ABE, LYNN, UMEZAWA: In Conversation

On July 31, 2017, Greg Lynn gave the Keynote Lecture at the inaugural xLAB Summer Program. The lecture was titled, Localization: Static to Dynamic Spaces & Infrastructure. After the Keynote Lecture, Greg Lynn was joined by Hitoshi Abe and Tak Umezawa to discuss the future of mobility in the city.

In envisioning a city of Gitas, Lynn compares the streets of the late 19th and early 20th Cent. to the ones of today. While the streets devoid of crosswalks or traffic signal may look chaotic, the greater volume of people and things demonstrate an intelligent system of mobility and will inevitably describe the movement with our future cities. To promote multimodal transportation, Lynn argues that cities don’t need more infrastructure, but rather more vehicles. Take for example, Greg’s colleague:

“He likes to cook, and every night he walks to buy all the vegetables, fish, chicken. It’s all in his neighborhood. He can walk to [the market], but two nights a week, when he buys wine or milk, he gets in his electric BMW. He drives five blocks because he needs to carry the stuff, but he’s carrying it with a two-ton car. That’s crazy…Let’s get those vehicles off [the road] and replace them with smarter new vehicles.”