Securing the Vertical Space of Cities

TODAY

01 March 2017

Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman

A passenger drone (unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV) —EHang 184 — was unveiled last month at the World Government Summit held in Dubai, where the Road and Transportation Agency of the United Arab Emirates then announced plans to commence regular flights (flying taxis) by July this year. In Singapore, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University are designing an air traffic management system for drones. In London, the new mixed-use Canaletto tower was designed to create vertical communities.

Such developments not only underscore the practical utility of new technologies and architectural ideas, but also, and more profoundly, how growing urbanisation and the advent of smart cities herald the increasing territorialisation of the vertical space. The foreseeable mixed use of the vertical space in cities — vertical urbanism —will have strategic implications on homeland security.

To sustain long-term economic vibrancy and livability, cities and city-states are grappling with the complex challenges of accommodating increasing population density and economic activities amid land constraints. With innovation and the use of disruptive technologies, the optimisation of the urban space could expand radically beyond existing concepts of land use zoning, and high-rise residential and commercial buildings to include the mixed use of the vertical space.

… Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This piece first appeared in RSIS Commentary.

Categories:

CENS / Print / Online