Urbanized Page #6

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and put that number in.

We were interested in doing

a public display,

so we turned the street essentially

into a big graph.

On the street, we show

how the average usage

of the participants compares

to the Brighton average.

It's 500 feet long,

we recorded for three weeks,

and each day we show

how they compare.

So if you're looking down the street,

you can see how their electricity

usage has changed over time.

It's woken us up.

I'm not very technological, is it?

So I did my best.

And I try to unplug things and so on,

but it has made us very conscious

of what we use, and what we waste.

It wasn't really so much

about the numbers as

where your wiggly line was going

in relation

to the street's Wiggly line.

Seeing the information graphically

really focused you into

thinking about things you leave

on that you don't need to.

Mine was quite high,

so I needed to in the community spirit

try to get that down

rather than bring the street average

up and above.

So I started changing the way

I did things.

One of the pieces of technology

we gave the participants

was an appliance meter.

I think that was really important,

because once they got an idea

about how their overall electricity

usage was changing,

they then wanted to identify

which particular appliances were

were using more electricity.

We'd see just how greedy

some of the devices

we had in the house were.

Halogen lighting,

very very greedy.

The television, not so bad.

The kettle...

We have to ration how many cups

of tea we have everyday

because it uses up so much electricity.

But it does make you very aware

of what you're using.

Everybody that walked by,

you could see them examining

the street art,

trying to understand what it was.

There was a lot of conversation

that went on in the street.

You were always talking

about the project.

When people were walking down

on Saturday,

they wanted to talk about the project.

So I think it genuinely raised

the profile,

having this thing in the road.

Over the first three weeks

of the project,

the average electricity usage

of the participants came down by 15%.

So it's promising.

And we're hoping that

that change will be sustained.

I'd thought about energy use

in general,

but I hadn't thought about how

I would change my behavior,

I didn't do anything about it.

By participating in the project,

what it did was just make me act on it

as opposed to think nice thoughts

about perhaps doing something.

The main lessons we can learn about

sustainability from this project

is that although it starts

with individuals,

a really important factor in people's

behavior is their community.

People are influenced by what

other people are doing around them.

So if you can engage them

as a community,

they seem to be more motivated

and more likely

to change their behavior.

Maybe out of these extreme

energy pressures,

the positive aspects of human nature,

the quest for innovation,

for inquiry, will lead to something

which is

more exciting, more sustainable.

As an architect,

if you are not an optimist

you're not going to be able

to survive professionally.

So you have a belief in the future.

The big transformation of the city

happened through technology.

For example, in the past,

technology that would take away

the open sewers

and create the networks of roads.

What is the equivalent now

of those new technologies?

Rio is like your wife

or your mother-in-law.

I mean, you can say bad things

about them,

but you never let people say

bad things about Rio.

You can use technology not only

for preventing disaster,

not only for security.

What we try to do here

is how can we take care of

the everyday life of the people

using technology.

This operations center that we built,

you've got all the departments

of the city there.

You've got a big screen with the

garbage company of the city,

civil defense which is taking care

of disasters,

there's the social assistance there,

there's the subway,

there's the trains,

there's the power company,

there's the gas company,

you've got the school system,

the health system.

I mean you have it all there

on a big screen.

Bigger than NASA, that's what I like.

It's something that you can use

to really make the departments

work together.

Let me give you an example. If you

see in the power grid,

there is a lack of energy in a

certain area of the city,

you can connect straight

to all the hospitals

and schools there

and get the city ready.

With the information you can get,

and all the changes you can make,

you can really change

the everyday life of the city.

When you go to the favelas,

the big problem that we face

is taking care of this security issue.

They don't have big roads

inside the favelas.

They are always narrow streets,

dark spaces,

and obviously that's bad for security.

So when you put good lights

on streets,

open big spaces for squares

where people can meet.

You change completely the security

aspect of the place.

Khayelitsha's a very interesting story.

It's one of the youngest

townships in South Africa.

It was built in the 1980s.

It offered the latest example

of the then local authority

trying to concentrate the growing

African black population in the city,

at the periphery of the city.

It was specifically developed

as a dormitory residential area

with no economic base,

no real industry, economy,

nothing like that.

People were required to travel out

of the area to gain access to jobs.

And it was characterized

by very poor health conditions

and very high violent crime rates.

What's interesting about Khayelitsha

is the storm water systems, that were

designed by engineering standards,

which create large,

vast tracts of open,

underutilized land,

which become crime hotspots.

The idea was to transform

the very unsafe areas that form

part of the storm water system

into something that is more positive.

Those spaces were used by gangsters

to attack the community

when they go to work,

when they pass by.

People were robbed,

they were mugged,

people's stuff was taken by the thugs.

And when VPUU was introduced

into the community

by the KDF and the city,

that made a big change.

VPUU is Violence Prevention

through Urban Upgrading.

The project looks at those problems

and creates interventions,

and it might not just be buildings,

it could be occupying space

but it could be something

as simple as lighting or paving.

The first one we started working on

was the pedestrian walkway

that extended from Khayelitsha

railway station,

across the suburb of Harare, towards

the informal settlement.

Historically the way urban design

has happened

in South Africa is along what

are seen as major routes,

and that's where all the

infrastructure happens.

The different tack that VPUU took is

they actually spoke with the community.

Which meant that the decision

as to where pedestrian routes went

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