In city environments, the visual clutter of streetlights, phone poles, utility boxes, electric poles and cell phone towers is just something that we’ve learned to accept and, for the most part, ignore. But Vancouver writer and artist Douglas Coupland thinks that our cities deserve better than that, so he’s redesigned the way that urban utilities interact with the urban environment. The V-Pole (V for Vancouver, of course) is a surprisingly stylish utility pole encompassing just about everything the modern city dweller needs.

Each pole is connected to underground optical wiring. Different utilities can be included in the poles, depending on what is necessary for that area, with modular pieces. Thanks to a new technology developed at Bell Labs, those gigantic utility boxes we are used to seeing can now be replaced by compact devices the size and shape of a Rubik’s cube. That is really the driving technology that allows the V-Pole to squeeze so many utilities into such a small space.

Besides the LED streetlight at the top, a single V-Pole can provide mobile network coverage, wi-fi, electric vehicle charging, parking transactions, and neighborhood bulletin board services. It’s way more energy efficient and and cheaper than current versions of all of these services, and because they are all combined visual clutter is dramatically decreased. Thanks to its modular nature, it will be expandable for future generations. Eventually, we may even be able to forget that urban utilities used to take up so much space in our cities.

The post Vancouver Utility Pole Concept is Compact, Full of Services first appeared on Gajitz.

Today’s airports tend to be situated away from city centers, out in the suburbs or, even better, in the house-free industrial areas surrounding cities. The reasons are obvious: noise and safety concerns make it sensible to keep the airports out of city centers. But at one time, the future of airports seemed to be putting them right in the middle of the busiest parts of cities.

These delightfully impractical designs are the best of past urban airport ideas. They focus on putting the airport in the most convenient places: right where travelers live, work and vacation. Never mind the pollution – both noise and air – that urban airports would produce: think of the convenience!

Designs like rooftop airports situated in a loop atop residential buildings seem absolutely ridiculous today. But urban planners in the first part of the 20th century seemed to take a creative stance when it came to aerial transportation hubs. Luckily for us, most airports ended up away from residential areas – and none (that we know of) wound up on precarious-looking platforms perched above neighborhoods.

The post Urban Airports: Past Predictions for Future Flight Fields first appeared on Gajitz.