Free, pervasive wi-fi is a pretty big goal for this generation to figure out. Thanks to Virgin Media, one UK town gets to experience what it’s like to have free high-speed wireless under their feet and at their fingertips at all times. The conglomerate partnered with Chiltern District Council to outfit the town center in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, with Smart Pavement.

The Smart Pavement modules are waterproof resin squares that rest in the sidewalk alongside the regular concrete squares. They connect directly to Virgin’s fiber network, providing free wireless to the homes, businesses, and visitors in the area. According to Virgin, people are seeing speeds of up to 166 Mbps – or about seven times the average UK broadband speed.

The concept of integrating wireless technology into the cityscape is being considered all around the world. As internet access grows in importance, it seems that many are turning their eye toward treating it like a municipal utility – just like water or natural gas. Chesham is a grand experiment in keeping people connected even when away from home and cutting down on their mobile data usage. Installing little wifi modules could (and probably will) become a matter of routine in cities of the future.

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The idea of communal or shared cars has been growing in popularity recently, particularly as cities become more congested and it becomes more expensive to own a car. Designer Yuhan Zhang‘s concept takes its cues from bees, insects which are known especially for their predisposition to work together.

Zhang branded the BeeHive concept with the Volvo name. The idea involves a fleet of city-owned or communal-owned vehicles which can be checked out by people who need a car to perform certain tasks like moving objects or traveling long distances. People who simply need to get themselves from one point to another take one of the other modes of transport in the system: a bus, train, or their own feet.

In the center of the BeeHive, appropriate vehicles are dispatched automatically. There isn’t much information about how the designer envisions the system working, but we’d like to think that you’d tell the system what kind of task you need to perform and, after answering a few key questions, you’d get a vehicle to check out for a day or two.

The conceptual BeeHive vehicles don’t feature a windshield that passengers can see out of because the vehicles are meant to be autonomous, self-driving cars. This probably won’t become anywhere near reality anytime soon, but Zhang understands that – the project was supposed to be a concept detailing what urban life would be like in the year 2030.

The post Hive Drive: Shared Car System Modeled After Beehives first appeared on Gajitz.