Shareway 2030, Audi Urban Future Award Winner

Boswash, la megalópolis que se extiende de Boston a Washington DC, un área donde residen 53 millones de personas y donde se genera un tercio del producto interno bruto de EE.UU., ha pasado de ser la excepción a la regla, con más del 80 por ciento de la población de EE.UU. viviendo en una de sus nueve megalópolis.

Las extensas tramas de suburbios de Boswash y la alta densidad de sus corredores urbanos están relacionadas y a la vez divididas a través de las infraestructuras de movilidad, la comunicación y la economía. Una superposición de itinerarios que atraviesan el territorio ofrecen una densa red de opciones de transporte, sin un sistema dominante o una fácil transferencia de un modo a otro.

Debido a una abrupta caída en el gasto público, la red de infraestructuras de EE.UU. está peligrosamente cerca del colapso. En Boswash, la primera generación de proyectos de infraestructura urbana, construidos medio siglo atrás durante la era Eisenhower, se acerca al final de su vida útil, sin nuevas inversiones en el horizonte. Los intercambios intermodales y su infraestructura son retos esenciales para Boswash.

Al estudiar la ciudad contemporánea, observamos la transición del centro a la periferia que se expande en órbitas de territorios urbanos difusos. Los mecanismos que producen esta condición están inducidos por lo tecnológico y el estilo de vida del sueño americano. Para repensar la ciudad y la movilidad debemos repensar el concepto de la propiedad y la oportunidad económica.

Shareway es una plataforma de movilidad y un sistema operativo que reestructura las relaciones entre la propiedad y la accesibilidad, permitiendo a los usuarios moverse a lo largo de redes eficientes y al mismo tiempo liberarse del concepto de propiedad de los automóviles y del hogar. A través de una combinación de infraestructura física (hardware) y de redes inteligentes (software), Shareway permite viajar sin esfuerzos y reconfigurar la estructura de las ciudades y de los suburbios. La proximidad es una función del tiempo y la ubicación. La geografía se negocia por velocidad. La distancia es desplazada por la accesibilidad. La conveniencia se reasigna a través de nuevas formas de transporte.

Shareway Bundle sustituye a la carretera con un sistema coordinado de transporte multimodal que se basa en las infraestructuras existentes y permite una alta velocidad de tránsito y de transferencias. Los nuevos patrones de desplazamientos permiten compartir los tiempos y redefinen el concepto de «hogar.» El «superhub» que se encuentra en Newark, Nueva Jersey, desplaza a Nueva York como la nueva capital de Boswash. El acceso a la movilidad es la métrica fundamental de la vida urbana. Al cambiar el concepto de propiedad por el de compartir, el nuevo sueño americano de libertad y oportunidad transforma el paisaje urbano.

Original text in English

Boswash, the megalopolis spanning from Boston to Washington, D.C., home to over 53 million and a third of the U.S. gross domestic product, has passed from exception to norm, with over 80 percent of the U.S. population living within one of nine megalopolitan regions.

Boswash’s sprawling networks of suburbs, exurbs, and high-density urban corridors are linked, divided, and inscribed through the infrastructures of mobility, communication, and economics. An overlay of itineraries and trajectories that crisscross the territory offer a dense web of transportation options, without a dominant system or easy transfer from one mode to another.

Due to a precipitous decline in spending, the U.S. infrastructure network is perilously close to collapse. In Boswash, the first generation of infrastructure projects built during the Eisenhower era a half-century ago is approaching the end of its useful life, with no new investment on the horizon. Unsustainable land-use patterns, intermodal exchanges, and failing infrastructure are key challenges for Boswash. Meanwhile, American land-use patterns (strip mall sprawl, cul-de-sac suburbs) and their attendant architectural typologies (decorated sheds, McMansions) have been exported worldwide, making Boswash an unintended role model for urbanization. As such, it represents a possible prototype for the middle-aged infrastructure network—one in need of an extreme makeover.

Surveying the contemporary city, we bear witness to the shift from center-periphery to sprawling orbits of diffuse urban territories. The mechanisms that produced this condition are bound by technological and lifestyle aspirations of the American dream. To rethink the city and mobility is to rethink ownership and economic opportunity.

Shareway is a mobility platform and operating system that restructures the relationships between property and access, allowing users to move along efficient mobility networks while remaining free of car and home ownership. Through a combination of physical infrastructure (hardware) and intelligent networks (software), Shareway makes travel effortless and reconfigures the structure of cities and suburbs. Proximity is a function of time and location. Geography is negotiated by speed. Distance is displaced by access. Convenience is remapped through new forms of conveyance.

Shareway Bundle replaces the highway with a coordinated multimodal system of transportation that builds on existing infrastructures and enables high-speed transit and seamless transfers. Ride sharing enables new patterns of commuting and time-sharing restructures the definition of “home.” The Superhub located in Newark, New Jersey, displaces New York as the new capital of Boswash. Access to mobility is the ultimate metric of urban life. Having traded ownership for sharing, the new American dream of freedom and opportunity transforms the shape of the urban landscape.

The Shareway
The bundle is made in the model of a physical internet. Around a new high speed rail core, it brings together formerly disparate car, regional rail, and freight infrastructures so that they may work together.  The Shareway Bundle offers options for a new lifestyle, in which sharability becomes a new currency. The Bundle re-inscribes work, life and communication opportunities for the future, encouraging Boswash citizens to identify with it as a regional community.

Superhub
The Superhub aggregates mobility platforms into a single major node in Newark, NJ.  It is capable of switching between modes at a scale that acknowledges the unique connectivity of the Boswash megaregion, and the role that it plays within a global network of megacities and megaregions.

Sharestay
The time share house is enabled by the networks of mobility provided by the Bundle.  The ShareStay structure ensures that everyone in Boswash is a neighbor, and all are banded together into interdependent networks.

Share farm
Vacant neighborhoods are converted into a hybrid system of large-scale industrial agricultural production and bottom-up neighborhood lots of organic gardening serving local and regional needs. Farm to Fork, hastened by The Bundle, has never been a shorter trip.

Tripanel
The Tripanel replaces the inert curb and contentious congestion pricing, with the smart street, the responsive roadway and the empathic park. The intelligence within the urban surfaces creates a variable cityscape that is self-regulating, communicative, and human-scaled to support the full diversity of urban life.