A collaborative city center built around transportation system
We often think of transportation as a critical component of the basic necessities of modern life including education and employment, but it is also important to the health of a community: food, music, art, entertainment, exploration, human connections.
Unified Potential’s Collaborative City Center addresses these elements in a cost-effective manner that benefits all segments of society.
The pillars for a collaborative city
Electrification
Electric drivetrains are more efficient, quieter, and vastly easier to maintain.
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Versatility
Shared vehicle ownership, whether among individuals or « commercial » drivers, is the future.
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Connection
Sharing only works if we are connected, and there remains one elusive hurdle: putting everything on a single network.
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Engineering & Materials Science
Vehicles remain physical objects made of metal, rubber, fabric, plastic, and composites.
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Software development
The software control of modern devices is both critical and extremely powerful.
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Food
More than just a necessity of life, food is a critical and enriching component of our community
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Music & art
A Collaborative City Center is the perfect setting for just such a structured proving ground, able to both showcase and develop local artists.
Read moreUnified Potential’s vision
The way the vehicles are owned and operated is changing, blurring the lines between private and public use. Collaboratively sharing our resources improves the quality of life for everyone in the city, but we have to define how that is going to happen, assuring the community benefits while protecting the rights and assets of the individual citizens. With connected transportation as its backbone and collaborative community as its soul, Unified Potential’s vision could be a transformative model for the way we live together.
Electrification
Electric drivetrains are more efficient, quieter, and vastly easier to maintain. Removing the complexity of the internal combustion engine removes the costs that are inherent in that complexity, reducing the costs of transportation. Where gas engines continue to have benefits on longer trips, effective in-city transportation is composed of a multitude of shorter trips, providing a tremendous opportunity for a community to capitalize on this new technology. Inherent in this vision is a need for expanding education of our next generation of service. Because this technology will spread into many other aspects of our lives, facilitating ways for our young people to learn feeds this value back into the community.
Versatility
The cars of today sit idle for the majority of their working lives, increasing cost and decreasing effectiveness. To get the most out of vehicles, we need to share. Shared vehicle ownership, whether among individuals who are doing the driving themselves, or “commercial” drivers who are transporting others, is the future. But the extraneous requirements that come with owning and operating a vehicle – insurance, personal property tax, and depreciation – mean that we have to rethink how we pay for, insure, own and operate these vehicles. A vehicle designed to be shared is going to look and be configured, differently than a vehicle purchased for private use. These things must be implemented as a system: a manufacturer will never be able to design, build, and sell a vehicle of this type without a community in which to prove its worth, one in which the insurance, personal property tax, and depreciation issues have been addressed with synergistic programs. This requires collaboration and connection.
Connection
Sharing only works if we are connected, and there remains one elusive hurdle: putting everything on a single network. MoveUP was design to be that network, purpose-built, extremely flexible, and adaptable to the needs of everyone. Over time, those needs will evolve, so continuous improvements and maintenance will be a necessary component. And that means education.
Engineering and materials science
Despite electrification, computerization, and automation, vehicles remain physical objects made of metal, rubber, fabric, plastic, and composites. What better source of apprenticeship and education than the transportation system that physically connects the people of a community? By centralizing and supporting these resources on the city infrastructure, the same resources can be offered back to the community, for personal needs or projects By recycling the revenue from these projects, we can reduce the running costs of the system as a whole.
Software development
The software control of modern devices is both critical and extremely powerful. Communities are now able to write and implement software that leverages the power of ubiquitous devices such as smart phones for the collective good. MoveUP will serve as an example of what we are capable of achieving, just as its maintenance becomes a source of learning.
Food
More than just a necessity of life, food is a critical and enriching component of our community; in the way we work, play, and live. The number, variety, and quality of available restaurants is a routine metric for evaluating the desirability – the health – of a city. However, running a successful restaurant is not easy given high startup costs, thin margins, and a public generally intolerant of early missteps. By providing an environment facilitating the testing of new ideas without the risks of a large initial investment, the hurdles are lowered and new possibilities are enabled, while providing the community a place to routinely sample new and varied meals.
Music and art
Anywhere people gather to eat, music inevitably follows. Though we have incredibly diverse methods of accessing recorded music, nothing compares to a live performance. Visit any city and you will get an understanding of the depths of human talent, even if you never leave the downtown streets. Live performance is both an art and a developed skill, but there are few venues that provide critical evaluation with the potential for structured feedback and directed improvement in the very medium of music that is most popular in everyday life. A Collaborative City Center is the perfect setting for just such a structured proving ground, able to both showcase and develop local artists.
The team
Stuart D. Rettie
Currently serving as Principal for Balmedie Consulting, Stuart has thirty eight years of upstream oil and gas expertise. Stuart is currently working with a team in validating new technologies to safely unlock access to high-pressure and high-temperature deep water hydrocarbon resources.
Sergio Asensio
After 13 years at headquarters, Serge made the decision to retire from Marriott in 1998. He relocated to Lynchburg, Virginia so he could take his “big city, big company” hotel industry expertise and offer it to clients at small town prices.
Gina Dicarlo
DiCarlo is the current Orchestra Director at E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Virginia, and she serves as the Adjunct Violin and Viola Instructor at Randolph College.
