Want to build a smarter city? Know what the people need, experts say

BridgeTower Media presented “Partnerships to Build the Future, Smart City Futures” during a webinar Tuesday. Moderated panels of experts in city planning and leadership spoke to the challenges of smart cities, with more than 700 in attendance from around the world. This was the first webinar in a series.

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It’s not 5G connections or lightning-quick internet service that makes a smart city. Beyond data and digital access, smart cities take the real needs of their citizens into account when reinventing processes and services to build better places in which to live.

They bring together communities, private sector innovators, governmental leaders and employees to create equal opportunity futures for businesses, residents, visitors and their workforces.

Public and private sector partnerships are at the heart of emerging smart cities, where reinvention touches services like transportation, utilities, capital investment and resources for small business, internet access and public infrastructure.

“The smart city movement has just begun,” said Jonathan Reichental, best-selling author of “Smart Cities for Dummies,” and founder of Human Future in Palo Alto, California. Reichental a, panelist at BridgeTower Media’s  webinar, “Partnerships to Build the Future, Smart City Futures,”  spent seven years working for the City of Palo Alto, helping it envision technology changes to move its community into the future.

Before beginning the smart city evolution, Reichental said each city must consider and reflect on the needs of its residents and businesses. Listening to citizens and stakeholders is critical to the success of smart city outcomes.

According to Reichental, transportation, energy, sustainability and digitalization are four key concepts in addressing any smart city process.

Among the first questions officials must ask is how they will change processes, and perhaps their thinking, from an analog to a digital landscape.  He encouraged residents to contact their local government offices, because those employees are generally more accessible and more easily accessible. Those first steps can begin to build relationships leading to greater trust.

“What each city does is a reflection of its [population] needs,” Reichental said. While smart cities will have key elements in common no two will likely look, feel, or behave in exactly the same way.

Reichental estimated the global cost to build smart cities at about $2.4 trillion, which could “generate enormous amounts of economic opportunity.” Those new opportunities – such as changing from analog to digital procedures, will become apparent as cities and smaller communities consider or change long-entrenched processes.

“There are lots of gaps – [which] are an opportunity to step up. Covid is playing a role in accelerating digitization,” Reichental said. Digitization is moving information from an analog format to a digital one. It’s also hastening digitalization, which is the process of moving something to digital processes like converting a local zoning permit request for a building project, from paper to an online form and process.

Pandemic is forcing change

The coronavirus pandemic and its resulting lockdowns and social restrictions have forced change across nearly every aspect of human life around the world.

Reichental said the digitalization of cities was a “massive economic opportunity,” but ultimately changes in services and how they are delivered to citizens would be about enhancing quality of life and remembering “it is all about people.”

Jim Wunderman is president and CEO of Bay Area Council near San Francisco.

He said massive job losses, the pandemic and the devastating wildfires in northern California set the stage for a massive number of people working remotely. This workforce migration, experience by nearly every community in some form, could lead to lasting employment changes and behavior.

“In other parts of the country and the world, the future will be different,” he said.

What kinds of services will cities need to provide to a new workforce format? How will different work habits change, once the pandemic is over? How will workers continue to do their jobs in a post COVID-19 world?

“We’ll be in a different place…how we can we be a better, more equitable, smarter place,” Wunderman said.

The environment

Dealing with environmental and natural disasters has become a more common issue for cities around the world. Some places, such as Miami; Venice, Italy; and New Orleans, that have experienced more frequent flooding, are harder hit than others, prompting conversations about change and innovation.

Quentin Messer, president and CEO of New Orleans Business Alliance, said 2020 has been a reckoning year with six named hurricane storms impacting parts of Louisiana, in addition to dealing with the coronavirus.

“The pandemic attacked socialization in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and Creole cuisine. It impacted how we see ourselves, and how the world sees us,” Messer said.

But New Orleans is resilient, according to Messer, and he knows the “other side” of the pandemic is coming.

“Resiliency is learning from tragedy and demanding that the city is less vulnerable or leaves fewer residents economically vulnerable in the future,” he said.

Smart city planning creates room for private and public sector partnerships to form and flourish. Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO at Partnership for New York City, said conversations begin outside of government, presenting an early opportunity for the private sector to become involved in creative problem solving.

She estimated New York City’s gross output to be down about 13% of the nearly $1 billion it generates as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s not about the privatization of the public sector, but a way for the government to access expertise and resources to address the problems that are better solved with partnerships,” she said.

It takes collaboration

Large scale infrastructure partnerships such as interstate roadways and other obvious public improvements are examples of traditional and successful public/private sector partnerships. She believes that model can be reinvented for smart city applications, too.

Wylde said an obvious hurdle in such collaborations is the fast pace at which the private sector works and makes decisions, in contrast to the much slower pace the public sector prefers to move.

“There needs to be mutual respect and clear definitions of the goals and expectations up front,” Wylde said.

Debra Lam said formalizing public and private partnerships is important to ensure their longevity and success in creating smart cities.

By formalizing relationships between institutions rather than individuals it’s less likely they’ll break down or founder, than if roles are given to specific individuals in a more casual way.

Lam is executive director at Partnership for Inclusion Innovation at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She used cities and car transportation as an example. If and when automobile transportation changes from cars to drones or smart cars, the revenue cities rely on from parking garages or traffic ticket violations to fund their operations will go away, but expected services by residents would not.

“Digital infrastructure needs to be built understanding the standard [infrastructure] already in place. How does digital intersect with traditional infrastructure, and with people,” Lam said.

Since ancient times, human beings have built cities in one form or another. They have been an integral place for commerce, culture, art and as a place to live in community with each other.

“The naysayers are wrong- cities will always have challenges…cities will resume as a center of society,” said Architect Daniel Libeskind, from a pre-recorded video presentation.

Libeskind is founder of Studio Daniel Libeskind. He designed One World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington D.C. and Shanksville Pennsylvania.

“Technology is here to make life better. Human relationships still dominate in smart cities,” Libeskind said.