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It was the perfect autumn afternoon in Paris. We sat on a café terrasse on the Place des Vosges, one of Europe’s finest squares, craving a beer. Finally, the surly waiter took our order. But first, without asking, he demonstratively moved from his territory the rental bike that my companion Carlo Ratti had parked there.
一個美好的巴黎秋日的下午，我們坐在歐洲最美麗的廣場之一——孚日廣場(Place des Vosges)的一個露天咖啡座上，渴望來杯啤酒。最后，態度粗暴的侍者終于把我們點的食物送了上來。但在此之前，他連問都沒問，就氣沖沖地把我的朋友卡洛•拉蒂(Carlo Ratti)租來的自行車從他的地盤上挪開了。
Ratti runs the SENSEable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He knows his urbanism. That waiter, Ratti told me, hasn’t yet understood that customers are now rating him online. The café we were in, Ma Bourgogne, specialises in surliness. Parisian tourist traps work on the theory that each tourist only comes once, so you can mistreat him with impunity. Right now people do indeed still stumble on Ma Bourgogne while ogling the Place des Vosges.
拉蒂是麻省理工學院(MIT) Senseable City實驗室的負責人。他對“城市主義”(urbanism)自有一套見解。他告訴我，那位侍者還不知道如今的顧客會在網上評價他。我們所在的咖啡店Ma Bourgogne以侍者態度粗魯著稱。巴黎的旅游陷阱靠的就是每名游客只會來一次，因此怎么對待顧客都不會有影響。眼下，人們的確還會在欣賞孚日廣場的美景時不經意地進入這家咖啡店。
But, one day, before they sit down, their smartphones will flash an alert – “Rude waiters!” – and suggest a nicer alternative. Already, says Ratti, hotels are becoming more polite because they need good ratings.
然而，有一天，在他們坐下之前，他們的智能手機就會顯示警告——“這里的侍者很粗魯！”，并推薦一家侍者態度更友善的店。拉蒂說，如今酒店的工作人員已經變得更有禮貌，因為酒店需要得到好評。
Life in western cities gets better every day for people rich enough to live in them. This is happening for many reasons: technology, data, the hipster ethos, competitive city rankings that set places against each other, and the takeover of cities by a global elite ruthlessly determined to live well. Downtowns are becoming “living rooms”, says John Eger of San Diego State University. And as Ratti and others told me, even bigger changes are coming soon.
西方城市的生活每天都變得更美好，當然這是對足夠富裕生活在這里的人們而言。原因很多：技術、數據、潮人風尚、競爭性的城市排名、以及控制著城市的全球精英階層，他們決心過上好生活。圣地亞哥州立大學(San Diego State University)的約翰•伊格(John Eger)表示，市區正在變成“客廳”。而就如拉蒂和其他人告訴我的，接下來還會發生更重大的變化。
The biggest of all could be driverless cars. Already you can occasionally spot them on northern Californian streets. In perhaps a decade, these things will start transforming the city. One day your car will drop you at work, then drive itself off, either to park outside town or to collect someone else. One benefit: hardly any parking in cities any more. (Warning: do not buy an urban parking space now.)
其中最大的變化可能是無人駕駛汽車。在加利福尼亞州北部的街道上，你已經能夠間或看到這些汽車。或許10年后，這些無人駕駛汽車將開始改變整個城市。有一天，你的車會把你送到工作的地方，然后自己開走，要么停在城外，要么再去接另一個人。一個好處是：城里幾乎再也不需要停車場了。（警告：現在別買城市里的停車位。）
From our table, Ratti pointed at the cars lining the gorgeous square. “Think how much real estate you are using to store idle pieces of metal that are used for what – an hour a day?”
席間，拉蒂指著廣場上停著的汽車說：“想想你用了多少面積來停放這些每天可能就用一小時的金屬家伙？”
Urban planners are already thinking of uses for former parking spaces. The obvious one is bike lanes. I’ve seen the future of urban transport, and it was the small Dutch town where I grew up in the 1970s. By the age of eight, my entire class was cycling to school without parents. It was (fairly) safe because we had dedicated bike lanes. Cycling in Paris still isn’t very safe, because there aren’t enough bike lanes. I stopped cycling here after a car door knocked me down. The driver dismissed my complaints, pointing out that I was merely bleeding from the head, not dead.
城市規劃師已經開始思考如何利用這些以后將不再是停車場的土地。一個顯而易見的用途是自行車道。早在20世紀70年代，我就已經在我成長的荷蘭小鎮看過城市交通的未來面貌了。8歲時，我們班同學都自個兒騎自行車上學。這樣做（相當）安全，因為我們有專用的自行車道。而即使是現在，在巴黎騎自行車還不是很安全，因為自行車道不夠。我自從被一輛車的車門撞倒后，就再也不在這里騎自行車了。那個司機對我的抱怨充耳不聞，聲稱我不過是頭上流血，又沒有不幸身亡。
Biking is for everyone. One new trend is hybrid bikes with electric wheels. If you’re old, or going uphill, just turn on the motor.
騎自行車適合任何人。一個新趨勢是配有電力驅動的混合動力自行車。如果你年事已高，或者要騎上坡，你只需打開電力馬達。
Another potential future for parking spaces: mini-parks, says Mathieu Lefevre, executive director of the New Cities Foundation. Previously, anyone with kids was expected to leave the city. Now that cities are nice and safe, families want to stay. However, they need more play areas. Replace that parked car outside Ma Bourgogne with a swing or slide, and you’d have the perfect family spot: parent friendly, which means “with coffee”.
新城市基金會(New Cities Foundation)常務理事馬蒂厄•勒費夫爾(Mathieu Lefevre)提出了停車場在未來的另一可能用途：小型公園。以前人們認為任何有孩子的人都應該離開城市。現在城市變得既漂亮又安全，有孩子的家庭想要在這里生活。然而，他們需要更多的玩耍空間。把Ma Bourgogne咖啡店外面的停車區換成一架秋千或者滑梯，你就擁有了完美的家庭活動地點：一個“父母友好型”場所，也就是說，這兒供應咖啡。
Already, urban workplaces have changed. Ratti and I were having a business meeting in Ma Bourgogne. “I don’t think there is a better office than this,” he said. But working in cafés is very 2003. The next step: working in parks, even in winter. New technologies can follow you around, giving you your own little portable bubble of heat and light, said Ratti. Another potential workspace: the roof of your apartment building. Imagine a swimming pool or garden there, and some desks.
城市里的工作環境也發生了變化。我和拉蒂在Ma Bourgogne開了一次商業會議。“我覺得沒有比這兒更好的辦公室了，”他說。但是在咖啡店里工作太有2003年的感覺了。下一步：在公園里工作，哪怕是在冬天。拉蒂說，如影相隨的新技術能夠為你提供一個包含光和熱的小型可移動氣泡。還有一個可能的工作地點：你住的公寓的頂層。想象那里有一個游泳池，或者花園，還配了幾張桌子。
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Cities are now dominated by knowledge workers. But Ratti has a counterintuitive candidate for the next urban industry: manufacturing. He explains that 3D printing will be done by creative types in small spaces such as former garages. These people want to be somewhere like the Place des Vosges.
現在城市里引領風騷的是知識型工作者。但拉蒂推斷在下一代城市產業中脫穎而出的可能是制造業，這真是讓人沒想到。他解釋稱，創新型工作者將在從前的車庫等小空間里進行3D打印。這些人希望在類似孚日廣場這樣的地方工作。
As the western city ceases to be a giant office-cum-parking lot, it looks better every day. But there’s an iron rule of our time: anything desirable gets grabbed by the 1 per cent. Cities are becoming unaffordable for anyone else. One way to counter this is to build bridges – often literally – between rich and poor areas. In Johannesburg, rich Sandton and poor black Alexandra are now neighbours. Soon a 250m footbridge will connect them. In Paris, “horizontal skyscrapers” and parks could cross the ringroad to link the city with its suburbs, says Lefevre.
隨著西方的城市不再是巨大的辦公室加停車場，城市的面貌將變得越來越好。但我們的時代有一條鐵則：任何值得擁有的東西都被1%的人攫取了。除了這些人，住在城市的開銷正逐漸超過其他任何人的承受力。扭轉這一趨勢的一個方法是修建連接富有和貧困地區的橋梁，通常這個橋梁就是指字面意義上的橋梁。在南非約翰內斯堡，富有的桑頓(Sandton)地區和主要是黑人居民的貧窮的亞歷山德拉(Alexandra)地區現在相當靠近了。很快一座長250米的人行天橋將連接這兩個街區。勒費夫爾表示，在巴黎，“地平線上的高樓大廈”和公園可以穿過環路，將城市和城郊連接起來。
Today’s cities also suffer from an age divide. Young people can’t afford the house prices. Meanwhile, many older inhabitants are getting infirm and lonely. Seoul has a nice solution: a programme that helps an old person arrange to share with a student.
今天的城市也面臨著年齡鴻溝問題。年輕人買不起房子。同時，許多年歲較大的居民開始變得體弱而孤獨。首爾有一個很棒的解決辦法：一個幫助老人與學生分享住處的項目。
Other cities will surely steal the idea, just as they are copying Amsterdam’s bike lanes and Sydney’s coffee. If only all policy making today were as creative as urbanism.
其他城市肯定會效仿這個創意，就像它們照搬了阿姆斯特丹的自行車道和悉尼的咖啡店那樣。如果今天所有的政策制定都能像城市主義這樣富有創見就好了。
