Rising to the transport challenge by integrating adaptability in building design

With seasonal unpredictability, and climate change increasing the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, water utilities use adaptive planning to ensure that long-term strategies stay flexible, in step with a changing climate. This approach links current decision making to future choices and keeps options open. But what has this got to do with the future of mobility?

There are many parallels that can be drawn between the water sector with its linear infrastructure, designed to last up to 100 years, and the transport sector with its road, rail and other multimodal projects having to adapt to a more digitally enabled and sustainability focused future. Yet our inner-city high-rise environment that supports the connectivity of our transport infrastructure has traditionally been designed for the here and now.

Fifty years ago, the mobility landscape was completely different. In Singapore, for example, skyscrapers such as OCBC Centre, One Raffles Place and the Swissotel predate even the first mass rapid transport (MRT) line, which has seen a mode share increase from zero percent to about 70 percent (bus and MRT), by going around and underneath these tall buildings.

Cities have adapted to changes in mobility solutions, but that is not to say that developers had adaptively planned for this or that they took a whole of systems approach to high-rise buildings.

How do you plan buildings for a transport future that you cannot yet predict?

As mobility consultants, we aim to take a whole of system approach and work with architects and urban planners to conceptualise how people will arrive, move within, and leave a space. How people will travel to and from the buildings at their destination is something we are asked to consider on almost every transport project. However, the answer to this question changes over time. We should not just be designing our high-rise buildings for a moment in time, rather, we should be designing them to adapt across an entire lifecycle of our transport future. But the whole of system approach is easier said than done.

Collaborating with architects for future mobility ready developments

As we think about a more sustainable future, we are bringing in more cycleways to our streets as well as other forms of active transport. It is one thing for transport authorities to adapt Central Business District (CBD) streets to cater for this type of mobility, but it is another for developers and building owners to consider featuring cycle storage and end of trip facilities prominently in their buildings or incorporating them in the refurbishments of existing buildings. This requires close collaboration and systems thinking between mobility teams and architects.

Then there are electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in building car parks – but these will not keep pace with demand as EVs become cheaper and overtake internal-combustion engines in the coming decade.

While collaborating with architects to solve space challenges is important, we also need systems thinking to work with our energy teams to consider the power needed, and the conduits and the ducting required for future use. It is significantly cheaper for developers to install this when the building is being designed and built, even if it is not initially fully utilised, rather than having to retrofit as demand for EVs increases.

Your flying taxi is here

There are other technologies already in development, such as Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) or Urban Air Mobility (UAM) – commonly known as “flying taxis” – that we need to plan for in our building design, and need to do so without a clear picture of the timeframes for adoption or the speed at which they will be implemented. Not to mention planning for technologies that haven’t been developed yet.

Doing so requires adapting and ensuring that the way in which space interacts and services today’s transport needs and choices can be upgraded, reconfigured or reprioritised to suit tomorrow’s new mobility solutions.

Like commuters, buildings need space to change behaviour over time

How we use and own vehicles is the next big shift we see coming. If autonomy can significantly decrease the operating cost of service-based transport, then many more people may reconsider the value of owning a car.

While the introduction of ride-hailing services has increased demand for pick up/drop off at high-rise buildings, such as shopping centres and office towers in CBDs, and decreased demand for parking – the introduction of autonomy will significantly accelerate this change.

This will radically change our built environment in the future. Areas around lobbies will need major improvement to allow for increased commuter circulation, while car parks will ultimately become 30 to 40 percent smaller, with autonomous vehicle-to-vehicle communication allowing the parked vehicles to organise themselves.

Make space for people, not cars

Many older high-rise buildings tend to have a central focus on the car park rather than the people who use the building. This is a legacy of having designed buildings for the transport that connects to it rather than the people who use the transport to connect to it. But even with many of these older buildings there are simple things that can be done to adapt to changes in our mobility behaviour, such as:

• converting car park space to cycle or active transport storage
• improving designated drop-off and pick-up space
• increased pedestrian access to the building, and between the building and public transport
• incorporating end-of-trip facilities for active transport (showers, lockers etc.).

Prime space in basements or above buildings should not be allocated for parking. If the vehicle comes to you, then space can be centralised in a less desirable area, reclaiming car park areas within developments for people.

Designing adaptable areas of the car park with a higher, for example increased floor to ceiling height, allows the space to be much more amenable to change and can be renovated into retail or entertainment areas. The cost of the extra space in the short-term is outweighed by its long-term adaptability value.

Another example would be when a space that has traditionally been used as transport infrastructure does not need to be used for mobility at all in the future. Many rooftop car parks are becoming green spaces for recreation, entertainment or even urban farms. Thinking about how the space could be adapted now will save time and money in the future, and have more sustainable outcomes requiring minimal demolition or construction.

Where’s the front door?

Sustainable mobility systems go hand in hand with the adaptability of the buildings they connect commuters with. Designing and constructing high rise buildings that have adaptable and reusable transport spaces, as opposed to being knocked down and rebuilt for new mobility modes, benefits the environment particularly on embodied carbon.

If the efficiency of a basement is its ability to transform into alternate uses rather than planning solely for car park density, it may be time to move away from planning column grids to fit car park lots.

Similarly, high-rise buildings have traditionally focused on volumes of people coming through car parks and priority access for those coming from the basement. For many of these buildings the literal ‘front door’ is just a façade with little more than a small lobby, while all the human interaction is happening below and above. But the car park is not the front door for active transport users, pedestrians, ride share passengers or those coming from mass transit.

The entrances to these buildings therefore need to be reconsidered based on the new and different ways that people are travelling to and from them. A cyclist reaching the office building should not have to go through a boom gate for a car and then enter a car park to get to their destination. Someone arriving on a mass transit system should not need to have to exit the station and walk in the heat or rain for 10 minutes to get to their nearest shopping centre. There should be seamless connections between the transport and the built environment.

Let’s collaborate to take building adaptation to the next level of mobility

Transport is like other linear infrastructure, whether it be water utilities that service high-rise buildings or the power that comes from electricity networks. It should connect to your destination and ensure that this connectivity is as seamless as possible.

Even with fixed infrastructure like a pipeline or an electricity grid, we adaptively plan for increases or decreases in supply as well as where that supply may come from. We should do the same with our transport networks and ensure that the future of mobility, from cycleways to CAV parking and UAM landing pads, are connected and integrated into our high-rise environment from the start of a development.

Given the complexity of design and implementing high-rise buildings, making them adaptable and future-proof is not an easy task. This makes it even more essential for different stakeholders – developers, policy makers, financiers, designers, consultants and technology providers – to come together for solutions and drive the adaptability of high-rise buildings.

Richard will be presenting on Integrating adaptability in mobility design and the emergence of a new mobility paradigm – how sustainability is intrinsically linked to adaptability at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat International Conference in Singapore from 16 to 21 October 2023.