​Streets In The Future Are Going To Look Completely Different

The future will hopefully be about flying cars and pavements floating high in the air - in fact let's just have cities in the clouds like in Empire Strikes Back.

We're not quite there yet, but streets are changing as we do.

Pavement Lights

We love our smart phones - they're our constant companion and we get withdrawal anxiety if we accidentally leave it at home.

But while they keep us connected to the world, they can also leave us with serious tunnel vision.

Someone gets hit by a car every eight minutes in the UK. And you know a lot of that will be because they're too busy looking at Snapchat.

The lights change colour to match the signals. They're designed to catch the eye of someone on their phone and stop them from walking into incoming traffic - and even look up and around for a second or two before going back to Candy Crush.

Credit: HIG Traffic Systems

It's a trial run - there's only one set of pavement lights at a zebra crossing in the own of Bodegraven in The Netherlands.

But the authorities are planning to do something very similar in Augsburg in Germany to tackle the "smart phone" zombies.

Credit: HIG Traffic Systems

It's pretty cool - it looks like a lightsaber is in the pavement. Green means go and red means stop - much like normal traffic lights.

Phone Boxes

The phone box is a pretty iconic British symbol - and sadly they're getting rid of them as we don't need call boxes anymore. But BT doesn't want to let them go - they've been part of our history and landscape now for decades!

In London this year BT is going to revamp phone boxes and bring them into the 21^st century.

They're not going to smell of piss, be filled with pamphlets of glamour models and have a broken telephone in them anymore - end of an era.

Credit: BT

Instead there will be chargers for your phone, free wifi, and free calls, too.

It's the worst when you are running out of battery and you need to check something, so this is a great idea.

Credit: BT

They're planning on putting 750 around London and then rolling them out to the rest of the country.

Wattway

Even the roads are going to change soon.

In a small village Normandy in France they have built a solar panel road - the first of its kind in the world.

It cost a whopping £5 million to create!

It's only a kilometre long but it's used by approximately 2,000 motorists a day - and in the two-year test run they're going to see if the energy it creates is enough to supply the entire village with street lighting.

The road has been called Wattway - which is really cute, especially if you say it in a French accent.

So we're not quite at the point where the streets are made of silver and there's flying cars everywhere... but it's close.

Words by Laura Hamilton

Featured Image Credit: HIG Traffic Systems

Topics: Technology

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