PLANIT VALLEY

In search of the intelligent city

By Ana Rita Lúcio Photos Rui Marto (João Cupertino Studio)

Translated from the Portuguese

Paredes 2011

In a small city in the northwest of Portugal a team of entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians

and academic experts have gathered to confront a global-scale problem: environmental

sustainability (or the lack thereof). In this town are all the ingredients for another real-life

Hollywood blockbuster, with a bit of science-fiction thrown in for good measure.

However, if the start-up Living PlanIT´s greenfield project, PlanIT Valley, is analogous to a

movie, it might well be the most realistic sci-fi film about building the first entirely

sustainable city, which is 30km outside Porto.

It all started with a most improbable meeting between three Portuguese, one Englishman

and one Australian, whose paths crossed in the most unusual manner in the city of

Paredes.

Miguel Rodrigues, the creator of Vinci GT, the first Portuguese sports car, wanted to

develop a mobility platform based on electric vehicles in the outskirts of Porto. Celso

Ferreira, the mayor of the municipality of Paredes, Peter Van Manen from McLaren

Electronic, and Manuel Simas from Microsoft joined forces with Rodrigues to look at the

model. Steve Lewis, the heart and face of Living PlanIT, began to dream … and the

revolutionary work was born.

Lewis, the British entrepreneur, technological globetrotter, and former Lotus, IBM, and

Microsoft executive, knows what it takes to be an entrepreneur: “If you have a dream, you

must pursue it,” he states, unconditionally. “Nothing can stop you.” And nothing has really

stopped him. In 2006 he founded, along with Malcolm Hutchinson, Living PlanIT, the

company whose credo (“there is no place for the word ‘no’”) is one to which Lewis has

dedicated his body, soul, and professional life.

Inspired, and with help of Rodrigues, Lewis adopted the mobility concept as well as the

location and in April 2008 he created the basis for an entire city. And from addressing

ecological worries to finding solutions in the most sophisticated technologies, he is making

a business worth millions.

The chimera worth gold

The second part of this real-life story begins with the audacity of “a frighteningly big idea”:

to build from scratch the first intelligent city on a 17-square-kilometre site, which runs

through the parishes of Recarei, Sobreira, Aguiar de Sousa, and Parada de Todeia. The

project has raised many eyebrows. A question persists: why choose this municipality

nestled in the Vale do Sousa region? Living PlanIT’s CEO saw the foundations he needed to

build his city of the future: the region’s “excellent human capital” combined with its

proximity to Porto; the presence of Minho, Aveiro, and Coimbra’s universities; not to

mention access to the railroad, the Leixões Harbour, and the Francisco Sá Carneiro

International Airport.

The overall premise is simple but ambitious: to find a solution to deal with massive global

urbanization while creating the mechanism for greater efficiencies. To be built by 2015,

the urban organism—with a network of arteries composed of over 100 million sensors

and a “brain” in the form of the Urban Operating System (UOS™), which will manage the

city´s basic functions—might seem utopian. But it is already on the horizon: “We will start

working in 2011 and, according to our own projections, the first wave will be completed in

about a year,” Lewis states. “By 2015 we will have developed all 25 waves.” The first three

thousand inhabitants who step on this sustainable valley’s soil for the first time will find a

high-tech paradise, where technology and ecology ensure no waste. In this “urban-scale

living laboratory,” energy bills will be cut in half and only 20 per cent of water usually

needed for urban centres will be consumed. People will be amazed by the city’s capacity to

increase its efficiencies, to produce energy from sources such as roads or “green” rooftops

with photovoltaic panels surrounded with plants that reduce temperature to avoid heat

loss, and to filter the water that enters the buildings.

However, in PlanIT Valley one of the most extraordinary benefits will be in the

management of garbage. Steve Lewis states: “Hydrogen, drinking water, butanol, amino

acids, vitamin B12…and gold can all be extracted from ordinary city waste. Many people

don’t know, but 13% of the world gold is in landfills, in the electronics that we throw

away.”

Thoughts by an Englishman

While Paredes is home to the project, Living PlanIT is about ensuring a more secure and

ecological world. The starting point is always the same, but the paths vary. Living PlanIT

recently announced that it will use technology incubated in Portugal for projects in the UK,

in the mythic Silicon Valley, in New Mexico, in Brazil, and in ten different locations in the

Mediterranean basin. But this authentic global road show will not happen by chance.

PlanIT Valley has already become a case study at the illustrious Harvard University in

North America, where distinguished professor Robert Eccles has called PlanIT Valley “the

best business model ever developed to a smart city.”

Living PlanIT was awarded the “Best Foreign Investment in Europe in High Tech” Award

from the World Investment Conference in La Baule, France in June 2009. The frontline

partners of this thought-provoking city (a city that exists because it thinks) include

multinational giant Cisco, which is going to establish an innovation centre in PlanIT Valley.

And other substantial international companies like Microsoft, McLaren, and others have

already guaranteed to take their place in Paredes, a sustainable Eden, and Portuguese

companies will also play a significant role. Living PlanIT’s boss assures us that “all building

work will be awarded to Portuguese companies.” In addition to working with national

companies in the software and material industries, Living PlanIT wants to be “a business

incubator for medium to small companies.”

Steve Lewis states that 110,000 jobs in the research and development area will be

generated over the next five years, most of which will be created locally. With

headquarters secure, partners accumulated, and troops recruited, Living PlanIT will set up

its offensive against pollution, energy, and waste inefficiencies as well as the consumption

of natural resources. Among his various battles, this astute entrepreneur had to abandon a

football career because of a disease, but he kept on kicking his dreams toward the goal as

he promises to fight “the war for the environment, which will be won or lost in the cities.”

He warns: “The world does not have much time. Everything we do is urgent.” Don’t miss

the next episode.

Urban Anatomy

More than a city, PlanIT Valley will be a living urban organism. Everything starts in the

brain, from which each move is coordinated. In a fusion of biology and software its Urban

Operative System (UOS™) will process the billions of megabytes of information collected

by sensors…in one single day. The eyes of the city will be a video camera circuit, which will

register each step. Buildings will act as kidneys, filtering the water and reusing it. And

PlanIT Valley’s skin will offer interactive interfaces with residents, which will allow them,

for example, to access the internet through smart walls embedded in offices and homes.