Winners of the Audi Urban Future Award 2014

On November 10th, a day after the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, our team Living Mobilities from Mexico City was declared winner of the third edition of the Audi Urban Future Award. Together with José Castillo (team leader, watch the video from his final presentation) from Arquitectura 911 and Gabriella Gómez-Mont from the Laboratorio para la Ciudad, we were proud and delighted to be declared winners by an international jury, considering the great proposals presented by the teams from Berlin, Boston, and Seoul.



Our project proposes to create a new social contract, assisted by technology, to improve mobility not only in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of quality of life. This focusses on Mexico City, but has the potential to be extended to other megacities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. We have a big city with small data, so we aimed at coordinating government, institutions, companies, and individuals to become "data donors". We've had considerable success, and with this opportunity we will extend our partnerships and to offer benefits, in particular to data donors, in general to the city.

The competition was very tight. Perhaps what inclined the balance in our favor was the timescale. Even when some aspects are futuristic, we arleady began implementing some of our proposals, so the impact can be much more immediate.

I am very grateful for this opportunity, for being able to participate and collaborate with a great multidisciplinary team of highly talented people. Apart from José and Gabriella, I am grateful to Mónica Arzoz, Roberto Ascencio, Stalin Muñoz, Daniel Pérez Tello, Christopher Chávez, Ricardo Mansilla, Humberto Del Ángel, Francisco Botello, José Luis Chávez, Luis Alberto Ceja. Josué López, Jaime López, Keylin Ortiz, and Jorge Tinoco. I am also grateful to the fruitful interactions with Christian Gärtner, Sophie Stigliano, Sara Mortarino, and the rest of the team at Stylepark, and also to Lisa Füting, Jutta Firsch, Annegret Maier, Rainer Stahlmann, and many other people at Audi with whom we had fruitful interactions.

OK, we won, now the hard work begins, as part of the prize involves extending the proposal into 2015. This will be an unique opportunity to explore ways in which we can improve cities, collaborating with many more partners.

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