Portugal's city of the future

Tuesday, 09 November 2010 00:00

An investment of at least 10 billion euros is set will result in the world’s first environmentally sustainable city, according to Portugal news. The planned city of PlanIT Valley (pronounced planet) is to be built on a 1,700-hectare site in Paredes, near Porto, and will become the world’s “first urban-scale green city”. The city will be based on the nervous system, and will be heavily reliant on a brain which in effect is a central computer that will regulate all facets of running a city such as water, energy and waste. The project will be funded entirely by “private equity”.

PlanIT Valley has been declared a project of national interest by the Government and has also received the full backing of Paredes Town Hall.

Living PlanIT explains that PlanIT Valley will be an inspirational environment for residents and visitors in which to live, work, play and learn. Its infrastructure  will create an integrated and evolving living laboratory and research platform, employing state of the art technology, and providing an environment where the community can develop, deploy and experience technologies that address critical world market, economic, social, environmental and ecological needs.

Because PlanIT Valley will be constructed on an undeveloped site, all the challenges that arise from existing urban infrastructure constraints will be avoided – the development will be able to deploy the most advanced systems for energy, resource management, transportation, communications and other essential infrastructure. Further, because PlanIT Valley’s residences and facilities are integrated with its educational facilities and R&D programs, innovations developed there can be tested on an urban scale and evolved within PlanIT Valley for replication elsewhere.

The area offers a high level of education and location of universities in relation to the PlanIT Valley site (five major universities within 45 miles) with the largest in Portugal – University of Porto – less than 7 miles away. In addition, there is a significant emphasis placed on knowledge development to support transition to a knowledge economy.

Software used to design cars and aircraft was used to create the architectural plans while buildings are being pre-fabricated so that when construction begins at the end of this year, it should be cheaper and quicker. The hexagonal shape of the buildings was chosen to make efficient use of space.

The city will also be heavily reliant on sensors and could use weather forecasts to predict when days will be cloudy, which will reduce the amount of energy generated by the city’s photovoltaic devices. It would then switch to using stored energy, in the form of ice produced by excess electricity on sunnier days, to provide chilled water for the building’s air conditioning systems, for example, New Scientist explains.

An urban data centre will process all the information gathered by the system’s sensors - around 5 petabytes each day. To prevent a problem hitting the data centre and knocking out the control of the entire city, each building will also have sufficient computing power to function on its own.