how to become an urban planner

BIG's designers began by imagining ideal historical cities before the introduction of automobiles. "Our main takeaway was that when you need less room for cars, parking, and idling, you get more space for people and nature," says Leon Rost, partner in charge of the project, which begins its first phase next year. As more modes of personal electric transport emerge, BIG's design for Toyota could have far-reaching effects on how existing cities approach transit infrastructure and, in turn, reduce emissions. "Cities have proven again and again that they can change their modes of mobility," points out Rost. "It's really a question of retrofitting the streets."

For companies like Uber, however, economic and environmental sustainability means operating within the existing infrastructure—where the individual car is the primary mode of transport—but rethinking how it can be used more efficiently, says Emily Strand, head of public policy for Uber Movement, a division of the company that shares anonymized insights about traffic and mobility. "We know we can't just make the roads bigger," which would lead to more cars and congestion, she says.

That's one reason the company is looking at multimodal transit as part of its corporate approach; it has already added Jump e-bike shares, supports better bike infrastructure, and recently rolled out an app that can help commuters sync up various legs (e-bike to train to Uber, say) of a route. "The vision is to be able to streamline that experience seamlessly," says Strand.

The Make My Train feature in Uber's app recently became available in New York and San Francisco. The technology helps commuters and travelers sync up multiple legs of a trip to be as efficient as possible. The company expects to expand similar feature to more cities.

That bridge between the technological and physical city is also critical to progress. More technological innovations—buildings or vehicles that monitor and relay air quality or congestion in real time, say—can help make everything from transit to energy use more efficient, and pleasant. But collecting and sharing this data is crucial; transparency is a must if greener cities are to emerge.

Uber Movement, for example, can provide anonymized data sets about how and when traffic is moving through a particular city or neighborhood. Analyzing these trends over time can help policymakers alleviate gridlock or assess how congestion pricing might work, says Strand. At the University of California Berkeley, data scientists used travel times to create a tool for the Bay Area that works like a Waze for fuel efficiency.

Getting people out of individual cars and into ride hails won't move the needle on emissions, but it can help us move away from the idea of a car-centric streetscape by discouraging car ownership and reducing the need for parking. The age of design for individual automobiles is over, says Strand: "Cities of the future are going to be built for people."

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To combat climate risks, urban planning must increasingly be driven by human health and well-being and technology that can support vibrant—and verdant—urban settings. "It's tempting to think about the city of the future as very Blade Runner and sci-fi," says BIG's Rost, "but it was a turning point in our project when we realized what really mattered was open space, clean air, and connection with other people."