For all the attention given to the role of cars in our urban landscapes, lifts are becoming the global city’s truly indispensable transport. At a recent event held by Otis to sell its new “Gen2 Life lift” into London’s ascending skyline, there was a real sense of being in a bull market. “Already two billion people travel by lift every day – that’s a quarter of the world,” said Otis’s commercial director Bertrand Rotagnon. “Cities are becoming taller and need densification. Mass lift transit is part of the future city landscape.” Add ageing populations, disabled access, the lust for “signature skylines” with better lift technology, and the future of the lift appears secure and profitable – a market estimated to be worth $125.22bn by 2021.
Oliver Bennett in The Guardian The meteoric rise’of lifts: will a new breed of elevator transform our cities?
