Audi Urban Future Award 2012: The present and future of mobility in six global metropolitan regions

The start of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012: six architects’ offices from Istanbul, Mumbai, the Pearl River Delta, São Paulo, Tokyo and the Boston/Washington region will present their megacities in Ingolstadt. They will state the most significant challenges for their regions in terms of future urban construction and mobility. All those who are interested can follow the conference by live streaming, record it by means of satellite coordinates or integrate it directly on their website.

In many parts of the world the population is increasing rapidly. Cities are rising to the sky, there is less space for their residents and in many places the transport infrastructure cannot keep pace. The challenges vary from one city to another, as every metropolis has its own individual history: In Tokyo, for example, there are no street names and the houses are numbered according to the year of construction. On the streets of Mumbai, all kinds of vehicles coexist alongside each other.

What is required are strategies that are tailored to the local potential. Solutions that draw together present conditions and future opportunities with great sensitivity. In Istanbul, for example: The geography of the city on the Bosphorus means that no well-functioning system of public transport exists. Individual road traffic is therefore constantly increasing – at times, moving forward is getting difficult. At the same time Istanbul has a much higher rate of Facebook use than most metropolises, a fact that holds great potential if traffic can be coordinated through social networks.

For the second Audi Urban Future Award, Audi has invited six respected architecture offices, from Mumbai (CRIT), Boston/Washington (Höweler + Yoon Architecture), Tokyo (Junya Ishigami + Associates), the Pearl River Delta (NODE Architecture & Urbanism), Istanbul (Superpool) and São Paulo (Urban-Think Tank), to create a vision of the future of mobility in their region.

With the second Award, Audi emphasizes its commitment to sustainable individual mobility. The competition focuses on a constructive exchange of ideas: Audi would like to learn from the cities of the world. All the approaches will serve as sources of information and inspiration in thinking about future mobility concepts and developing innovative business units.

This process starts off with the conference “Metropolis & Mobility Dialogue” in Ingolstadt on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 from 9am to 12 noon. The discussion with the architects and the chairman of the executive board of AUDI AG, Rupert Stadler, will be transmitted worldwide via live streaming.

We’ll have this stream live here on AudiWorld, stay tuned.