Word: downtowner
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...When Kamen unveiled Segway in December 2001, he told TIME that as cities get more and more crowded, they will increasingly ban cars from their congested downtown districts. Segways, he predicted, would ease that transition and prove so wildly popular that they would quickly fill the pavements of congested cities. None of that seems to be likely to happen any time soon. Here's what he had to say about his previous predictions and how he regards the ups and downs of invention...
...urban environment to bring technology that will make it green and easy and simple and fun to get around? And particularly at a time when the price of fuel is getting outrageous, when the environmental impact is becoming unsustainable, when people are looking for better ways to make their downtown to be a green environment, a fun environment. The reason I moved to a city is I wanted high density. I don't want to be spread out from everybody else here by stinking, smelly, noisy vehicles in the middle of a city. I love cars and trucks. I love...
...just exist on your sidewalks. You don't need to build airports, you don't need to put down steel rails, you don't have to build new highways, we get around on two little points like your tippy-toes, and we can get around on your downtown, on your sidewalks. So while we correctly asserted that you don't need new physical infrastructure, I don't think we fully appreciated how much change in the mental infrastructure would be required before people started to think it really is just unproductive and in some ways irresponsible to be moving around...
...prepared to tell you in 10 years Segways will be the predominant alternative to walking. But if it's too far to walk or you need to go three or four times faster than walking, which is as fast as you can go in a downtown, I can't say it will be a Segway. But one thing I bet you right now, anything you wanna bet, there is no chance that we will still have 10 or 15 years from now the majority of our society, in developed parts of the world, in big cities, consuming fuel, creeping along...
...drab, and in recent years petty street crime has become so bad that some Hong Kong residents no longer shop there for cheap household goods and knock-off designer clothes. But with per capita GDP of almost $7,500, Shenzhen is among the richest cities in China. Today's downtown is a jumble of traffic-clogged streets, luxury hotels, Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton stores, and foreign eateries like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. At the Portofino housing complex on the city's outskirts, golf carts carry residents from their lavish condominiums to the development's pricey European restaurant...