The working focus of the 14th edition of the YHS has been circularity in the city of the future. For Laia, “circularity is the ability to take advantage of the own city dynamics to generate new solutions and opportunities out of them. Circularity must be an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on social, economic and environmental challenges”.
During the convention, all the students participate in working groups of 4 to 5 people proposing new ideas to tackle circularity opportunities, and in particular, the case study of urban megaproject of ‘The Line’ in Saudi Arabia. For example, Laia’s group has presented an idea of a public face recognition software service that would identify the emotions and moods of citizens, which at the same time, would give out recommendations and personalized advice to each individual regarding their mental health. Since ‘The Line’ would be a vertical city with a huge amount of elevators, Laia has explained that these would be the most suitable place to install scanners.
In fact, all the proposals revolve around five urban aspects: public space, mobility, entertainment, culture and technology. And it is on these last three aspects where Joan and his group have dived into. They proposed the creation of virtual reality rooms for public use that would allow citizens to visit any part of the world.
“It has helped us to see the future and to think about issues that would have never crossed my mind a week ago, and also I realized I could apply hospitality ideas in a project that is starting from scratch”, says Joan.