A combination of rugged and road-worthy, this self-balancing electric scooter boasts quick-start functionality and speeds of up to 25 mile per hour, perfect for scooting through (and around) traffic in congested cities for hours on a single charge. For those already into Bird, Lime or other private scooter share programs (but frustrated with hunting for them in the wild), this device represents a potential leap up in durability, maneuverability, customizability, acceleration and speed.

Developed by California-based product designer Nathan Allen, the Stator has oversized wheels connected to a single-tube frame and a single, wraparound handlebar with an electronic control unit (turned on by a wireless RFID tag or standard key.

Modularity is part of the design’s charm, which is made up of components that can be swapped out and customized, including the seat, headlights, brake lights, phone chargers and holders, custom racks and rack bags.

It’s powered by a 1000W geared motor and a 20-Ah, 48-volt, lithium-ion battery pack tuckedi not the baseboard. Different power settings can be used to achieve better performance or balance energy usage.

At 90 pounds, it won’t be easy to lug around, but if you’re cruising urban streets that shouldn’t be an issue, and the extra weight helps provide extra features, like: regenerative brakes paired with front-wheel hydraulic disk braking. For now, it’s still a prototype, but its creator hopes to roll out models for sale in the near future.

Free soba and tempura in exchange for getting on the train a little earlier could be a tasty offer for Tokyo commuters who are sick of the “subway sandwich,” which has nothing to do with bread and everything to do with having your face smashed into a stranger’s armpit for the duration of your ride. The city’s transit system is so overloaded at peak hours, it has to hire literal “pushers” who physically cram as many people onto the trains as they can. Now, they’re hoping to tempt commuters on the frenetic Tozai line to help ease up the crunch.

As reported by the Japan Times, the Tokyo Metro Co. has launched a new program that rewards early birds noodles rather than worms. A two-week pilot program asks passengers to voluntarily stagger their commutes during morning rush hour in exchange for coupons for free meals at Metro An, a soba noodle shop affiliated with the transit company.

To participate, commuters have to sign up for the campaign and register their card information in advance before participating for 10 consecutive weekdays. And yes, there is a catch: volunteers will only get the coupon for a free bowl of noodles and tempura if 3,000 people participate. If only 2,500 sign up, they’ll just get noodles. If it’s only 2,000, they get a single piece of tempura. The trial runs through February 1st, so it remains to be seen whether a whole lot of people are going to alter their schedules and receive nothing but a piece of breaded shrimp for their efforts.

Of course, the Tokyo crunch is no joke, and less crowding is a reward in its own right. If you’ve never seen the in action, check out these videos demonstrating exactly how pushers make sure every single subway car is packed with human sardines and you’ll get the idea.

A series of sweaty portraits entitled “Tokyo Compression” captured by Hong Kong-based German artist Michael Wolf further illuminate the issue. Wolf minces no words on just how wild it gets, saying “Man is responsible for this himself – a dreadful system for people, and by people.”

Top photo by Takeshi Fujisawa/Flickr CC by 2.0

Cities like London, Amsterdam and Rome bloom like vivid living organisms in a series of creative road network visualizations, each one as unique as a snowflake. The individual shapes of cities have just as much to do with these arteries multiplying into wispy branches as they do geography, topography and architecture, notes data scientist Craig Taylor, and when they’re rendered in color and animated, they take on an unexpected abstract beauty.

The animations represent how far you can drive out of various city centers within thirty minutes. Taylor chose the “top 40 places to live” as indicated by the Mercer Livability Index as his subjects. The time-drive analysis is based on “an optimistic view” of zero traffic. Taylor began with the U.K. before creating a visualization for the European Union and another for the top 10 world’s most livable cities of 2018.

“For the past six months I have been fascinated by the concept of making city networks look like living corals,” says Taylor. “The varying patterns of urban forms are inherently dictated by their road network; a complex, seemingly organic connection of links moving people across their city. Like branches of coral they have a pattern and a function, I chose to expose this pattern and manipulate it to become something far more conceptual. However, whilst being incredibly beautiful they are derived from various geo-spatial analysis of drive-times catchments making them somewhat informative as well.”

The project comes to life in two animated videos, and it’s also available as a high-resolution poster. Taylor goes into detail about how the visualizations were created at Towards Data Science.

“Location, location, location” might be the mantra of the real estate industry, but that mindset could change radically with the advent of autonomous vehicles. It may take a while, but once driverless cars are adopted by consumers on a wide scale, everything from land usage to property values could shift as parking space is freed up and workers become more mobile. Some experts say we could see fleets of driverless cars on the roads by 2022, others predict that it’ll be closer to 2030, but either way, they’re almost certainly coming.

Autonomous electric vehicles are expected to reduce travel costs, commute time and congestion while boosting safety, and experts believe they’ll also free up millions of parking spaces and allow people to live longer distances from their workplaces. Automobile manufacturers are reflecting these expectations with designs that incorporate zero-emissions electric cars right into the home or double as mobile spaces for working, dining, shopping or even as a new form of housing on wheels.

Autonomous Cars as Mobile Living Spaces

The most obvious and immediate change that commuters would enjoy as driverless cars become the norm could be the freedom to do whatever we want during our travel time instead of driving. That could include getting ready for work, eating meals, working on projects or taking a nap, activities that can be difficult (or impolite) to do on public transit. The spaces remain private – a consideration that’s often cited as a primary motivation to drive instead of taking the bus or train – and even solo commuters could add hours back to their day that they’d normally spend cursing at traffic.

Concepts like Renault’s new EZ-ULTIMO, the latest in a trilogy of concept cars “illustrating the future of shared mobility,” act like first class mobile lounges. The EZ-ULTIMO cabin is designed to make passengers feel like they’re in a millionaire’s living room. The brand’s SYMBIOZ car and residence combo takes that a step further by making the car a room within a room, entering the home to provide additional seating and make the transition between home and travel as seamless as possible.

Hyundai’s Mobility Vision concept may not be quite as self-consciously highbrow as Renault’s, but it employs a similar idea, blurring the line between architecture and automobile in a whole new way. A driverless car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell to eliminate dangerous emissions plugs into the house once travel is complete, with a single large door opening its cabin up to the living room. The driver’s seat slides right out into the living space, so you don’t even have to stop what you’re doing when you arrive or depart.

Volvo’s 360c fully autonomous vehicle aims to make us as comfortable as possible while traveling, potentially eliminating the need to take short flights (which could help significantly reduce greenhouse gases, by the way.) All-electric and covered with a glass dome, the car acts like a mobile bedroom with seats that can be converted into a bed.

Volvo points out that while it believes many people will still want to own personal vehicles, cars like the 360c could be integrated into sharing services, too. In fact, none of these concepts necessarily have to be accessible for ownership. The beauty of autonomous cars is that we could summon them whenever we want them and send them away when we don’t. But it’s also not hard to imagine people choosing to purchase an autonomous vehicle just to sleep in, especially if they’re on the go a lot.

Offices, Restaurants and Shops On Wheels

Honda’s IeMobi, IDEO’s Work On Wheels and a new series of concept spaces by IKEA’s “future living lab,” SPACE10, abandon all attempts to make autonomous vehicles sexy in favor of more space. That makes them more functional as extra “rooms” you can still use once you’re at home, or to serve a greater number of people. Honda’s boxy concept is envisioned as “ a guest room to invite friends or a mobile pantry for weekend shopping,” while the Work On Wheels pod is a mobile office for your entire team.

The SPACE10 concepts go beyond commuting to present autonomous vehicles as unstaffed, driverless mobile services that can go virtually anywhere, from mobile cafes and hotel pods to farm stands and medical clinics that venture into underserved areas. The design team notes that autonomous cars won’t just change how we get to and from various destinations, but also how we interact with cities.

“Transportation difficulties are one of the three major barriers curbing access to healthcare, especially for low-income communities,” says SPACE10. “It’s known as the ‘last mile’ problem: health solutions tend to make it as far as medical outposts – but won’t reach end users. Healthcare on wheels solves ‘the last mile’ problem by getting medical professionals to visit people in need, not the other way around.”

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Nomadic Futures Self Driving Cars Could Change How We Interact With Cities

America’s most famous architect trained his way to greatness in Chicago, and made his mark across the Midwest (and the world), expressing a special love for this city along the way. Inspired by his legacy, British cartographer Max roberts challenged himself to illustrate the routes of the Windy City’s ‘L’ system in the style of Wright.

Borrowing from FLW’s Arts and Crafts typography and abstract stained-glass works, he began drawing out the lines and curves of this urban railway network. At the same time, he also took cues from the CTA’s own color-based approach and geometric simplification. Together, these integrated approaches create a system of colors and symbols that is both legible but also aesthetically inspired.

And the results resonate — for anyone who already associates Chicago with the Robie House and other famous Wright creations, these new diagrams seem like a natural extension of his work, and something you might well found hung inside a Usonian house. While Wright favored cars as modes of transportation (during the automobile boom years of the early 20th century, one might also hope he would appreciate the role of public transit with the benefit of hindsight.