scheme designs for an award-winning company. He is the coordinator of the City Sciences
module for his second year.

 

KEY SPEAKERS

Flavio Tejada Gorráiz
Flavio Tejada completed his MSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Cantabria. He also extended
his formation including an Architectural Design Program at UNC Charlotte (USA) and a Master's degree in
Executive Real Estate Business Management (MDNI), ICADE-ICAI. He has given courses and lectures at
universities in Spain, Europe and America.

Flavio works as Master Planning & Urban Design Practice Leader for ARUP in Europe Region. During his
career, Flavio has worked in several parts of the world, including in the Europe, Middle East, LATAM and
United States. Experienced in working with local standards and cultures, he is able to manage large
multidisciplinary teams from concept to implementation. Flavio's team has identified new methods of city
planning, management & development, approaching the socioeconomic and environmental challenges of
XXI century territories from an innovative perspective.

Tono Fernéndez Usón
Tono Fernández studied architecture in Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Navarra (ETSAUN)
and graduated as an architect in Universidad Politécnica de Barcelona (UPC). He holds a Master in City
Sciences by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Tono has worked for IDOM Barcelona as the Manager for the Architecture and Construction Division in
Barcelona, and he is currently the Director for Architecture Projects in IDOM Madrid. He has recently
completed the award-winning Convention Centre in Lima, a circa 15,000 sqm public institution in the heart
of Perú and is currently undertaking the design and construction of a 30-ha vertical district in New Delhi.

Gustavo Romanillos Arroyo

Gustavo Romanillos studied architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (UPM) and at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture in Paris La Villette, he holds a Masters in Geographic Information Technologies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and obtained the Diploma of Advanced Studies by the Department of Architectural Graphical Ideation in the ETSAM.

As a researcher, his work focuses on the spatial analysis of urban and social dynamics through the
application of Geographic Information Systems. He is currently part of the research team for INSIGHT
(Innovative Policy Modeling and Governance Tools for Sustainable Post-Crisis Urban Development) and
TRANSBICI projects, from which he has launched the Huellaciclistademadrid initiative. He is also Honorary
Contributor of the Department of Human Geography of the Faculty of Geography of the Complutense
University of Madrid and coordinator of the MappingCampusMoncloa Project of the Campus of International Excellence Moncloa

Daniel Sarasa Funes
Daniel Sarasa holds a Master of Telecommunications Engineering (MEng) by the Universidad de Zaragoza, and a Master in City Sciences by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM).

Currently Daniel Sarasa has been appointed to manage the Business and Innovation area of Zaragoza's
Milla Digital innovation district. His responsabilities include: managing Zaragoza's Open Urban Lab and the
city WiFi network. He also coordinates the vision of the three start-up incubators of Milla Digital's ecosystem and led the European Projects team.

Approaching urban design from the IT and Telecom angle, Daniel Sarasa’s role so far has been to architect
some of the foundations of the city’s innovation strategy.

Javier Dorao Sánchez
Javier Dorao holds a MSc in Civil Engineering with specialty in Urbanism and Master in City Sciences (Smart Cities), both at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

In his position as ICT Specialist at Eptisa Information Technologies, he is the link between Indian and
Spanish teams working to support four Indian City Councils (Jaipur, Udaipur, Indore, Ajmer and Kakinada)
in the implementation of their Smart City plans.

The project includes all the activities to achieve an integrated underground smart infrastructure, the
implementation of a public transport with real-time management, the redevelopment and pedestrianization
of significant streets, monitoring the quality of air and water, improving the emergency services through
smart solutions and real-time controlling of the whole city information from an Integrated Command Control
Centre.

Rafael Borge García
Rafael Borge holds a degree on Forestry and Environmental Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica
de Madrid (UPM) and a PhD on atmospheric modeling from UPM. He leads the Laboratory of Environmental Modelling at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Being an Associate Professor at this same University, he runs courses on environmental engineering, air quality and environmental modeling.

Currently, he coordinates the research project TECNAIRE, that aims at the development and integration of
new technologies and methods for multiscale modelling and measuring of urban air pollution.

Andrés Monzón de Cáceres
Andrés Monzón holds a degree in Civil Engineering by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). He is
a Full-Professor of Transportation Planning at the Civil Engineering Department of the same School.

He is currently Director of TRANSyT (Transport Research Centre) and the Director of the Metropolitan
Mobility Observatory, which publishes a yearly report on mobility supply and demand, including data of 24
Spanish Cities.

He has published more than 40 books and chapters of books, 50 papers in scientific journals, 65 papers in
international Conferences’ Proceedings and 50 in national Conferences and Symposiums. He has been
supervisor of more than 20 PhD thesis.

Óscar López García
Oscar López holds a PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de
Madrid (UPM) in 1999, where he is also a Full-Professor. He is the Vice-president of the Center for Industrial Electronics (CEI-UPM). He has participated in several international technical committees and he has been the Chairman of the SAAEI’13 conference.

He has received several awards, UPM Research and Development Award for faculty under 35 in year 2003; UPM Innovation in Education Award in year 2005; and Semikron Innovation award in 2012.

His main area of research is power electronics. In this area, he has been involved in more than 70 research projects, he holds 8 patents and he has published more than 180 technical papers in scientific journals. His expertise in energy conversion has been applied to various sectors such as medical, industrial, telecommunication, defense and aerospace.

José Antonio Juncá Ubierna
José Antonio Juncá is a Civil Engineer by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and holds a PhD on Aesthetic Design of Tunnels and Underground Works by the same University. He works General State
Administration for the Ministry of Development, currently serving in the Department of Architecture, Housing and Land. He is CEO at SOCYTEC, pioneer in Spain in projects, plans and audits on accessibility.

Since 2008 he is Member of Technical Committee of Building the Institute of Engineering of Spain,
representing the Association of Civil Engineers, and he is currently Secretary of the Committee. He is a
member of the Working Group AEN / CTN41 / SC7 / GT1 in AENOR.