Massive Small Smart Cities

Blog 2 from the IEEE International Conference on Smart Cities, Guadalajara, Mexico.

Make me a city. This is becoming a more regular request. Examples are Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, Songdo in South Korea and Zenciti in Mexico. Specifically, these are being tagged as Smart Cities. The grandios approach to their conception is hard to stomach, when existing cities have taken centuries, if not millennia to form their culture, personality and reputation; but what is effectively the ultimate challenge for designers within the built environment is understandably hard to turn down.

Previous attempts to build cities from scratch demonstrate how fragile and risky they can be. Take a look at the “desert cities” in Egypt such as Al-Shuruq and New Cairo which have vacancy rates of up to 80% according to this article, China’s so called “ghost cities” like the downright strange English town replica, Thames Town, and the Spanish town of Ciudad Valdeluz.

Huai-Chun Hsu – originally posted to Flickr as IMG_4371

You could also add to this the struggle of the $18bn Masdar city to attract companies to relocate there despite the huge investment into the project. Co.EXIST say that “a representative remains cautious, asking for patience–a surprising statement in a state which makes a claim on all street corners to be the fastest and first–and finally admits that it is–politically–unthinkable to abandon such a project.”

Even existing cities, built on a wealth of experiences and guidance have slumped. Detroit and it’s reliance upon the automobile industry is the obvious example but even the northern manufacturing-focussed cities in the UK such as Hull, and even New York came perilously close to imploding after the decline of the textile industry.

Therefore, it is interesting to hear a recurring theme arising from this conference on Smart Cities: that a smart city is not a goal, but a process. To paraphrase Roberto Sarocco, the President of EIT Italy, “You can’t build/make a smart city, a smart city is a process, constantly providing the framework in which innovations can be implemented on a constantly morphing basis”.

So what is this framework? Put simply, the framework is the ability for a huge number of players to create data, and for a single player to assimilate data from a wide range of sources. This player may be anything from a lamp post or a car to a person.

Then along come the innovators. Kirk Sheba, a director of research at Intel, gave a presentation, not on the all encompassing control of Intel over a city, but discrete projects within their Living Labs  whereby they are plucking out useful data from the built environment and looking to see how this can overcome an identified problem, such as the efficiency of Hyde Park’s maintenance or the effectiveness of catalytic paints on increasing air quality.

The majority of work at this conference is related to relatively small projects with potentially really useful outcomes when used in specific circumstances. If implemented together, our cities have a better chance of becoming Smart Cities, with a higher resilience to change. This incremental approach to creating smart cities is the best shot at creating resilient, effective and trusted cities as opposed to the sweeping approach of vanity projects. The big challenge in the world of Smart Cities is the balancing of incremental growth with accelerating urbanisation and increasing global populations.

International Conference on Smart Cities

I timed my travel plans to the International Conference on Smart Cities in Guadalajara, Mexico to perfectly coincide with the landing of hurricane Patricia. However, having overcome a cancelled flight and a days delay, I arrived in a city that is currently planning it’s own ‘smart city’ development. However, as I am finding out, the definition of a smart city is not a done deal.

Huawei have just delivered a presentation that is demonstrating Huawei’s massive reach into the area of monitoring every single aspect of a city, in a 24-style bomb plot foiling action video which, with a different soundtrack, could just as easily be a video demonstrating their ability to implement the ultimate Big Brother society. It was framed however, with the line “smart safe city”.

Conversely, another group of delegates here are representing the town of Tequila that wishes to become a smart town with the aim of increasing tourism and industry. Another group are here pitching their idea of Zenciti, a completely new 500 acre city development based solely around the IT industry, but although they have identified areas (such as the environment and ‘living’) that they wish to be ‘smart’, there is no clear method about what this word actually entails!

What is consistent throughout this conference so far is the theme of using Big Data and the Internet of Things to overcome identified problems and current deficiencies; whether it be using an embedded system app to monitor micro-climates with the purpose of reducing air pollution, or creating an IoT based water management system for a campus.

Being an IEEE conference, a lot of the work here is boarding on computer science and, as a mechanical engineer, I won’t try to suggest that I fully understand some of the in-depth presentations, but it was refreshing to see, nestled among a number of high-tech talks, a tutorial focussed on the civic engagement of people within smart city projects. You can have all the apps and smart systems you like, but if you do not have the trust and engagement of the people that are using, or being affected by them, it is much less likely that they’re going to work! In this tutorial, run by Frieda Edgette from Novos Consulting, one of the take-home messages was that, even if your smart concept is completely online, you shouldn’t assume that you can ignore offline aspects. Constant feedback, reinforced messages and opportunities for in-person engagement facilitates understanding and trust.

For example, one presentation focussed on the use of electric vehicles within a Smart City to shift peak electricity loads by only allowing charging at night time.  My question was about the impact of this system on the expectations of everyday life, and the reply was that the consumer would be required to choose between risking having an uncharged vehicle during an emergency night journey and having lower energy bills. The project presented was interesting but I believe that ignoring human aspects of smart concepts can undermine the advanced research that is being carried out.

The conference has demonstrated the scale and complexity of a ‘smart city’ and all the complicated stuff that goes on under the bonnet. However, it’s clear that there is some tension between a company like Huawei, IBM or Cisco having complete control over a city, and uncoordinated smart offerings that are able to engage with their stakeholders more effectively.

Why urban development?

Urban development is not a new term, granted. The presence of cities has always called for some sort of structured development with Roman towns like Caistor below:

However, over the past 5 or 10 years, there has been an increasing recognition by some of the bigger engineering consultancies that urban development is where they should be focussing some of their resources. Even the mainstream media have started raising cities to the forefront, such as The Guardian’s ‘cities’ section.

The reasons for a consultancy focussing on cities are numerous but here are a few:

1. Urbanisation is happening worldwide

Urbanisation, or the movement of people from rural to urban areas is widespread. Recently we tipped the scales and for the first time more people now live in urban areas than rural areas. I took data from World Bank and mapped it to show the average rate of urbanisation in every country as a percentage increase of urban population proportion over 5 years, from 2008-2013.

Average percentage increase in proportion of urban population 2008-2013

As you can see, very few countries are not urbanising (there is the odd white one because not all data was available).

The reasons for this are many. As the Coursera MOOC called The Age of Sustainable Development, run by Columbia University, describes; the transition from agriculture to manufacturing and service industries leads to a migration from working the land to working within urban developments. Edward Glaeser writes in The Triumph of the City that cities provide opportunities and jobs, which attracts people (both poor and wealthy) to them, and then become epicentres of innovation. Furthermore, it is only the wealthy that tend to move from cities to rural parts, because it is more expensive to live in rural areas whilst maintaining the quality of life experienced in a city.

According to

2. Population growth

As with the above map, I have mapped the average rate of population growth from World Bank over the same time period (2008-2013) in the same countries.

Average population growth 2008-2013

You can see that the countries within which the population is increasing most rapidly roughly correlates to those countries in which the percentage urban population is also increasing. This means that the actual population within these cities is increasing at an even faster rate, and therefore the size and importance of these cities is rocketing. The reasons for population growth again are numerous, including lack of access to family planning and fertility preferences.

3. Future economic powerhouses

Two acronyms: BRIC and MINT.

These were coined by economist and retiring chairman of Goldman Sachs, Jim O’Neil. In this podcast, Jim says how in 2001, he had predicted Brazil, Russia, India and China to be the next economic powerhouses. He then coined Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey as the economic giants of the future. The chart below shows the predicted rise in GDP of the MINTs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25548060

A countries ability to convert their urbanisation and population growth into capital will result in them climbing these rankings. At the moment, the MINT countries do this most effectively, but the desire for countries to turn their cities into well running machines drives the demand for increasingly large scale development projects by multinational engineering consultancies.

Personally, I find it fascinating. Every city in every country is completely different. It’s not just about building buildings. It’s about creating communities, creating sustainable jobs and balancing inequality; it’s about crime, corruption and governance; social mobility, healthcare and energy; about international and internal markets and a multiple other aspects I will have forgotten to write down! Each is dependent upon and influences another, which creates a need for large multidisciplinary organisations to approach one problem from multiple, synchronised angles.

I can think of very few areas that have such a wide scope and I look forward to being involved within this field, in some form, in the future!

 

 

Sheffield Green Commission Hearing 4

The 4th Sheffield Green Commission Hearing had an extremely qualified panel consisting of Gary Topp, David Rudlin and Eddie Murphy from the Bristol Green Capital Partnership, URBED and Mott Macdonald respectively.

The hearings have the purpose of having these expert witnesses present before the Sheffield Green Commission in order to influence the future direction of future city growth. Although some of the discussion was obviously based around Sheffield, the proposals were developed upon decades of work within numerous cities by the speakers, spreading across the world.

Here, I’m going to summarise a few of the most potent quotes and themes that I feel stood out for me within the context of cities as a whole, and furthermore with a focus on Sheffield.

1. It’s not all about industry

Eddie’s talk had some focus upon education. Mott Macdonald have done the design of 13 out of 27 primary schools in Sheffield and Eddie’s well founded perspective is that change is instigated within primary schools. If you lose a child in primary school, they could become a problem to society, but if they stay and engage, they become a solution to society.

David responded to a tricky question about the effect of public cuts on our city’s growth by saying that a city’s growth is often attributed to industrial growth, but that the long term trends in industry cannot be predicted. Therefore, for long term growth, a city needs to attract bright people. These bright people then innovate.

2. Cities are not the Olympics

Gary’s experience with Bristol, having been selected to be the European Green Capital 2015, was that people often asked exactly what they were planning to achieve within this year. However, he made it clear that Bristol’s evolution has been happening since 2007 and you cannot achieve sustainable change within a single year.

Eddie’s talk showed a process through which Mott MacDonald approach a city consultancy task: Clear vision -> Strong Leadership -> Long term plan -> learn from others -> clear vision. Within this process it was emphasized that long term change does not happen in 4 years.

Eddie further mentioned this in the question session where he addressed the need for long term policies to be in place throughout different governments over decades rather than just one 5 year tenure.

3. Integration is vital

David’s talk did focus upon Sheffield itself and identified the fundamental need to have economic planning and spacial planning happening with the same theatre. Growth is not necessarily caused by economic growth, by city growth causes multiple economic benefits such as increased catchment spend, workforce attractiveness and council tax.

Gary’s talk very much looked at how providing a platform for a cluster of “green” organisations with a forward thinking leadership and government enabled Bristol to progress on it’s sustainability agenda. Gary said how government alone cannot reposition a city, an opinion echoed by Eddie on the subject of domestic energy reduction; even when a government throws money at a scheme such as the Green Deal, behaviour inhibits action.

What about Sheffield?

David spoke the most about Sheffield, including his thoughts that the tram network should be extended, and suggested (but did not confirm) that he thinks Attercliffe has a big potential to be remodelled to become a lively and sustainable urban neighbourhood.

Eddie, although not focussing on Sheffield too much, suggested that the largely low skilled workforce needs to evolve in order for the city to develop. There are links between education and sustainability, and Sheffield currently does not manage to keep it’s bright and skilled people as much as it should be able to do.

Gary, with experience in other cities, addressed Sheffield the least but suggested that growth should not be to the detriment of innovation in Sheffield (linking with Eddie and David’s views)

All in all, a fascinating insight into some experienced minds, and good to see so many keen people in the audience like myself.