(CNN) - From footfalls to climbing stairs, to opening doors, the cities of the future will look at ways of tapping energy from all the mechanical energy we expend going about our daily lives.
When looking at the amount of kinetic energy produced in the average metro station at rush hour, or even on the dance floors of nightclubs, harvesting electricity from human activity makes sense.
The technology that makes it possible -- the piezoelectric effect -- is more than 130 years old: in 1880, the brothers Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered that placing crystals under pressure produced an electric charge.
Today, manufacturing technology has made it possible to place piezoelectric devices in the most unlikely places and one company, Pavegen, has developed power-generating systems for pavements, football fields and even school corridors.
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