Future of Cities Featured

ESI ThoughtLab and CityAge Invite City Leaders to Attend The 2021 Smart Cities Strategy Summit

by

An Exclusive Meeting of Global City Leaders

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a watershed event for cities, with lasting impacts on how residents will live, travel, shop, and work. Our ground-breaking research into the post-pandemic plans of 167 cities worldwide—to be released at the summit—reveals that cities will need to morph into Cities 4.0 to achieve their social, environmental, and economic goals and meet their citizens’ needs after the pandemic ends.
‍
Cities 4.0 are urban centers that will evolve beyond yesterday’s smart cities to transform and interconnect various urban domains by leveraging technology and data, and by using a wider set of partnerships and innovative financing models. Just as importantly, Cities 4.0 will engage and empower their citizens, and will work with communities to take their social, environmental, and economic agenda to a higher level, fully aligned with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The Smart Cities Strategy Summit will bring together city leaders from around the world to exchange views on solutions for a post-pandemic world. Participants will include urban experts from ESI ThoughtLab and CityAge and thought leaders from the business, academic, and government, who will help moderate and contribute to the discussion. Unlike other urban-focused events, the Smart Cities Strategy Summit is an invitation-only interchange that will provide a virtual forum for a cross-pollination of ideas and practices, drawing on our latest evidence-based research.
‍
Please join us at the summit so that you can gather insights from your peers and our analysis to craft a successful roadmap to achieve your post-pandemic urban development goals.

Special thanks to our event sponsors

           

 

How Business Will Permanently Change in 2021

by

Succeeding in a Transformed Post-Pandemic World

With the end of the pandemic in sight, a new U.S. administration in place, and Brexit a reality, 2021 is quickly becoming a new dawn for business and government. Digital, social, and economic shifts will continue to gain momentum, propelling companies and cities into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a defining moment for business leaders and policymakers. Like other seminal turning points in history, it is galvanizing technological, market, and social forces already in an unprecedented manner.

As this new era continues to unfold, private- and public-sector leaders will require visionary thinking and actionable insights to keep their organizations profitable and their cities safe. To fill this need, ESI ThoughtLab is conducting several thought leadership research programs throughout 2021 to analyze how industries and cities will need to adapt their approaches and digital strategies to succeed. Are you and your clients prepared for 10 ways that business will forever change?

  1. Everything goes digital. Digitalization will upend all industries, giving rise to remote medicine, online education, mobile banking, and smart manufacturing. From operations and sales to HR and financial management, everything that can be better done digitally, will be.
  2. Customers reset priorities. A year of social distancing is permanently shifting the demands, priorities, and shopping behaviors of customers across generations. Customers will expect digital experiences, hyper-personalization, and social awareness from businesses.
  3. The pre-pandemic workplace does not return. Now that agile and remote digital working has been shown to boost productivity, there will be no turning back. Boundaries between firms and ecosystem partners will blur, IT platforms will modernize, and the future of work will start now.
  4. Smart connectivity and on-cloud platforms transform business. The convergence of AI, IoT, cloud, 5G, and faster computing will speed business processes and decision-making while creating seamless connections among billions of devices, products, and services.
  5. Distance loses its relevance. Proximity will matter less to companies across industries, from retail and entertainment to banking and manufacturing. Customer relations will become contactless, except where personal access can provide added value or a competitive edge.
  6. The pandemic ends, but disruption remains. The pandemic has shown that we live in an interconnected world where disruption can occur suddenly and cascade unexpectedly. Agility and resilience will drive business success.
  7. Technology empowers citizens and consumers. Digital connectivity will give people greater input into political, business, and product decisions. Governments will use technology to achieve their social, economic, and environmental goals, with an eye on building digital equality.
  8. Cities adopt a 4.0 framework. The most successful cities will use technology, data, and citizen engagement to achieve sustainable development goals. They will use an agile ecosystem of partners to drive change and support new ways of doing business.
  9. Capitalism becomes inclusive. The crisis has served as a wake-up call for business to think, act, and invest for the common good. Firms will move from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism to meet the changing expectations of customers, investors, and employees.
  10. The US democratic tsunami will redraw the business landscape. While businesses will likely see increases in taxes and regulations, they should also expect a revitalized economy with greater geopolitical alignment and a sharper focus on sustainability and social responsibility.

Big Shifts Lie Ahead

The 2021 thought leadership agenda has been set. The pandemic has shown that we live in an increasingly interconnected world where disruption can occur suddenly and cascade unexpectedly. Agility and resilience must continue to be a driving force for business and government to succeed. Massive transformative shifts lie ahead, and to help our clients and governments around the world, we will be building off of these themes and conducting several cutting-edge evidence-based research initiatives throughout the year.

We’re calling this moment ‘The Big Shift’, and we would love to hear your thoughts on these topics.  In our opinion, successful thought leadership is a team sport, requiring collaboration and the right blend of analytical, editorial, and marketing skills. Please contact us today if you would like to learn how you can join one of our many exciting programs.

 

Lou Celi is Founder and CEO of ESI ThoughtLab. During his more than 35 years of research, marketing and publishing work, Mr. Celi has helped top organizations build their businesses by engaging corporate and government decision makers. Prior to setting up ESI ThoughtLab, Lou was board director and president of Oxford Economics, where he built the firm’s successful business in the Americas and set up its global thought leadership practice.

Bogota: How Data Helps Tackle Mobility and Transportation Challenges

by

Urban mobility is a critical factor for the economic productivity of a city, and for the quality of life of its citizens and their access to basic services. In the wake of COVID-19, cities are reevaluating their urban mobility strategies and policies. According to ESI ThoughtLab’s survey of 167 cities globally, 55% of city leaders said the pandemic had caused them to reconsider mobility and transportation approaches to accommodate changing citizen behaviors. This was the second most important pandemic impact reported. The top impact was that COVID-19 would cause a reconsideration of approaches to urban planning, reported by 69% of respondents.

Mobility was a major area of focus for the city of Bogota, Colombia even before the pandemic. With 7.8 million inhabitants and 1.2 million vehicles, the metropolitan area has been suffering from significant traffic congestion problems since the 1990s. The 2019 Global Traffic Scorecard shows that Bogota is the city most affected by traffic congestion in the world, where drivers lose an average of 191 hours a year on the road. According to the local government’s estimate, the economic cost of traffic congestion is US$1.8 billion annually, equivalent to the overall annual investment in health.

Traffic problems have become worse because of the increase in the number of private vehicles on the road in recent years and the reduction in the capacity of public transport as the city’s population grows. In our city survey, Bogota’s city leaders cited mobility and transportation as among their main investment priorities over the next three years, second only to public safety and security.

Years ago, authorities set up alternate-day driving (based on odd- and even-numbered license plates), but the initiative has not been effective at reducing congestion. More recently, they turned to more technology-driven solutions. In 2019, in partnership with World Sensing (a Spanish IoT company specializing in sensing solutions for smart cities), Bogota was able to develop one of the most complete and advanced mobility management solutions in the world. It integrates data from traffic lights, bus stops, traffic cameras, bicycle lanes, and other elements to provide a comprehensive understanding of urban mobility that enables real-time management.

Real-time data key for developing solutions

Bogota has learned that data is a powerful tool for pinpointing and addressing the most pressing transportation issues. It helped officials design measures to reduce congestion and contributed to improved road security by helping them understand the factors that cause accidents.

According to Grace Quintana, a leader in digital government and transformation, one of the biggest challenges to solving mobility problems was acquiring and utilizing the real-time data needed to create an efficient government plan.

“We created an open data model called GAQO, focused on Governance, Administration, Quality and Optimization of data,” said Quintana. The tool was created with the aim of facilitating use of data to solve any kind of problem in Bogota, particularly in the public sector. For instance, officials are in the process of implementing GAQO in the National Health Superintendency.

“What GAQO does is create a roadmap detailing what our problems are and what kind of data can help respond to them. For instance, how many cars are in Bogota, where do accidents happen, at what time, what color are the cars?” said Quintana.

 

Alongside Jorge Sneider Quintana, a mechanical engineer with expertise in transportation, Grace Quintana conducted aa mobility study utilizing GAQO that helped to determine a key data point to reduce congestion: 65% of car trips in Bogota involve only one or two passengers, a factor that increases traffic dramatically in a city where 60% of vehicles traveling on the road are private. This information revealed that heavy load vehicles were not primarily responsible for Bogota’s traffic jams as was originally thought; instead, the main culprit was private cars.

This information also allowed Quintana to pursue other solutions that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve the city’s air quality, minimize road accidents, and reduce traffic. Her team is working to develop a new vehicle that would only occupy 50% of the space that is currently taken up by a normal car on the road. The project is still in its early stages but, if successful, would allow Bogota residents to drive their vehicles every day without restrictions (instead of on alternate days, as is currently mandated).

“It’s important to make data open, available, and useful to people. GAQO ensures that no data is wasted and that we are utilizing it to satisfy the need for information and to solve issues. This model generates value for the government, giving us the ability to improve products and services,” said Quintana.

‍

Expert Views: Smart Cities Should Be Sustainable Too

by

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become an essential tool to overcome the devastating impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on cities. ESI ThoughtLab’s survey of 167 cities worldwide determined that 77% of cities have included each of the SDGs as a framework for their plans. With a public health crisis to solve despite exhausted budgets, cities will need to find sustainable solutions to recover.

ESI ThoughtLab’s thought leadership team asked experts participating in our Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World global study to offer their perspectives on how the SDGs can help rebuild cities after the pandemic shock and serve as a roadmap in their future development.

Our research shows a clear correlation between smart city maturity and progress on the SDGs. How do cities use smart innovation to achieve their sustainable development goals?

William Baver, Vice President, Smart Platform, NTT: NTT certainly believes there is a correlation between smart city maturity and progress on the SDGs. Smart solutions and data are powerful tools for cities to achieve their sustainability goals: these can in fact provide useful information not only to track progress on how they are doing against their goals and set new measurable KPIs, but also to really understand their starting points and therefore outline a precise and relevant strategy. Cities without data have a harder time starting and working towards clear objectives and consequently they often end up failing because they lack a strategy aligned with their situations and capabilities. By focusing on specific citizens’ needs, cities can easily get momentum and then enlarge the scope of their projects.

Jose Antonio Ondiviela, Microsoft Western Europe Industry Executive Smart Cities:  Smart innovation is the main driver to achieve the SDGs, not only for goal #11 (Sustainable Cities) but also for the rest. Technology plays a crucial role in achieving sustainable cities and communities, as it is the key enabler for energy, water, air, traffic, buildings and processes to work efficiency and in alignment with expected goals.

Andrew Caruso, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: Technology enables SDG progress because it can integrate both technical and social solutions. It optimizes use of scarce resources, connects governments with their citizens, and scales quickly to respond to dynamically changing conditions. Further, it enables both front-end insights, and feedback loops that power a cycle of continuous improvement which drives progress.

Gordon Feller, Board Member, Alliance for Innovation: Some cities are using SDGs as a vision statement and as a goal-post. Other cities are using SDGs as a benchmarking tool. This allows city executives to evaluate themselves (and/or their contractors), by comparison, against other cities that are either geographically close or similar to them. When benchmarking their urban performance against the SDGs, these cities are using the SDGs as a stand-in for external criteria.

Gerald Uche Maduabuchi, Director of Sales, Panorama Data Solutions Ltd: Africa faces the most challenges in meeting the SDG commitments with its highest environmental degradation, poverty and unemployment rates. But, counterpoints like social media and high mobile broadband penetration provide some unique opportunities for Smart City solutions. Smart City technologies can help Africa meet its SDG commitment. It entails enabling policy reforms and the use of new and existing technologies to improve all sectors of the economy.

Miguel Eiras Antunes, Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader, Deloitte: The link between smart city maturity and progress on SDGs is almost logical, and now we have the data from the ESI ThoughtLab survey to prove that link. While traditionally characterized by high population density and construction, cities are now rethinking their structure and functions to secure ecosystem resilience and human well-being and ensuring sustainable urban living. COVID-19 has only further accelerated the trend to create these cleaner air, walkable, green, bicycle cities.

Eugenie L. Birch, Nussdorf Professor and co-Director, Penn IUR: Cities use smart innovation to advance any number of SDGs depending on what they have selected to concentrate. For example, if they are focusing on Goal 3 health, they might use smart phone apps to help mothers keep track of their children’s vaccinations. If they are pursuing Goal 11 cities and human settlements, they might invest in various systems (water, sanitation, transit) to make them more efficient.

Ton de Vries, Senior Director, Business Development, Bentley Systems: The City of Porto, Portugal is focused on improving its entire urban water cycle. They commissioned a smart water management platform called H2Porto. This digital twin has helped to improve the accuracy of data produced from sensor readings to nearly 99%. Their water service interruptions fell by 22.9%, sewer collapses decreased by 54%; repairs for pipe burst and sewer and service connections improved as well by 8.3% and 45.5%.  The integration of real-time data and ability to access information in the field helped improve operations by 23%.‍

Cities like New York, Copenhagen, London, and Singapore stand out as leaders in both sustainability and smart innovation—what we call Cities 4.0. What can city leaders learn from these 4.0 approaches? Do they represent the urban model of the future? What do you see as the hallmarks of success for cities in the future?  

Jose Antonio Ondiviela, Microsoft Western Europe Industry Executive Smart Cities: Most cities are still in the 2.0 stage, gathering data to monitor and control the city. Few are starting the 3.0 ladder where they offer a citizen-centered service and none has fully achieved the 4.0 as a Cognitive/Inteligent city with technology managing all automated processes and citizens fully and permanently connected and cocreating the future of the city.

Aseem Joshi, General Manager of Smart Cities, Honeywell: Three important factors differentiate these cities in a shared vision, which is developed with deep stakeholder engagement and brought to reality by strong, execution-focused leadership. Instead of siloed approaches, these cities take a more integrated view to create improvements across a range of functional areas. As Honeywell has worked with multiple cities around the world, we have found this to be a consistent theme for success.

Jarendra Reddy, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: Many cities struggle to drive growth without compromising the quality of life for citizens or the long term social and environmental sustainability of their communities. Cities 4.0 — those making measurable progress in both SDGs and Smart Solutions — create balanced growth and share the benefits of this growth across broader segments of society. Investment in enabling infrastructure, grassroots innovation programs, tailored service provision, reduced dependence on scarce resources, and innovative delivery models are hallmarks of smart city solutions that advance SDG achievement.

Eugenie L. Birch, Nussdorf Professor and co-Director, Penn IUR: Many cities can learn from New York, Copenhagen, London, and Singapore but they have to realize that all adaptations have to be context specific – it is important for the “model” cities to reveal the conditions that allowed them to undertake their innovations and equally important for the adapting city to understand its own conditions – not to adopt something without adapting it.

Ton de Vries, Senior Director, Business Development, Bentley Systems: In our experience, we see successful innovation happening when collaboration happens. It’s where city leaders are collaborating across departments, partnering with technology providers, and partnering third party companies to identify a problem to solve or a service to provide, to connect the right data sources to build a digital twin fit for purpose, and delight their stakeholders by deliver new or improved services.

Our research shows that cities making the most progress on the SDGs typically monitor that progress, conduct voluntary reviews, and designate specific departments to lead SDG initiatives. What best practices would you recommend that cities follow to achieve the SDGs?    

Andrew Caruso, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: Strategy alone is not enough. Monitoring and evaluation help track progress on implementation at a tactical and operational level. Interventions should be informed by business case frameworks with SDGs as a central objective, using evidence to understand the triple-bottom-line outcomes and describing impacts in ways relevant to stakeholder groups. A system thinking approach is essential to aligning stakeholders and disciplines around objectives, performance, and needed refinement to achieve SDGs.

Gerald Uche Maduabuchi, Director of Sales, Panorama Data Solutions Ltd: The bottom-up approach is a holistic and most productive approach whereby the government institutes some study groups to conduct grassroots research and stakeholders’ consultation forums with the citizens, communities, NGOs, trade unions, private and foreign companies to enact a bill and formulate a Smart City Act. The Act, through its frameworks and directives, will be used to form an independent governing body who will be in charge of developing rules and regulations that will create an enabling environment for the SDGs and Smart City innovations; and it is achievable at any or all levels of government: federal, state or local.

Eugenie L. Birch, Nussdorf Professor and co-Director, Penn IUR: Cities need to align their own goals and objectives with those of the SDGs.  Many cities already have sustainability plans, so the key is to see where the SDG efforts and their own agree on directions. In other words, the global community cannot expect to impose the SDGs on cities – they have to let the cities (and nations) use the aspirational framework (that is what the SDGs are) as guidance.

‍

Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World is an in-depth global study designed to create an evidence-based roadmap to make cities safer, more sustainable, and resilient. The research reveals lessons learned from the pandemic, centered on the social, environmental, and economic imperatives that matter most, and based on objective quantitative analysis that shows which investments and technologies will be most effective for achieving their goals.

Managing the Challenges of a Post-Pandemic World: Cities 4.0

by

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring a healthy, safe, and prosperous future for citizens has been a burning imperative for city leaders around the world. At the same time, the health crisis has raised the importance of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which many cities have adopted as a framework for achieving their social, environmental, and economic objectives. In a new survey of 167 cities conducted by ESI ThoughtLab for its study Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World, over a quarter of city leaders said that the pandemic had made the SDGs a higher priority. A third said the crisis had stimulated new thinking about their social priorities overall.

The pandemic also is accelerating the need for cities to adopt smart innovation and digital solutions, as it transforms citizen behaviors and expectations, and redefines how people work and live: for 63% of cities, the biggest lesson learned during the pandemic was just how crucial smart city programs were for their future. And it is underscoring the role of collaboration among business, government, and academia to address long-term urban challenges and to build resilience. Those cities that make the most progress on the SDGs while also leading in smart city innovation will be the most successful as we enter the post-pandemic world.

How Innovation Can Drive Sustainable Development Goal’s

A prime objective of this ongoing research is to assess how smart urban solutions can help cities achieve the SDGs. To measure the progress that cities have made in driving the SDGs, ESI ThoughtLab developed an SDG progress framework. Our framework categorizes cities into three groups: implementers, which are in an early stage of SDG adoption; advancers, which are making progress on a range of SDGs; and sprinters, which are making fast progress on most areas of sustainable development. Twenty-two percent are classified as implementers, 57% as advancers, and 21% as sprinters.

According to the research, nearly 8 in 10 cities have adopted the SDGs as part of their plans and around 60% have made considerable progress across all the 17 goals. Small cities with less than a million people are much farther along than larger cities in embracing the SDG framework. By region, North American and European cities are ahead, while those in Africa and Asia trail behind.

Our economists have also created a smart city maturity framework to assess which cities are ahead in using smart city solutions and technologies to achieve their social, environmental, and economic goals. A smart city leader was defined based on its maturity in the use of technology across the urban domains, its use of data, and the steps that it takes to ensure citizen and stakeholder engagement. Thirty percent of cities are classified as beginners, 49% as intermediates, and 21% as smart city leaders.

The Rise of Cities 4.0

To analyze the impact of smart city solutions on sustainability, we identified a subset of SDG champions that also lead in smart technology. These cities, which we call “Cities 4.0”, serve as models for the cities of the future. They continue the evolution of smart cities from Smart Cities 1.0 to Smart Cities 3.0 and go beyond, by showing how to effectively use technology, data, and citizen engagement to drive the SDGs. They are in step with new ways of working and excel at using an agile ecosystem of partners to spur change. They demonstrate how, with the expectations of citizens rising, and businesses gearing up for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the most successful cities will be digitally transformed, fully sustainable, and skilled in entirely new ways.

What sets Cities 4.0 apart?

Cities 4.0 are well ahead in all aspects of data management. They are masters at collecting, integrating, protecting, and making data accessible to citizens. Most of them have policies, resources, and budgets in place to manage and analyze data at a high level of excellence. They also tend to be more open in their use of data and integrate it across city departments.

Cities 4.0 also unlock greater value from their ecosystems. They are better at proactively managing their partnerships and they develop partnership skills across their city domains. They prioritize public-private partnerships more than others and are more open to new ideas. And they enjoy greater personnel, fiscal, functional, and regulatory independence from national, state, and provincial control.

Cities 4.0 also ensure that citizens are engaged and digitally connected. They use a combination of digital and traditional methods to communicate with citizens. They actively engage citizens and stakeholders when setting goals, demonstrate the value of projects, and ensure that disadvantaged populations, including the poor and handicapped, are involved in the decision-making process.

 

ESI ThoughtLab’s ongoing research program into sustainability and smart city solutions will serve as a roadmap for city actors across the world looking for best practices and to compare solutions. Our full findings will be available in March 2021, but readers can already visit our Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World program microsite for the latest articles, insights, program updates, and planned events.

Dr. Daniel Miles is the Chief Operating Officer for ESI ThoughtLab, Econsult Solutions’ thought leadership arm. As part of his work for ESI ThoughtLab, Dr. Miles specializes in assessing the impact of technologies on companies, cities, industries, and business performance. He has served as the research director on Smarter Cities 2025: Building a Sustainable Business and Financing Plan, Building a Hyperconnected City, and Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World, to name a few. He has also led studies on cashless cities, autonomous vehicle readiness, the economics of cybersecurity, the ROI of artificial intelligence, and digital transformation of small businesses.

 

Expert Views: Post-Pandemic Trends in Cities

by

As city leaders around the world continue to cope with the impacts of COVID-19, they are also assessing which will remain with us in a post-pandemic world. Repercussions of the health crisis, including recession, high unemployment, and the new urban exodus, have highlighted weaknesses and underscore why leaders need to improve public health and other infrastructures, create new jobs, and adopt new technologies and innovative solutions to address their social, environmental, and economic challenges.

ESI ThoughtLab’s thought leadership team asked experts participating in our Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World study to offer their perspectives on how the pandemic will reshape cities, what future trends they foresee for urban centers, and how smart technology and solutions, along with new partnerships, will help city leaders address the challenges they face.

Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World is a multi-organization initiative designed to create an evidence-based roadmap to making cities safe, sustainable, and resilient. The research will reveal lessons learned from the pandemic, centered on the social, environmental, and economic imperatives that matter most, and based on objective quantitative analysis that shows which investments and technologies will be most effective for achieving their goals. It builds off of last year’s research program, Building a Hyperconnected City.

‍

What will cities look like over the next 3-5 years? How will city living, shopping, working, and mobility change? Will Main Street look different? How so?‍

Kok-Chin TAY, Chairman, Smart Cities Network: COVID-19 has had tremendous impact on cities worldwide. Hence, future cities need to see an exponential growth in their use of technologies for city governance, to make progress with the digital economy, and get used to the future of work.

‍Gordon Feller, Advisor to cities; Board Member: 4 VC-funded smart-city solution providers; 4 non-profit smart-city solution providers: Executives who help lead cities—whether elected, appointed, or otherwise—must be armed with tools, and usable real-time data is among the most vital of those critical tools. Solid research and analysis can help leaders because they’re finding that data-at-rest is often found less useful than data-in-motion.

Miguel Eiras Antunes, Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader, Deloitte: The pandemic will have a long tail, and cities will take some time to bounce back. We will continue to see slower economic growth, a broader focus on public health infrastructure, and cities struggling with backlogs and pent-up demand. But we will see an emergence of an adaptive governance style that focuses on data-driven decision-making, adopting emerging technology, and implementing innovative policies.

‍Kevin Taylor, Segment Development Manager, Smart Cities, Axis Communications: In past years, there was a global mega-trend of populations moving into metropolitan centers. More recently, and in light of COVID-19, it is likely that more suburban areas will grow into mid-size cities. The things that have drawn people to cities over the last 30 years—economic opportunity, cultural/social/entertainment choices, and an environment conducive to mass transit and micro-mobility options—are likely to be scaled down into smaller “home-town” style communities.

Mark Saunders, Academic Director, Zigurat Global Institute of Technology: Cities may implement different changes, but it is important to appreciate which may be temporary and which more sustained. Key changes such as contactless payments are likely to become ubiquitous and permanent; issues like “the future of work” and the utilization of city center office space may be more dynamic.

‍Andrew Caruso, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: COVID-19 has reinforced fundamental principles of healthy, resilient communities. The ability to access the necessities of everyday life within one’s local context—food, education, economic opportunity, transit, safe space for exercise, and digital connection—has proven essential to surviving catastrophic risk events of all types. Buildings will need to increasingly flex to accommodate new uses. In the wake of rising eCommerce, we hope Main Streets find reawakening in their history of social and civic functions, potentially reinvigorated by rising levels of non-motorized transport adoption.

Raúl García-Rodríguez, Advisor, Real Estate Market Advisory Group, UNECE: Cities will be less automobile focused; people will try to reduce their mobility range to closer areas thus fostering neighborhood life rather than city life. All services will eventually return to the “closer” environment, suburban development will no longer focus just on retail services, offices, and industrial uses as all uses (other than non-polluting production) will reallocate within the “closer” areas.

‍William Baver, Vice President, Smart Platform, NTT: With remote working becoming a norm rather than an exception, new localisms emerge, and cities will have to deal with this by decentralizing their services and increasing flexibility to meet a demand that can scale up or down. Data-driven information can certainly help city leaders here in understanding for instance which facilities are used and how.

Yi Wang, Head of Global Development Program, ANBOUND: Science and technology are driving the sustainable development of cities. The development of diversity and equality with access to conceivable gadgets could prepare for uncertainties. City leaders have ideals and can handle their urban planning properly, but would they be able to plan people’s life? We will be rethinking the needs of people in a city that is truly people-oriented and that aims to bring about urban prosperity.

‍What techniques and tools will cities of the future use to achieve their sustainable goals? What role will smart technology, partnerships, and financing play in improving social, environmental, and economic conditions?

Yi Wang, Head of Global Development Program, ANBOUND: In today’s information society, material wealth can be digitized, including currency. History, cultural, and artistic expression are also in the process of rapid digitization. The smart city will not just rely on the tedious technical systems, but rather on smart technology like VR, AI, cloud, IoT, 5G/6G, robotics, biometrics, and anti-digital crime. Smart solutions will facilitate data platforms open to the public and engage business executives in regulations and policymaking.

Kevin Taylor, Segment Development Manager, Smart Cities, Axis Communications: The first tool that cities should leverage is an internal culture of collaboration. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it has revealed that no one person, stakeholder or department within government has all the answers to solve all the needs of the community. Best of all, this tool costs cities nothing; they already have everything they need to put it to work for the good of the community they serve. Cities will adopt technologies that are open architecture and compliant to established standards.

MC, UE, Launch of Metro 21, Smart Cities Institute, March 2 2018

Karen Lightman, Executive Director, Metro21: Smart Cities Institute, Carnegie Mellon University:Techniques such as user-centered design and design-thinking principles should guide any city of the future—because cities are about the people, not the gadgets. Yes, we should aim to improve efficiency, but not at the expense of human nature or humans in general. We should be mindful of diversity, equity, and inclusion to ensure that any techniques or technology are based on improving quality of life for all.

‍Miguel Eiras Antunes, Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader, Deloitte: New and emerging technologies will play a vital role. We will see a truly hyperconnected era in cities with the convergence of IoT, 5G, cloud, and edge computing. For instance, today’s smart cities might have sensor networks of a few thousand connected devices. Imagine a scenario where millions of such devices can be connected in a city center, measuring temperature, humidity, air quality, flood levels, pedestrian traffic, and more.

‍Jarendra Reddy, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: Smart solutions will enable transformations in both demand and supply. Real-time feedback could help consumers understand the impacts of consumption patterns and make individual decisions that optimize their use of scarce resources. Likewise, providers can leverage more robust data to assess future requirements and pinpoint opportunities to improve products and services, leading to more efficient and less impactful consumption and production patterns.

‍Karen Lightman, Executive Director, Metro21, Smart Cities Institute, Carnegie Mellon University: Techniques such as user-centered design and design-thinking principles should guide any city of the future—because cities are about the people, not the gadgets. Yes, we should aim to improve efficiency, but not at the expense of human nature or humans in general. We should be mindful of diversity, equity, and inclusion to ensure that any techniques or technology are based in improving quality of life for all.

William Baver, Vice President, Smart Platform, NTT: Smart technology, data, and analytics will need to be translated into new sustainable economic and environmental policies. Cities will need to learn how to harness the power of data to make more informed decisions and ultimately achieve their goals. AI and analytics-based solutions providing real-time and predictive information will be key alongside having better data and multiple data sources.

Mark Saunders, Academic Director, Zigurat Global Institute of Technology: Cities need to fully embrace a range of technologies to automate activities to make them more efficient and safer. Key “backbone” systems, like Internet of Things networks, allow a range of downstream benefits across the whole gamut of city life. We all need to help cities understand the hugely positive business cases around smart city developments and act on them.

‍Raul Garcia-Rodriguez, Advisor, Real Estate Market Advisory Group, UNECE: Corporate social responsibility and sustainability criteria will be the necessary catalyst for companies to survive. Innovation and technology will allow the adoption of sustainable criteria and policies for every process and activity. The financial sector could and should be the main catalyst when adopting CSR and sustainability criteria by providing capital for the transition conditioned to ESG impacts.‍

How will cities use a range of partnerships to achieve their future goals? How will they leverage partnerships with companies, government agencies, other cities, start-ups, universities, and other entities to make things happen?

‍Per Bjorkdahl, Sustainability Sales Engagement Director, Axis Communications: Construction of current partnerships needs to be revised to sustain dramatic changes that now caused disruptions. New partnerships need to broaden their scope to be able to withstand disruptions. Research institutes can contribute by narrow focus on local conditions backed by the research of best practices in a much wider context.

‍William Baver, Vice President, Smart Platform, NTT: Cities cannot be alone in this journey. They will need to partner with local, regional, global organizations across both the public and private sector to make this happen. We will see the creation of new business models that can allow these groups to exist and cooperate while sharing costs and profits. To make things happen, a two-way dialogue will be important to receive and share information on all fronts.

‍Kok-Chin TAY, Chairman, Smart Cities Network: Ecosystems of stakeholders will start to develop, as people begin to see the benefit of partnerships with the increased online interactions. Such partnerships will help fill the gaps that individual companies cannot fulfill.

‍Andrew Caruso, Director, Urban Solutions, Hatch: Our hope is that cities emerge from this crisis with the same vision—the courage to reimagine existing relationships and structures between stakeholders, and the focused ambition to generate opportunities for shared value and prosperity. Much like a vaccine trial, reinventing our cities will be iterative. It will require quantitative analysis and qualitative reflection. We must talk about failures as much as successes, shift away from celebrating the individual successes to collective prosperity, and leverage and invent new technology at every step.

John Tuohy, Director, Smart Cities Strategy, Oracle: Cities will need to partner with other academic, non-profit, and government agencies to use platforms for online services and engagement that may have a high startup cost. An example might be using a non-profit platform to attend a conference shared by multiple conference providers. Also, start-ups that offer niche pointed solutions in lieu of expensive enterprise solutions, provided they can provide integration and security.

Mark Saunders, Academic Director, Zigurat Global Institute of Technology: Resilience is a “team sport” and no single party can succeed on their own. While cities compete with one another, there is also much to do to share and work together. Sharing “what works” and “what didn’t work” are key aspects of this and when cities define longer term outcome-based aspirations, different companies, agencies, and institutions can identify how they are able to contribute and collaborate.

Miguel Eiras Antunes, Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader, Deloitte: A successful development strategy for cities depends on six critical factors: technological innovation, citizen involvement and co-creation, strategic partnerships, local leadership strategy, innovations in public procurement, and new innovative financing systems. It is necessary to create the right conditions for people to develop their business, invest in education, create a vibrant talent economy, and evolve a robust technology ecosystem. Governments can’t do it alone: they will need to build a broad, multi-stakeholder ecosystem on the ground.

‍