It was the perfect autumn afternoon in Paris. We sat on a café terrasse on the Place des Vosges, one of Europe’s finest squares, craving a beer. Finally, the surly waiter took our order. But first, without asking, he demonstratively moved from his territory the rental bike that my companion Carlo Ratti had parked there.
一个美好的巴黎秋日的下午，我们坐在欧洲最美丽的广场之一——孚日广场(Place des Vosges)的一个露天咖啡座上，渴望来杯啤酒。最后，态度粗暴的侍者终于把我们点的食物送了上来。但在此之前，他连问都没问，就气冲冲地把我的朋友卡洛•拉蒂(Carlo Ratti)租来的自行车从他的地盘上挪开了。

Ratti runs the SENSEable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He knows his urbanism. That waiter, Ratti told me, hasn’t yet understood that customers are now rating him online. The café we were in, Ma Bourgogne, specialises in surliness. Parisian tourist traps work on the theory that each tourist only comes once, so you can mistreat him with impunity. Right now people do indeed still stumble on Ma Bourgogne while ogling the Place des Vosges.
拉蒂是麻省理工学院(MIT) Senseable City实验室的负责人。他对“城市主义”(urbanism)自有一套见解。他告诉我，那位侍者还不知道如今的顾客会在网上评价他。我们所在的咖啡店Ma Bourgogne以侍者态度粗鲁著称。巴黎的旅游陷阱靠的就是每名游客只会来一次，因此怎么对待顾客都不会有影响。眼下，人们的确还会在欣赏孚日广场的美景时不经意地进入这家咖啡店。
But, one day, before they sit down, their smartphones will flash an alert – “Rude waiters!” – and suggest a nicer alternative. Already, says Ratti, hotels are becoming more polite because they need good ratings.
然而，有一天，在他们坐下之前，他们的智能手机就会显示警告——“这里的侍者很粗鲁！”，并推荐一家侍者态度更友善的店。拉蒂说，如今酒店的工作人员已经变得更有礼貌，因为酒店需要得到好评。
Life in western cities gets better every day for people rich enough to live in them. This is happening for many reasons: technology, data, the hipster ethos, competitive city rankings that set places against each other, and the takeover of cities by a global elite ruthlessly determined to live well. Downtowns are becoming “living rooms”, says John Eger of San Diego State University. And as Ratti and others told me, even bigger changes are coming soon.
西方城市的生活每天都变得更美好，当然这是对足够富裕生活在这里的人们而言。原因很多：技术、数据、潮人风尚、竞争性的城市排名、以及控制着城市的全球精英阶层，他们决心过上好生活。圣地亚哥州立大学(San Diego State University)的约翰•伊格(John Eger)表示，市区正在变成“客厅”。而就如拉蒂和其他人告诉我的，接下来还会发生更重大的变化。
The biggest of all could be driverless cars. Already you can occasionally spot them on northern Californian streets. In perhaps a decade, these things will start transforming the city. One day your car will drop you at work, then drive itself off, either to park outside town or to collect someone else. One benefit: hardly any parking in cities any more. (Warning: do not buy an urban parking space now.)
其中最大的变化可能是无人驾驶汽车。在加利福尼亚州北部的街道上，你已经能够间或看到这些汽车。或许10年后，这些无人驾驶汽车将开始改变整个城市。有一天，你的车会把你送到工作的地方，然后自己开走，要么停在城外，要么再去接另一个人。一个好处是：城里几乎再也不需要停车场了。（警告：现在别买城市里的停车位。）
From our table, Ratti pointed at the cars lining the gorgeous square. “Think how much real estate you are using to store idle pieces of metal that are used for what – an hour a day?”
席间，拉蒂指着广场上停着的汽车说：“想想你用了多少面积来停放这些每天可能就用一小时的金属家伙？”
Urban planners are already thinking of uses for former parking spaces. The obvious one is bike lanes. I’ve seen the future of urban transport, and it was the small Dutch town where I grew up in the 1970s. By the age of eight, my entire class was cycling to school without parents. It was (fairly) safe because we had dedicated bike lanes. Cycling in Paris still isn’t very safe, because there aren’t enough bike lanes. I stopped cycling here after a car door knocked me down. The driver dismissed my complaints, pointing out that I was merely bleeding from the head, not dead.
城市规划师已经开始思考如何利用这些以后将不再是停车场的土地。一个显而易见的用途是自行车道。早在20世纪70年代，我就已经在我成长的荷兰小镇看过城市交通的未来面貌了。8岁时，我们班同学都自个儿骑自行车上学。这样做（相当）安全，因为我们有专用的自行车道。而即使是现在，在巴黎骑自行车还不是很安全，因为自行车道不够。我自从被一辆车的车门撞倒后，就再也不在这里骑自行车了。那个司机对我的抱怨充耳不闻，声称我不过是头上流血，又没有不幸身亡。
Biking is for everyone. One new trend is hybrid bikes with electric wheels. If you’re old, or going uphill, just turn on the motor.
骑自行车适合任何人。一个新趋势是配有电力驱动的混合动力自行车。如果你年事已高，或者要骑上坡，你只需打开电力马达。
Another potential future for parking spaces: mini-parks, says Mathieu Lefevre, executive director of the New Cities Foundation. Previously, anyone with kids was expected to leave the city. Now that cities are nice and safe, families want to stay. However, they need more play areas. Replace that parked car outside Ma Bourgogne with a swing or slide, and you’d have the perfect family spot: parent friendly, which means “with coffee”.
新城市基金会(New Cities Foundation)常务理事马蒂厄•勒费夫尔(Mathieu Lefevre)提出了停车场在未来的另一可能用途：小型公园。以前人们认为任何有孩子的人都应该离开城市。现在城市变得既漂亮又安全，有孩子的家庭想要在这里生活。然而，他们需要更多的玩耍空间。把Ma Bourgogne咖啡店外面的停车区换成一架秋千或者滑梯，你就拥有了完美的家庭活动地点：一个“父母友好型”场所，也就是说，这儿供应咖啡。
Already, urban workplaces have changed. Ratti and I were having a business meeting in Ma Bourgogne. “I don’t think there is a better office than this,” he said. But working in cafés is very 2003. The next step: working in parks, even in winter. New technologies can follow you around, giving you your own little portable bubble of heat and light, said Ratti. Another potential workspace: the roof of your apartment building. Imagine a swimming pool or garden there, and some desks.
城市里的工作环境也发生了变化。我和拉蒂在Ma Bourgogne开了一次商业会议。“我觉得没有比这儿更好的办公室了，”他说。但是在咖啡店里工作太有2003年的感觉了。下一步：在公园里工作，哪怕是在冬天。拉蒂说，如影相随的新技术能够为你提供一个包含光和热的小型可移动气泡。还有一个可能的工作地点：你住的公寓的顶层。想象那里有一个游泳池，或者花园，还配了几张桌子。
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Cities are now dominated by knowledge workers. But Ratti has a counterintuitive candidate for the next urban industry: manufacturing. He explains that 3D printing will be done by creative types in small spaces such as former garages. These people want to be somewhere like the Place des Vosges.
现在城市里引领风骚的是知识型工作者。但拉蒂推断在下一代城市产业中脱颖而出的可能是制造业，这真是让人没想到。他解释称，创新型工作者将在从前的车库等小空间里进行3D打印。这些人希望在类似孚日广场这样的地方工作。
As the western city ceases to be a giant office-cum-parking lot, it looks better every day. But there’s an iron rule of our time: anything desirable gets grabbed by the 1 per cent. Cities are becoming unaffordable for anyone else. One way to counter this is to build bridges – often literally – between rich and poor areas. In Johannesburg, rich Sandton and poor black Alexandra are now neighbours. Soon a 250m footbridge will connect them. In Paris, “horizontal skyscrapers” and parks could cross the ringroad to link the city with its suburbs, says Lefevre.
随着西方的城市不再是巨大的办公室加停车场，城市的面貌将变得越来越好。但我们的时代有一条铁则：任何值得拥有的东西都被1%的人攫取了。除了这些人，住在城市的开销正逐渐超过其他任何人的承受力。扭转这一趋势的一个方法是修建连接富有和贫困地区的桥梁，通常这个桥梁就是指字面意义上的桥梁。在南非约翰内斯堡，富有的桑顿(Sandton)地区和主要是黑人居民的贫穷的亚历山德拉(Alexandra)地区现在相当靠近了。很快一座长250米的人行天桥将连接这两个街区。勒费夫尔表示，在巴黎，“地平线上的高楼大厦”和公园可以穿过环路，将城市和城郊连接起来。
Today’s cities also suffer from an age divide. Young people can’t afford the house prices. Meanwhile, many older inhabitants are getting infirm and lonely. Seoul has a nice solution: a programme that helps an old person arrange to share with a student.
今天的城市也面临着年龄鸿沟问题。年轻人买不起房子。同时，许多年岁较大的居民开始变得体弱而孤独。首尔有一个很棒的解决办法：一个帮助老人与学生分享住处的项目。
Other cities will surely steal the idea, just as they are copying Amsterdam’s bike lanes and Sydney’s coffee. If only all policy making today were as creative as urbanism.
其他城市肯定会效仿这个创意，就像它们照搬了阿姆斯特丹的自行车道和悉尼的咖啡店那样。如果今天所有的政策制定都能像城市主义这样富有创见就好了。