SMART CITY MIAMI®Magazine - SUSTAINABLE CITIES EXPERIENCES

MARCH 2022

SMART CITY MIAMI MAGAZINE

SPECIAL EDITION

SUSTAINABLE CITIES EXPERIENCES INNOVATION & CHANGE

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

CLIMATE ACTION Smart City Miami | 1

Smart CITIES Americas

BUILDING THE SMART CITY ECOSYSTEM IN SOUTH FLORIDA

We work with local, national and international actors offering a wide scope of news, research and events production to ensure sustainable solutions to the complex urban environmental issues that major cities are facing worldwide.

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LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Welcome, I am thrilled to present to you this special edition of Smart City Miami Magazine, produced and published by Smart Cities Americas LLC. Sustainable Cities Experiences was the theme of Smart City Expo Miami 2021, and the relevance of the subjects presented motivated us to launch this special edition. The event, in its second annual edition, attracted more than 5,000 participants who attended sessions on Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, Resilient Infrastructure, and Quality of Life.

Setting up the event infrastructure and inviting the speakers was a tremendous personal experience. Dealing with brilliant people, experts in their fields, added a lot in terms of personal relationship and learning in the assembly of each talk.

The participation of professionals from different countries, cultures, and languages r​​ esulted in a roster of 50 award-winning and globally recognized speakers, the best thinkers in urbanism and technology, to raise awareness of the importance of Urban Planning, Climate Action, and Green Economy.

The presentation of concrete actions turned into real experiences for the participants. Despite the challenges the urban life faces today, there is optimism.

This Sustainable Cities Experiences had innovative content, with an easy-to-use networking system and a fun interactive component. In essence, the immersive experience and impactful talks and connections empowered participants, catapulting the movement

with practical, optimistic approaches to fostering climate action. We need to come up with more nature-based solutions for a better quality of life.

The event brought Miami to the forefront of innovation in urban solutions with sustainability;.

Among participants, you had representatives from cities, countries, local, national and international technical bodies, non-governmental organizations, corporations, startups, and entrepreneurs.

We have to thank the speakers, the participants, and the organizations that supported us, and, especially, the support and participation of Mayors Francis Suarez and Daniella Levine Cava.

It is also necessary to acknowledge the professionalism and dedication of the Smart Cities Americas team, which contributed greatly to the success of the event and to the publication of this magazine.

Bernardo Scheinkman

Architect & Urban Planner Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas LLC Founder, CEO & Curator, Smart City Expo Miami

Bernardo Scheinkman Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas Miami, Florida Architect and urbanist Bernardo Scheinkman is building South Florida’s smart city ecosystem and leading it through Smart Cities Americas, the platform for smart cities intelligence, trade shows, and conferences. He interacts with local, national, and international stakeholders to offer a wide range of news, research, and events through his organization that promote sustainable solutions for complex urban environments.

Smart City Miami | 3

SMART CITY MIAMI MAGAZINE

Bernardo Scheinkman Publisher & Founder, CEO & Curator, Smart Cities Americas Sherri Balefsky Hanson Editor & Creative Director Wendy Goya Marketing Manager Riley Kaminer Writer Editorial Advisory Board Jonathan Reichental Founder & CEO, Human Future Paul Doherty CEO, The Digit Group Leticia Latino CEO, Neptuno USA Matthew James Bailey CEO, AIEthics.World Smart City Miami Magazine - Special Edition - Sustainable Cities Experiences is a special edition published by Smart Cities Americas LLC with content from the Smart City Expo Miami 2021 - Sustainable Cities Experiences.

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SMART CITIES AMERICAS BUILDING SOUTH FLORIDA’S SMART CITY ECOSYSTEM

Smart Cities Americas is attracting leading smart cities companies to Miami that will generate $40 billion revenue for South Florida businesses, while creating more than 20,000 new jobs in our region.

S

mart Cities Americas is building South Florida’s smart city ecosystem. Led by architect and urbanist Bernardo Scheinkman, it is the leading platform for smart cities intelligence, trade shows, and conferences. The organization interacts with local, national, and international stakeholders to offer a wide range of news, research, and events that promote sustainable solutions for complex urban environments.

According to Scheinkman, “A city is smart if its citizens are smart.” Technology might immediately come to mind when people think of smart cities. However, technology is just a tool that enables modern urban areas. Smart Cities Americas believes in focusing on what citizens want and need from their government, and using new technologies to make the government work for them.

It is clear that businesses stand to gain from the smart city revolution. Global market research consulting firm Frost & Sullivan expects the market value of smart city opportunities to surpass $2.4 trillion by 2025. Technology spending comprises

6 | Smart City Miami

approximately 15% ($327 billion) of this overall valuation. The remaining 85% is distributed across activities including education, smart infrastructure, smart healthcare, smart energy, smart transportation, and smart building.

According to Frost & Sullivan, there will be more than 26 smart cities by 2025, 16 of which will be located in North America or Europe.

However, smart cities are undeniably a global phenomenon. The research firm reports that more than 70% of global smart city spending by 2030 will be from the U.S., Western Europe, and China.

Smart Cities Americas is fostering a community around urban innovation. The organization unites smart cities stakeholders under one roof, from architects and urban planners to business leaders and cutting-edge technologists.

Miami continues to be validated as a top destination for developing new ideas and catalyzing innovation. Leading startups and venture capital firms are increasingly growing roots in the Magic City. Miami is home to innovative environmentally-conscious

companies working in sectors as diverse as mobility, marine tech, and built infrastructure.

Equally, local government officials are tackling climate change head on. The City of Miami has committed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, having set out an action plan for building a green economy. MiamiDade county even has the world’s first Chief Heat Officer.

Smart Cities Americas’ flagship event is Smart City Expo Miami, which brings together some of the world’s leading urban innovators under one (virtual) roof. The 2021 event garnered more than 5,100 attendees from over 85 countries.

Simultaneously, Smart Cities Americas is developing Miami’s smart cities ecosystem through a handful of other initiatives. Its forthcoming news channel, SmartCityMiami. com, will highlight trends related to urban innovation and citizens’ engagement in the process of building sustainable and resilient urban environments. Its streaming hub, CitiesHub.tv, will provide video content about the Smart City Expo Miami and related media.

©GMCVB

SMART CITIES AMERICAS

The Leading Platform for Smart Cities Intelligence, Trade Shows & Conferences SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI International Conference & Expo

Its Hack-a-Town program and Ciurbe Urban Innovation Lab will enable civic minded technologists to maximize their impact.

With these and more initiatives already underway, Smart Cities Americas is attracting leading smart cities companies to Miami that will generate $40 billion revenue for South Florida businesses, while creating more than 20,000 new jobs in our region. And the best is yet to come.

Discover more about Smart Cities Americas’ quest to put Miami on the map for smart city innovation by visiting SmartCitiesAmericas.com.

“A CITY IS SMART IF ITS CITIZENS ARE SMART.” — BERNARDO SCHEINKMAN, FOUNDER & CEO, SMART CITIES AMERICAS

SMART CITY MIAMI The News Channel

CITIESHUB.TV

The Streaming Portal

CIURBE.ORG

The Innovation Lab

C-MOVEMENT

Engage and Empower Citizens, Communities & Cities Smart City Miami | 7

SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI

SUSTAINABLE CITIES EXPERIENCES December 8-10, 2021

Disruptive, diversified, and dynamic, the international conference is the largest global event of its kind in Miami, with a reach of over 5,000 participants from 85 countries.

S

mart City Expo Miami is an international conference produced

by Smart Cities Americas LLC, a Florida corporation. It is the largest global event of the year, hosted from Miami for the second year in a row, featuring awardwinning and globally recognized experts.

The event brought Miami to the forefront of innovation in sustainable urban solutions with representatives from cities; countries; local, national, and international technical bodies; nongovernmental organizations; corporations; startups; and entrepreneurs.

The second Smart City Expo Miami international conference and exhibition opened for discussion on business, innovation, and entrepreneurship in a 3D Live Experience: Disruptive, Diversified, and Dynamic. Guests and participants were encouraged to partake in keynote lectures, panels, and rooms to

5,121

Participants 8 | Smart City Miami

engage and empower citizens, communities, and cities around the world.

In the sessions, we learned from the best practices implemented in other cities and industries as foundational building blocks to apply in our own backyard in order to prolong positive and profitable development for as long as possible. It all started with the meeting of the minds at Smart City Expo Miami.

The event covered innovation areas, specifically Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, Resilient Infrastructure, Smart Destinations, Inclusive & Sharing Cities, and Quality of Life, along with insight on smart cities that comprised of cities experiences, hubs such as Innovation and Startups, and a CIO Music Hall.

By interacting with the local community and raising awareness of the importance of urban planning, this event stimulated business

289 Cities

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trade and international missions, encouraged the use of circular economy, and marketed Miami as an innovation platform.

All participants joined the C-Movement— citizen, community, city—aimed to engage and empower citizens and communities to participate in the planning and implementation of actions to meet the core functions of their cities: livability, workability, and sustainability.

The event provided a powerful opportunity to ignite essential conversations and inspire life-changing ideas that can have a lasting effect in our communities and beyond for generations. It is a time to come together and collaborate on building stronger, more conscious developmental practices making the transition to green economy, and there is no greater place to begin than in the international metropolis that is the Magic City.

Countries

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Continents

Smart Disruptor Mayor Francis Suarez received the award as Smart Disruptor from Smart City Expo Miami in recognition of his administration’s work in actions to protect the City of Miami from climate change.

“SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI PROMOTES SOCIAL INNOVATION, ESTABLISHES PARTNERSHIPS, AND IDENTIFIES BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN AN EFFORT TO CREATE BETTER FUTURES FOR CITIES AND CITIZENS WORLDWIDE.” — MAYOR FRANCIS SUAREZ, CITY OF MIAMI

THE POWER OF SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI Award-winning and globally recognized experts.

Stimulate public and private partnerships in infrastructure.

Encourage the use of circular economy.

Promote educational activities.

The place to connect the whole smart city ecosystem.

The best thinkers in urbanism and technology.

Engage with local communities in powerful ways.

Position Miami as a launchpad for innovation.

Raise awareness on the importance of urban planning, climate action, and green economy.

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Speakers

40

Exhibitors

200+

Startups (Network) Smart City Miami | 9

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chulalongkorn Centenary Park, Bangkok Read more on page 44.

©PANORAMIC STUDIO/LANDPROCESS/V2COM

INNOVATION & CHANGE

Land Art Generator Read more on page 22.

14 Miami: Sustainable & Resilient Francis Suarez, Mayor, City of Miami

16 Miami-Dade County: Climate Action Daniella Levine Cava, Mayor, Miami-Dade County

18 Why Mayors Should Rule the World Benjamin Barber, Political Activist & Author

20 Smart Cities Are Resilient Cities Jonathan Reichental, CEO, Human Future

22 The Emergence of a Human-Centric, Data-Driven Community Paul Doherty, CEO, The Digit Group

24 The Need for Developing Nations’ Model of Smart Cities Kris Libunao, Director, SmartCT

25 Innovation Guerilla Against Bureaucracy Anja Wyden Guelpa, Founder & CEO, CivicLab

26 Why It Is Time to Reevaluate the Function of a City José Antonio Ondiviela, Industry Advisor Smart Cities, Microsoft Western Europe

28 The Future of Work: Civic Innovation in the New Economy David Graham, CIO, City of Carlsbad 10 | Smart City Miami

©HEERIM ARCHITECTS & PLANNERS/LAND ART GENERATOR

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH 30 The Case for an Innovation Agenda that Is Social in Nature Bas Boorsma, CDO, City of Rotterdam

32 Coral Gables Resilient Smart Districts Raimundo Rodulfo, CIO, City of Coral Gables

34 Future City: Resilient by Data, Adoptive by Design Erez Ella, Founder & CEO, HQ Architects

35 Smart & Sustainable Urbanism Rafi Rich, Founder & CEO, SUiTS

© LIVING SEAWALLS

City Hall, Tel Aviv Read more on page 43.

©TEL AVIV-YAFO TOURISM BOARD/GUY YECHIELY

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE 36 Better Governance, Better Livelihood, Better Industry Luis Guillot, CTO Government Solutions, Huawei Latin America

38 Digital Transformation with Sustainable Standards Ray Walshe, Assistant Professor, Dublin City University

40 Kyiv Smart City: Digital Infrastructure

Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia Read more on page 60.

Yuriy Nazarov, Smart City Committee Chairman, Ministry of Digital Transformation

CLIMATE ACTION

42 The Race to Resilience

52 If We Act Together: Keeping 1.5ºC Alive

Albert Slap, President, Coastal Risk Consulting

Edward Mazria, CEO, Architecture 2030

43 Transforming the City

54 Water as Leverage for Sustainable Development

Guy Elad, Deputy CIO, City of Tel Aviv-Yafo

Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands

44 Bangkok: Porous City Chulalongkorn Centenary Park Wins UN Climate Action Award

46 Greening Our Gray Cities with Nature-Based Solutions Robert Brears, Founder & CEO, Our Future Water

48 Investing in the Future: Smart and Sustainable Tourism

Lexie Assunto, VP of Business Development, ClearWorld

56 Transforming Streets to Adapt to Climate Change John L. Renne, Professor, Florida Atlantic University

57 Choosing Change: How Bold Mindsets Will Save the World Anne Therese Gennari, Founder & CEO, The Climate Optimist

58 Integrating Equity into Climate Planning Alissa Farina, Resilience Programs Manager, City of Miami

49 Smart and Resilient Cities: Tools for City Leadership

59 Miami and South Florida in 2050: A Dispatch from the Future

Amy Hochadel, Director, Connected Places Catapult

Jason King, Principal, Dover, Kohl & Partners

50 Digital Twin: Collaborative Subsurface Infrastructure

60 Living Seawalls: Bringing Marine Life Back to Concrete Coastlines

Alex Shalash, Co-Founder, Uevo

51 Next-Generation Infrastructure & Sustainable Mobility for Smart Cities

Aloisio Pereira da Silva, Founder & CEO, Infracities

Mariana Mayer Pinto, Scientia Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales

61 Financing Green Resilient Urban Infrastructure Julia Ambrosano, Infrastructure Manager, Climate Bonds Initiative Smart City Miami | 11

TABLE OF CONTENTS ©FILTER CAFÉ FILTRÉ

Rue Picardstraat, Brussels Read more on page 70.

TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

QUALITY OF LIFE

62 Building the Future of Sustainable Government

Annekatrien Verdickt, Founder, Filter Café Filtré Atelier

Jeremy Goldberg, Director of Critical Infrastructure, Microsoft

72 Pocket Parks

64 Urban Mobility: Bicycles, E-Cargo Bikes & the City

Daniel Bumann, Co-Founder, Parkly

Eyal Santo, Founder & CEO, Umo – Urban Mobility

73 Visual Utopias

66 America’s Top 100 Bicycling Cities

Jan Kamensky, Designer, Visual Utopias

Martin Morzynski, SVP, StreetLight Data

74 Architects as Healers: Buildings as Medicine

68 Where Are Self-Driving Cars Taking Us? Richard Ezike, Director, CHPlanning

Angela Mazzi, Principal, GBBN & Megan Mazzocco, Director, Spring Architecture & Design

69 Smart Design in Dutch Cities

76 Health Tech Will Make Smart Cities Smarter

George Liu, Online Education Strategist, Cycling Research Review ©ROTTERDAM PARTNERS/IRIS VAN DEN BROEK

70 Claiming Safe Streets for Livable Cities

Alfred Poor, Editor, Health Tech Insider

77 Humans + Nature + Mindfulness = Resilient Sustainable Cities Suzanne Jewell, CEO, The Mindful Entrepreneur

78 Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning & Design Can Save Cities Tim Gill, Global Advocate, Rethinking Childhood

79 Creating Child-Friendly Smart Cities Leticia Latino, CEO, Neptuno USA

INCLUSIVE & SHARING 80 Entrepreneurship for Sustainability Edna Pasher, Founder & Chair, Israel Smart Cities Institute

81 Circle Scan Jordi Pascual, City Strategist, Circle Economy Rotterdam, Netherlands Read more on page 69.

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82 Investing in Racial Equity Through Small-Scale Manufacturing Ilana Preuss, Founder & CEO, Recast City

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Hello, We are very excited to welcome you to this special edition of Smart City Miami Magazine, where we showcase excerpts from the 50 speakers’ presentations that took place during the second annual Smart City Miami Expo in December. With the theme of Sustainable Cities Experiences, the virtual event brought together thousands of participants from around the globe to learn, discuss, and share their expertise in subjects related to the smart city, including Climate Action, Sustainable Growth, Resilient Infrastructure, Quality of Life, and bringing communities together at the city level.

I have lived in Miami since 2010 and have seen firsthand how a city can evolve and become “smarter.” The Miami of today is nothing like it was 12 years ago—and not just because of the influx of new high-rises. Our city is constantly improving its public spaces, technological advances, city initiatives, community events, cultural institutions, and so much more.

Putting together this magazine made me increasingly aware that with continued growth comes increased responsibility, not just from our elected leaders but from business owners, corporations, urban planners, influencers, and, especially, everyday citizens like myself.

With the effects of climate change becoming more of a

reality, we have to be active participants in our cities if we want them to survive and thrive. This means educating ourselves about important issues, getting involved in local organizations, advocating for equality at all costs, voting in local elections, and thinking outside the box to imagine what could be possible. Everyone has the potential to help make their city smarter. And, to me, that is incredibly exciting.

We hope that this magazine encourages you to see the unlimited potential for the cities of the future. The technology for making cities smarter and more resilient is already within arm’s reach; the challenge lies in how we utilize this technology to benefit citizens today—and future generations.

Sherri Balefsky Hanson Editor & Creative Director Smart City Miami Magazine

Visit SmartCityMiami.com for the latest updates, news, trends, and more regarding urban innovation and community engagement in building sustainable, resilient cities around the world.

Smart City Miami | 13

INNOVATION & CHANGE

MIAMI:

SUSTAINABLE & RESILIENT

BY FRANCIS SUAREZ

T

he importance of resiliency cannot be understated. Oftentimes, resilience is pigeonholed as a singlefaceted environmental cause, while it’s actually much more meaningful than that.

Resilience is anything that affects the quality of life of our residents. Every project that seeks to sustainably improve Miamians’ quality of life contributes to Miami’s resiliency and our goal of making Miami a smart city.

As Mayor of Miami, I have experienced the devastation of climate change firsthand. But I’ve also been afforded opportunities to see the ways climate action and clean energy can provide a more sustainable and successful future for my city. Just as we’ve made Miami the most wind-resilient city in the world, I want to make Miami the most flood-resistant city in the world. My administration has been aggressively committed to developing a long-term climate strategy, and part of that commitment will be making Miami a carbon-neutral city by 2050.

The clean energy industry currently employs over 60,000 people in Miami, making us eighth in the nation in green jobs. And as we continue to break through as a national leader in solar and electric vehicle infrastructure, we will have the opportunity to expand

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employment opportunities even further.

But none of this is possible overnight. It requires a meticulously coordinated effort across all our departments, and, more importantly, it requires our residents to be fully invested in our vision. This issue impacts all of us, and it will take all of us to fix it. In 2017, our residents voted to approve the $400 million Miami Forever Bond, nearly $200 million of which will go directly toward sea-level rise mitigation and flood prevention.

In 2021 alone, we installed 38 tidal valves, planted over 4,000 trees, and upgraded capacity to all our stormwater pumps. And after seeing the demand from Miamians for forward-looking solutions to severe weather events, the private industry has quickly followed suit. High-level public-private partnerships will define how our nation’s cities will innovate and adapt to their current surroundings. And our diverse array of partners serves as the perfect example of how the City of Miami is building a smart future.

In partnership with the Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact, we developed a civic engagement toolkit to improve the ways residents can interact with their government. And under what Microsoft

calls Project Eclipse, the City of Miami is currently testing a low-cost, highly accurate air quality-sensing platform for cities to better understand how to make their air cleaner and healthier for their people.

The time is over to simply be reactive to climate change; we must be proactive and pave the way for other cities in the U.S. and around the world to achieve lower carbon emissions while ensuring our communities remain safe and prosperous. Addressing climate change is a moral imperative. And if managed properly, it will also be the right move for the health of our residents and the health of our economy.

“THE TIME IS OVER TO SIMPLY BE REACTIVE TO CLIMATE CHANGE; WE MUST BE PROACTIVE AND PAVE THE WAY FOR OTHER CITIES IN THE U.S. AND AROUND THE WORLD.”

©GMCVB

FRANCIS SUAREZ INAUGURATED AS NEW PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS On January 3, 2022, Mayor Francis Suarez was inaugurated as the 80th President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) at an event in Miami, where he laid out his vision for American cities and the conference. “It is such an honor to lead this organization and carry the torch for America’s mayors as we continue to blaze a path toward better days,” said Suarez.

“Mayors are proving every day that local leadership and fresh thinking can dramatically improve people’s lives. Here in Miami, we have a vision for what American cities can be— vibrant, resilient, inclusive—and I’m excited to lift up the voices of my fellow mayors who are also delivering real change. There is so much we can accomplish when we work together and leave partisanship behind, and that is the spirit of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. My father was a member of this organization, and I have long understood how powerful it can be to have America’s mayors speaking together. I also want to thank Nan Whaley for her extraordinary leadership as president of the conference. I’m excited to begin this new chapter serving the conference, my fellow mayors, and the people of Miami.”

Francis Suarez Mayor, City of Miami Miami, Florida Francis X. Suarez is the 33rd Mayor of the City of Miami. As the first Miami-born mayor, he is committed to serving the residents of the community where he was born and raised. Prior to being elected with 86% support from Miami residents, Suarez served as Miami Commissioner for District 4 for eight years. He currently serves as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

In these capacities, he takes a leading role in collaborating with fellow mayors from around the country to preserve the environment and develop programs and policies that directly benefit Miami. Suarez is dedicated to elevating the quality of life of the residents he serves by focusing on transportation and connectivity, resiliency, and job creation by nurturing the growth of technology and innovation.

Smart City Miami | 15

INNOVATION & CHANGE

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY:

CLIMATE ACTION

BY DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA

Miami-Dade County has a plan to finance the green industry to accelerate public and private investment, increase the supply of businesses and skilled labor, harness transformational opportunities and economic benefits for historically disadvantaged communities, and grow South Florida’s expertise as a global leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

M

iami-Dade County is the poster child of what a diverse, thriving metropolis can do to excel in the face of climate change.

Thanks to everyone in our community, we are taking bold actions to ensure that we not only survive but actually thrive as a sustainable city. We have so many powerful demonstrations of collaboration, commitment, and sheer determination to find great climate solutions.

In November, I was proud to participate in the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. It was inspiring to see tens of thousands of people from all around the world gathered in one place, so full of energy, ideas, and incredible drive to tackle the challenges we are facing.

In speaking on a panel with the mayors of Athens, Greece, and Freetown, Sierra Leone, we realized that urban areas have a growing voice in developing national and international goal-setting. More often than not, action at the local level is where big ideas and wellintentioned promises are actually converted

into boots-on-the-ground transformations.

And all these positive changes improve the health, stability, and equitable transition to a prosperous economy.

One of the most important lessons I learned is that local governments, community partners, smart entrepreneurs, and tech innovators are often the best starting point for us to take immediate action around the world.

Working together, we can have a dramatic impact in a short amount of time. Bold ideas are often best launched at the local level and then scaled up to the state, national, and international levels, and Miami-Dade County is the ideal place for this innovation to happen.

The county recently submitted our plan for financing $2 billion in green industry investment, which serves as the foundation for our application to a new federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant. The vision is to launch transformational public and private investments to create new jobs and opportunities while simultaneously sustaining an aggressive regionwide program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This

plan gives our county the strong financial framework to focus on three targeted industries: alternative energy, energy efficiency improvements, and sustainable, emission-free transportation.

As we move forward, our key goals are accelerating public and private investment, increasing the supply of businesses and skilled labor, harnessing transformational opportunity and economic benefits for historically disadvantaged communities, and growing South Florida’s expertise as a global leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

By doubling down on these areas, we’re building on our existing industry strengths.

In fact, employment in these areas grew by 18% from 2015 to 2020, with alternative energy expanding by a whopping 110% over the same five years. Our piece of these industries in Miami-Dade are some of the most productive in the entire nation, and the opportunity here is huge. Conservatively, the total market scale opportunity is more than $24.3 billion, while transitioning the region to carbon neutrality is worth well more than

Daniella Levine Cava Mayor, Miami-Dade County Miami, Florida Daniella Levine Cava was elected Miami-Dade County’s first-ever female mayor in November 2020 following a 40year career as a relentless advocate for South Florida families in public service and elected leadership. She oversees a metropolitan government with more than 28,000 employees serving nearly 3 million residents and managing an annual budget of approximately $9 billion. Mayor Levine Cava’s administration is focused on building a stronger, more inclusive, more resilient Miami-Dade by prioritizing reforms to make our county safer, restoring and reinvigorating a thriving economy that delivers economic security for businesses and families, saving Biscayne Bay and our environment, and engaging with residents to make local government more responsive, transparent, and accountable.

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Miami, Florida Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne

©GMCVB

$100 billion in new cost-saving investments.

Aside from these financing opportunities, we’re also taking many steps to make our community more sustainable. In February 2021, we launched the first-ever sea-level solution strategy, a holistic approach to make our community more resilient. And we’re tackling the challenge of rising groundwater levels head-on by accelerating our conversion from septic to sewer.

Miami-Dade County is uniquely vulnerable.

We know that residents in low-lying areas are experiencing more backups than before, and that’s why we’re committed to fasttracking these projects wherever possible.

The ones already underway include two new pump stations and force main projects.

When finished in 2023, the stations will collect more than 500,000 gallons of wastewater from potentially compromised or failing septic systems. This effort alone will support approximately 4,000 new green infrastructure construction jobs in small local businesses. That’s a win-win for our environment and economy.

The recent infrastructure bill passed by Congress is a historic step forward that can accelerate our efforts to build a more resilient Miami-Dade while accelerating economic growth. This once-in-a-generation investment will create millions of jobs nationwide, transform our infrastructure, tackle the climate crisis, bring high-speed internet to homes across America, and

modernize our public transit system.

My administration has been doing the important work to prepare Miami-Dade to partner with the federal government to invest these funds into hundreds of shovel-ready resilience projects that create good-paying local jobs. We are ready to invest funds in projects to expand transportation across our county, bring shore power to PortMiami by 2023, expand electric and solar energy as part of our fight to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, and more. We’re ready to create new opportunities for thousands of residents and businesses as we build back our economy stronger than ever.

Miami-Dade is doing great work on multiple fronts related to resilience and sustainability. For example, I appointed the county’s first-ever Chief Bay Officer, Irela Bagué, who is doing a fantastic job to protect and restore the health of our beautiful Biscayne Bay. Also, to help improve public health, I appointed the world’s first-ever Chief Heat Officer, Jane Gilbert. Extreme heat events claim more lives worldwide than all other natural disasters combined. So when we help everyone beat the heat, we’re also saving both lives and livelihoods.

I also introduced our new Heat Season Public Awareness Campaign, which will run each year from May 1 to October 31 to help people learn how to stay healthy and well while they live, work, and play outdoors as the temperatures rise. We have a new website

“BOLD IDEAS ARE OFTEN BEST LAUNCHED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL ... AND MIAMI-DADE COUNTY IS THE IDEAL PLACE FOR THIS INNOVATION TO HAPPEN.” with tips at miamidade.gov/heat.

More smart solutions include ramping up our tech industry. Many people in the tech industry around the nation have come to Miami-Dade to work remotely, which is great.

We are now also ensuring that more of those jobs go to those who have lived here for a long time, trained here, and went to school in Miami-Dade County.

We’re also narrowing the digital divide between the various subsectors of our diverse population through new programs at all of our colleges and universities. We partnered with Miami Dade College to put on the Venture Miami Tech Hiring Fair with more than 35 companies and over 2,700 open positions.

I’m glad to be part of this critical conversation and looking forward to all the great work we’ll do together in the months and years ahead.

Smart City Miami | 17

INNOVATION & CHANGE

WHY MAYORS SHOULD RULE THE WORLD This TED Talk was presented by Benjamin Barber at TEDGlobal 2013 and posted to TED on September 20, 2013. We honor his legacy by publishing it here.

Transitioning away from nation-states to a system of cities will globalize the world—and mayors are proving it.

D

emocracy is in trouble, no question about that, and it comes in part from a deep dilemma in which it is embedded: It’s increasingly irrelevant to the decisions we face. In fact, we live in a world of interdependence and brutal interdependent problems. And when we look for solutions in politics and democracy, we are faced with institutions designed 400 years ago—autonomous, sovereign nation-states with jurisdictions and territories separate from one another, each claiming to be able to solve the problem of its own people.

In that dilemma lies the central problem of democracy. And my suggestion is that we stop talking about nations and bordered states and start talking about cities. Because when we talk about cities, we are talking about the political institutions in which civilization and culture were born. We are talking about the cradle of democracy.

We are also talking about the public spaces where we come together to create democracy and at the same time protest those who would take our freedom. Think of Place de la Bastille, Zuccotti Park, Tahrir Square, Taksim Square, or Tiananmen Square; those are the public spaces where we announce ourselves as citizens, participants, and people with the right to write our own narratives.

Cities are not only the oldest institutions; they’re the most enduring. If you think about it, Constantinople (Istanbul) is much older than Turkey; Alexandria is much older than Egypt; Rome is far older than Italy. Cities endure the ages. They are the places where we are born, grow up, are educated, work, marry, pray, play, get old, and, in time, die. They

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are home—very different from nation-states, which are abstractions. We pay taxes, we vote occasionally, we watch the people we choose rule more or less without us. Not so in our towns and cities.

So if the dilemma is that we have oldfashioned political nation-states unable to govern the world or respond to global challenges like climate change, then maybe it’s time for mayors to rule the world, for mayors, citizens, and the people they represent to engage in global governance.

When I first came up with the phrase “if mayors ruled the world,” it occurred to me that they already do. There are scores of international, intercity, cross-border institutions, networks in which cities are already working together to deal with climate change, security, immigration, and other tough, interdependent problems that we face. They include UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments); ICLEI (the International Council for Local Environmental Issues); Citynet in Asia; City Protocol, an organization out of Barcelona using the web to share best practices among countries; the U.S. Conference of Mayors; the Mexican Conference of Mayors; and the European Conference of Mayors. Mayors are where this is happening.

So, how can we create a world in which mayors and the citizens they represent play a more prominent role? To understand that, we need to understand why cities are special, why mayors are different from prime ministers and presidents. To be a prime minister or a president, you have to have an ideology, a meta-narrative, and a theory of how things work; you have to belong to a party.

Independents, on the whole, don’t get elected to office.

But mayors are the opposite. Mayors are pragmatists; they’re problem-solvers. Their job is to get things done, and if they don’t, they’re out of a job. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia said he could never get away with the stuff that goes on in Washington—the paralysis, the non-action, the inaction. Why? Because potholes have to get filled, trains have to run, and kids have to get to school.

Mayors have to put ideology, religion, and ethnicity aside and draw their cities together.

We saw this a couple of decades ago when Teddy Kollek, the great mayor of Jerusalem in the ’80s and ’90s, was besieged one day in his office by religious leaders from all of the backgrounds —Christian prelates, rabbis, imams—who were arguing about access to the holy sites. Kollek listened and then said, “Gentlemen, spare me your sermons, and I will fix your sewers.” That’s what mayors do. They fix sewers. They get the trains running. There isn’t a left or a right way of doing things.

Boris Johnson calls himself an anarchoTory. He’s a libertarian; he’s an anarchist; he rides to work on a bike. But at the same time, he’s in some ways a conservative. Bloomberg was a Democrat, then he was a Republican, and finally, he was an Independent and said the party label just gets in the way.

Yury Luzhkov, 20 years mayor in Moscow, helped found the United Party with Putin, but he refused to be defined by the party. He eventually lost his job, not under Brezhnev or Gorbachev, but under Putin, who wanted a more faithful party follower.

Mayors are also what I like to call homies.

Benjamin Barber (1939-2017) Dr. Benjamin Barber was a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, founder and President of CivWorld at Demos, Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Rutgers University, and the former Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland.

An internationally renowned political theorist, Barber brought an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship and issues of politics, culture, and education in America and abroad. He consulted regularly with political and civic leaders in the U.S. and around the world. He combined a career as a distinguished scholar and political theorist with a life of practical commitment to democratic civic practices and the arts.

“MAYORS ARE PRAGMATISTS; THEY’RE PROBLEMSOLVERS. THEIR JOB IS TO GET THINGS DONE.”

©TED, PHOTO BY JAMES DUNCAN DAVIDSON

They’re from the neighborhood. They’re part of the neighborhood. Ed Koch used to wander around New York saying, “How am I doing?”

He could ask that because he knew New Yorkers, and they knew him. Like Cory Booker in Newark, a mayor is likely to get out of his car and pull people out of a burning building.

No head of state would be permitted by their security details to do it, nor be in a position to.

You can run for Senate out of a different state, but it’s hard to do that as a mayor. And as a result, mayors, city councilors, and local authorities have a much higher trust level.

In the U.S., 18% of Americans approve of Congress. And even with a relatively popular president, the figures for the Presidency run about 50% at best. But when you ask, “Do you trust your city councilor or mayor?” the rates shoot up to 70%, 75%, or even 80%.

The difference has to do with the character of cities themselves, because cities are profoundly multicultural, open, participatory, democratic, and able to work with one another. China and the U.S., for example, are locked in a rivalry for number one. Cities don’t worry about number one. They have to work together, and they do.

In Copenhagen, 184 nations came together to explain to one another why their

sovereignty didn’t permit them to deal with the grave crisis of climate change. But the mayor of Copenhagen invited 200 mayors to attend, and they found ways to work together, city-tocity, and through intercity organizations.

Eighty percent of carbon emissions come from cities, which means cities are in a position to solve the carbon problem, whether or not their states make agreements with one another.

And they are doing it. Los Angeles cleaned up its port and, as a result, got rid of about 20% of carbon. New York has a program to upgrade its old buildings, make them better insulated in the winter and not leak energy in the summer.

In Bogotá, Mayor Antanas Mockus introduced a transportation system that saved energy by allowing surface buses to run in effect like subways. It helped unemployment because people could get across town, and it had a profound impact on climate. Singapore, as it developed its high-rises and remarkable public housing, also developed an island of parks.

Cities are doing this, but not just one by one. They are doing it together. And they are making a difference by shared best practices.

Bike shares started 20 or 30 years ago in Latin America. Now it’s in hundreds of cities worldwide. Pedestrian zones, congestion fees, emission limits like California has...there

is a lot that cities can do even when nations refuse to act.

The bottom line is we still live politically in a world of borders, boundaries, and walls, a world where states refuse to act together. Yet we know that the reality we experience day to day is a world without borders. And unless we find a way to globalize democracy or democratize globalization, we will increasingly not only risk the failure to address all of these transnational problems, but we risk losing democracy itself, locked up in the old nationstate box, unable to address global problems.

So, where does that leave us? The road to global democracy doesn’t run through states.

It runs through cities. Democracy was born in the ancient polis. I believe it can be reborn in the global cosmopolis. We can rediscover the power of democracy on a global level. We can create not a League of Nations, which failed, but a League of Cities, not a United or a dis-United Nations, but United Cities of the World. We can create a global parliament of mayors—and I love that idea because a parliament of mayors is a parliament of citizens, and a parliament of citizens is a parliament of us, of you and of me. I am ready to reach out and embrace a new global democracy. And the only question is: Are you?

Smart City Miami | 19

INNOVATION & CHANGE

SMART CITIES ARE RESILIENT CITIES

BY JONATHAN REICHENTAL

Changes in how we work, live, and play, coupled with an unpredictable climate, mean that cities must evolve quickly and be able to respond to shocks. City leaders and stakeholders must plan and build for a variety of future possibilities. Being smart about resiliency is a core requirement of smarter and more sustainable communities.

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rbanization is occurring all over the world. About 80% of cities are growing today. We’re adding about 3 million people to cities every single week and building infrastructure the size of Manhattan every month—and we’ll do that for the next 40 years. Cities are also the center of GDP in almost every country. Cities are incredible places, and they are our future.

Of course, we have a lot of challenges. We have to fix some very urgent issues, including our love affair with the automobile, hyperconsumerism, and extreme inequalities among our populations.

The opportunity to innovate and deliver new products and services to our cities, to make them smarter and resilient, is worth $2.4 trillion by 2025. And if we look even broader, our urban innovation activities can create $20 trillion of new economic value by 2030, which is very motivating.

That takes us to the topic of resiliency, which is the ability to bounce back and recover quickly from shocks. Are cities ready?

What will it take for that to happen? The future is never a straight line. We know that things are going to surprise us. We can’t think of everything, but we can be more prepared. We need to ensure that big issues don’t happen—but when they do, that cities can recover quickly and bounce back on a positive trajectory. And then, we can be on a path to transforming our societies so they are strengthened and more resilient over time.

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Climate Crisis One of the most significant areas of resiliency is our ability to be prepared for the eventualities of the climate crisis. About 550 global cities are on coastlines, representing about 1.5 billion people. Many of them see flooding year-round, sometimes daily in areas where it used to be sporadic. We will also see droughts, and when they happen, they will be longer and dryer.

When storms come, they will be more frequent and stronger. Being able to plan for and respond to the climate crisis is interconnected with every other aspect of resiliency.

Economic Resiliency Many communities experience the cyclical nature of economics: We go through periods of growth, where we have plenty of commerce and demand for products, and it trickles down into every aspect of life. We also see the downsides. During the Great Recession, for example, we saw the entire world economy dip such that many organizations, including cities, had to let people go and reduce services.

When we look over the last 100 years, we see we do not have a situation where economic growth is continuous without interruption. So how can our communities be resilient against major downturns?

Part of it comes down to the diversity of industries. Economies dependent on one sector are more vulnerable than those that are more diverse because those cities have built an ecosystem that supports lots of different industries.

Innovation is another important part of economic resiliency, ensuring that communities continue to evolve and that there is collaboration between public and private sectors to ensure that investments are made to catalyze economic opportunity.

Governance Governance applies to the day-to-day management of a city, but it also relates to the structures in place in the event of a crisis.

Governance asks questions like: Do we have leadership driving positive and popular change? Do our responding organizations have strong, trained leaders who have the trust of their communities?

We also need to engage with stakeholders— city leaders, academia, private sector, nonprofits, community members, visitors, etc. To what degree does a city engage and create engagement channels for all stakeholders to be involved? Do our communities have strong public-private partnerships that support these types of engagements? This is very core to what we mean by governance.

“RESILIENCY IS A CITY’S ABILITY TO BOUNCE BACK AND RECOVER QUICKLY FROM SHOCKS.”

Bruges, Belgium

Jonathan Reichental CEO, Human Future San Francisco, California

Finally, what about data? Is the city making the right data sets accessible to stakeholders?

Is there a progressive open data strategy?

And if one exists, is it kept current? There are thousands of open data systems worldwide, but some are not maintained, which decreases their value enormously.

Society How fragile is your city’s infrastructure? Are your bridges protected and strong? Do you have good road systems? Do you have reliable water and energy supplies? Do you have a large homeless population or people who are not getting the medical care they need?

What do your public safety capabilities look like? Do you have a mature, well-integrated police force that works within and across the community? Do you have good emergency services? Focusing on robust public safety capabilities is core to building great cities, and innovative techniques to deliver safety must be considered.

Environment I mentioned this already in my words about the climate crisis. But let’s go broader: Are the air and water clean? Is the plumbing made from contemporary materials? Does your city have parks and open spaces? By having clean air, water, parks, and other basic needs, we’re building healthier communities.

How good is the electrical grid? Is it carbon-intensive? Are you moving toward noncarbon energy options like solar, wind, and

other forms? Is your community supporting or incentivizing migrations to a non-carbon future, where if there are big disruptions to the grid, it can absorb them?

The environment is also about communication. Is there good internet access?

If some people have slow or no internet access, it creates digital divides that are quite corrosive and don’t help us become more resilient.

Finally, what does the transportation system look like? Are you providing public transport?

Is it clean and efficient? If you have jobs in one area, but there’s no way for people to get to those jobs from the places they live, you have a bigger challenge.

All of these areas need to be baked into how we build our future cities. They can’t be an afterthought. We have to build from the ground up with resiliency in mind. We see some great new ideas around building sustainability into every part of a city, from the materials used to transportation systems, energy, and green spaces and the use of urban forests for better and cleaner air. We need to ensure that all these things are part of the DNA of our urban systems.

We will build many new cities over the next few decades, and we’re going to retrofit our existing cities. I encourage us to think about these dimensions of resiliency as we think about the future of our cities. As you can imagine, our cities aren’t as smart as they can be. So it’s my contention that smart cities are resilient cities. They go hand in hand.

Dr. Jonathan Reichental is a multiple award-winning technology and business leader whose career has spanned both the private and public sectors. He’s been a Senior Software Engineering Manager, a Director of Technology Innovation, and served as Chief Information Officer for O’Reilly Media and the City of Palo Alto.

Reichental is currently the founder of advisory, investment, and education firm Human Future and also creates online education for LinkedIn Learning.

He has written three books on the future of cities: Smart Cities for Dummies, Exploring Smart Cities Activity Book for Kids, and Exploring Cities Bedtime Rhymes.

Smart City Miami | 21

INNOVATION & CHANGE

THE EMERGENCE OF A HUMAN-CENTRIC, DATADRIVEN COMMUNITY

BY PAUL DOHERTY

Urban innovations, technologies, techniques, and workflows are challenging conventions, shifting values, and offering new ways of providing services. Smart city ecosystems are leveraging how the built environment meets the demands of human-centric design through data-driven processes.

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he Digit Group is a smart cities development group. We do design and, sometimes, construction and operations, but we’re really about discovering innovations, especially urban innovations, that help with the development and delivery of housing, transportation, technology, energy, media, and health care. We look at smart cities as a system of systems. There’s no one silver bullet for any place on the planet. We look at innovations like ingredients in a kitchen, and we are the chefs that create those special recipes.

If we focus on ensuring that we hold the people responsible for the design, master planning, and construction of our cities accountable, we will create a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable future for our urban environments.

Carbon Neutrality At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, there was a lot of talk about carbon neutrality. A lot of effort and money is being put into it, but much of it isn’t helping. What would help is a scientific, data-driven approach. And there are new technologies that can help with that.

For example, starting in 2022, there will be a multi-year phasing out of the construction industry’s traditional PDF contract into a smart contract.

When you hear smart contract, think blockchain.

Not blockchain as in Bitcoin or NFTs (that’s something else); we’re talking about a relationship between owner and architect: “I contract you to

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do this work, and I pay you upon delivery.” Using a blockchain, we can have a conversation about Building Information Modeling (BIM) as part of the construction documents. Now you can see things in 3D, which improves communication. There’s also another piece called specifications, which is the narrative of what needs to be built. We call that the BIM process. This now can talk to the smart contract, which has immutable data.

We will require that every piece of material, equipment, and fixture has a geotag. When the subcontractor puts materials and systems in place, they will communicate to the BIM that it was done according to the contract, on time, and correctly.

That then talks to the ledger system that confirms they’ve met the contractual obligations and pays them wirelessly.

This data that’s part of the contract becomes part of the blockchain, a trusted piece of data that everyone agrees to. This can be very powerful for taking into account not just that the construction was done properly, but that it was done non-wastefully.

We can now have an ongoing performance measure because the data is immutable.

Net-Zero Energy I’m a big believer in clean tech, but, for the most part, it’s not meeting our needs. For example, the best solar energy you can get efficiency-wise is 23%. We need at least another generation or two to improve the process. In the meantime, we’re looking at other forms of energy, including:

©JEDDAH ECONOMIC COMPANY

©HEERIM ARCHITECTS & PLANNERS/LAND ART GENERATOR

Jeddah Economic Tower This 3,281-foot tower planned for the ancient port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has an autonomous vehicle master plan where no traditional combustion vehicles are allowed.

Paul Doherty CEO, The Digit Group Memphis, Tennessee As CEO of The Digit Group, Paul Doherty is one of the global industry’s most sought-after thought leaders, strategists, and integrators of process, technology, and business. A senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, Doherty is an award-winning architect, author, educator, analyst, and advisor to Fortune 500 organizations, global government agencies, prominent institutions, and the most prestigious architectural, engineering, and contracting firms in the world. His current work is focused on smart city real estate developments that include financing, design-build, and innovative technology solutions.

Land Art Generator “Beyond the Wave” was a submission

by Heerim Architects & Planners to the 2014 Land Art Generator Initiative design competition for Copenhagen.

Plasma Gasification Plasma Gasification was created 100 years ago by the U.S. coal industry. It is the process of taking brown coal and mixing it with municipal solid waste. It’s heated at high temperatures to break it down to the molecular level, which creates a synthetic gas that drives steam and powers the turbines.

The residue left over is hydrogen and a carbon-based fertilizer for agriculture.

Piezoelectric Energy Piezoelectric energy is the idea of compression technology. You put materials underneath horizontal services, and as you put pressure on those materials, it excites the molecules and reharvests that energy. I think that will be one of the keys to the future of urban environments.

Land Art Generators Another interesting energy producer is the idea of using art. Certain land art sculptures can be designed to harvest the power of solar or wind energies while also being visually appealing.

This mixing of technologies is like writing a symphony. I encourage designers to ratchet up the efforts because we now have the ability to take their ideas from design to reality.

Cryptocity When we start to think of buildings as computers or servers, we can start to connect buildings together. Imagine you have a blockchain contract: You know exactly what materials are in there; your buildings are talking to each other, creating a connection with other buildings in that neighborhood, district, and entire city. What would happen if every business, building, and person created their own metaverse to connect to when they wanted. That’s what we see as the future.

It’s how we start to look at practical things like safety, security, energy, water, waste, and transportation issues. We are now at the cusp of being able to do things that past generations were unable to. We like to call this the Cryptocity. We are one step away from doing this around the world.

Smart City Miami | 23

INNOVATION & CHANGE

THE NEED FOR DEVELOPING NATIONS’ MODEL OF SMART CITIES

BY KRIS LIBUNAO

Exploring smart city practices in the Philippines and other developing countries underlines that promoting and adopting a sustainable digital transformation approach should be the main action for companies, donors, and governments.

S

martCT is in the business of making smart cities open. If you have been looking to make a difference in the developing world or get into Asia’s smart city arena but have found it difficult to do so, I hope to lend some perspective as head of an organization leading the charge toward smart cities in the developing world.

Smart city initiatives are going full swing in Southeast Asia. But here are three littleknown facts about this region: First, Southeast Asia may be the hot spot for megacities, but economic growth and urbanization are also happening in middleweight cities with populations between 500,000 and 5 million.

Secondly, cities in Southeast Asia are particularly at risk from climate change. For instance, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other major city on the planet.

And third, cities are becoming increasingly independent. As a result, engaging with city leaders as the main stakeholders rather than coercing everything through the national governments is the future.

Despite opportunities in the region, here’s the sad truth: In developing countries, fewer than 20% of digital government projects are successful. That’s more than 80% of failed digital government projects. Why? There are

many reasons that international development organizations have cited, including limited funding, stretched implementation capacity, and political instability, among others.

The smart city business journey to Southeast Asia is riddled with complexity. But there are also many opportunities, especially when going beyond the usual public-private partnerships that leave us with projects that no one uses and initiatives that people don’t really ask for. It is better to work with local independent organizations that know the DNA of their region, the culture, demographics, challenges, citizens’ needs, and existing infrastructure. This is why SmartCT exists. We sprang from the following realities: 1) Most digital projects don’t address the data problem. Recently, we passed the first local government-level open data policy, ensuring that the data sets will be machinereadable and open.

2) Unlike existing projects that focus on the supply of tech, we focus on the users’ demand and capacity. We have data and digital literacy projects on both the public sector and citizen sides. We’re also about to launch the first Open Data Fellowship in the country in partnership with a university in one of our partner local governments.

Kris Libunao Director, SmartCT Quezon City, Philippines Kris Libunao, an Internationally Certified Sustainability Practitioner, is the Executive Director and Chief Sustainability Officer at SmartCT and is currently training under the ASEAN Smart Cities Leaders’ Programme. She is committed to transforming how the world thinks about and plans smart cities in the Philippines and developing countries.

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3) Developing countries are burdened with legacy systems and proprietary software that don’t talk to each other. We partner with Linux Professional Institute in creating a demand for open-source software, talents, and practices. We are also about to launch Foss Pilipinas to organize and build the open-source community in the country.

4) We want to move away from 100-page reports that no one will read and the public can’t understand. We recently finished a project, “Getting Started with Being Smart,” which teaches the fundamental concepts of smart cities and practical ways of getting started through the use of icons and easy-tounderstand cards.

5) The existing coalitions in the region focus on megacities and the usual public-private partnerships. To ensure that all of the above will be adopted in cities and municipalities, we’re creating a network of smart cities and communities, private companies, and local independent organizations. At the end of the day, the future lies in public-private-people collaboration so that tech can be maximally beneficial for everyone. Beyond altruism, understanding the city’s challenges and citizens’ needs will give the businesses the best bang for their buck.

“THE SMART CITY BUSINESS JOURNEY TO SOUTHEAST ASIA IS RIDDLED WITH COMPLEXITY. BUT THERE ARE ALSO MANY OPPORTUNITIES.”

INNOVATION GUERILLA AGAINST BUREAUCRACY

©CIVICLAB

BY ANJA WYDEN GUELPA

Why is innovation so difficult in the public sector? And what can we do to make it happen?

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hange is never simple—especially in the public sector. But we need innovation, because the costs of security, health, and education will go up more in upcoming years than additional taxes. Innovation means trying something new, taking risks. That’s hard in a public sector with a zero-risk culture.

What can we do? Many public bodies have invested in digital strategies. That was important, but it’s not enough. We need human strategies. But you know the saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” A McKinsey study showed that 75% of all transformation projects fail, according to the top managers. The reason is cultural, not technical. How can we reinvent our public culture?

Purpose Steve Jobs said, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” A study showed that for 85% of master’s students, it is extremely or very important that their purpose is reflected in their company’s values. Once you have your purpose, it’s important to share it with your employees so you can motivate them and attract good talent.

Autonomy We also need autonomy to be intrinsically motivated. Ideally, employees can choose what they do and when, how, and with whom

they do it. That’s an extreme case, but if our employees cannot choose what they’re doing, at least give them the liberty of choosing when, how, and with whom.

Recognition People want to be recognized, not only as employees but as humans. We know money is not a good incentive. Even worse, it can lead to a lone-wolf mentality. Instead, we need people who can collaborate and build on each other’s strengths. Recognition should be focused on behaviors and the investment people put in rather than just the result.

The role of managers also needs to change.

If people are intrinsically motivated, they know what they have to do. Managers have to do real work: coach employees and watch market changes, competitors, the strategy, and the mission. They have to create a safe space where employees can thrive and positively impact the company.

If we want more innovative public services, we have to invest in people much more than in a technical way. If you want to change your organization, experiment with new methods like design thinking and really invest in a human strategy. You will see it will pay off, and it will be much more fun.

Anja Wyden Guelpa Founder & CEO, civicLab Geneva, Switzerland Anja Wyden Guelpa, founder and CEO of civicLab, helps CEOs and companies become more competitive and attractive through their corporate culture. She teaches innovation and design thinking at two universities, is an international public speaker, and served as State Chancellor for the State of Geneva for eight years.

civicChallenge

At civicLab, we launched civicChallenge, which is a contest, an incubator, and a network. There are people in the public sector who want innovation, and we try to empower them. Government employees, whether at the national, regional, state, city, or municipal level, can send us an idea. It doesn’t have to be a realized project; it’s really a change idea.

We then have an international jury of innovation specialists that chooses the 10 most promising projects; those project teams are then invited to a workshop where we train them in design thinking and innovation methods, and they continue to work on their project idea.

Then, the jury chooses four of these 10 projects to receive $30,000. There is a one-year incubation phase with coaching in order to implement their project. All projects, of course, are open-source, so other municipalities, states, or national services can use these projects and everything that has been developed.

The civicChallenge is also a network because culture is about how people live together and communicate. We invest a lot in this so that people can experiment with new ways of working, collaborating, and cooperating, and it’s really a snowball effect.

Smart City Miami | 25

INNOVATION & CHANGE

WHY IT IS TIME TO REEVALUATE THE FUNCTION OF A CITY

BY JOSÉ ANTONIO ONDIVIELA

We must consider our cities in a “reboot,” rethinking processes, operations, citizen engagement, and spaces.

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e have an opportunity to reevaluate how our cities function, the services they provide, and how spaces are dedicated. Achieving operational efficiency and providing green services is challenging, but it is the new normal. Devoting more areas for social activities while reducing the space dedicated to cars is an indisputable target. Let’s imagine the future of our cities with technology as a loyal ally, over the shoulders of intelligent urbanism and social citizen engagement. Here are 10 keys to understanding the cities of the future.

Sustainable and Green City The city of the future is associated with the concept of sustainability. We are seeing a lot of different initiatives like the EU Green Deal, California’s AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act, and the UK Climate Change Act. Not only is carbon-neutral important, but so is the concept of circular cities, where we need to properly manage the matter on our planet.

New Urban Mobility This topic is a combination of many factors—business models, new vehicles, and new economy—with the imperative to be sustainable from the environmental point of view. We have to balance the need for fast and convenient public transportation with reducing emissions, reducing deaths, the zero-vision concept, and the need to create or include new business models. The new transportation will be green, shared, and electric, and it will be or is striving to be autonomous.

Accelerated Technological Adoption Cities are adopting a full transformation of the way they work. They are giving civil

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servants and employees tools to deliver better service, optimizing operations by embracing modern cloud computing, analytics platforms, and new ways to connect and engage with citizens. Because of all this data and artificial intelligence tools, we can create new services to better serve our community.

The New City in Three Distances For the concept of a three-dimensional city, we consider three distances: The city of 90-minutes commuting time, the big metropolis. The 15-minute city, as proposed by the City of Paris, where they raved that you can reach 95% of everything you need in less than a 15-minute commute using a micro-electric vehicle or public transportation. This is the concept of an environment where citizens can enjoy a wonderful quality of life at this short distance. And, finally, the one-minute city, proposed by the City of Stockholm, which is trying to create social areas inside our district.

Local vs. Online Commerce Cities are trying to compete against online commerce monsters and protect the local economy and stores. They are adding artificial intelligence and new technologies to better compete and take advantage of the concept of proximity, knowing the people and connecting to them so they can can interact and work with them.

Hybrid Work Model The hybrid work model is here to stay. We can understand that the new work style is defined by these three Ws: new work tasks and work tools, which are more virtual, more services-related, less physical; new workforce, new generations working, the adoption of a generation set, and millennials changing the

way they are using technology (we need to re-adapt our service to those needs); and a new workplace that will be hybrid. You can see the paradox we obtained in our Microsoft internal survey: 73% of people want to continue working remotely, but 67% also want more in-person engagement. So, we need to accommodate both trends, and the only solution is the hybrid model.

Need for Additional Training (Reskilling) We need reskilling for our civil servants and citizens. We need to improve their skills to increase their employability so that our city is more attractive for investors. People are trying to find the best place to achieve or develop their full potential, and to make this happen, they are choosing those cities. This is a competition for talent at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution. This is raising the concept of city attractiveness—an attractiveness to retain and attract talent, creating the conditions for this to happen.

Cybersecurity and Digital Rights Our cities are suffering here a lot. Half of our cities are impacted by ransomware, which is a serious crime. They’re making more money than the narcotrafficking industry. We need to face this using the latest technologies and trust the cloud providers to manage our security and data confidentiality. We also need to comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and other regulations across the world. And we need to protect the very sensitive data of our citizens, which is super-important.

Value of the Critical Supply Chain These days, we have a lot of scary news about potential supply shortages or blackouts. Very

clearly, we need to improve the resiliency of the supply chain. We need to guarantee that we have supplies when needed by offering different alternatives at affordable prices.

A Renaissance in Culture Let me dream about a new world where we appreciate the values associated with human creation, art, and everything that is humanmade and take advantage of the benefits of technology. Technology is an enabler; it’s not our destiny. We need to also appreciate what is purely human. So, let me dream about a renaissance in culture.

The New Model for Smart Cities And, finally, a summary of what could be the new model for smart cities: Human: Citizen-centric with welfare and quality of life as the major goal.

Sense of Community: Ideally, the city would be a beehive where all citizens cooperate around a collective task or project with a strong sense of unity, belonging, and identity.

Social Enabler: The city facilitates

relationships, making society more inclusive, diverse, and livable with shared activities.

Citizens as Co-Creators: The city as an expression of collective experience with citizens who are proud to contribute.

Open, Respectful, and Ethical: The city as a place where living means that we can reach the highest ethical achievements while also creating strong identity and values.

Sustainable: Social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

Self-Everything: Self-sufficient in water, energy, matter, people and talent, funding, and resiliency.

Smart DataSphere: AI-driven digital twin models monitoring the physical city, simulating potential improvement alternatives but always understanding living humans.

Zero Everything: Zero pollution, carbon, violence, poverty, inequality, and nonrenewable energies.

Metropolis Broken (90-15-1 City): Walking distance suburbs and districts, spaces for humans, walkable, and bike-friendly.

Agile, Dynamic, and Versatile: Always creating projects, experimenting, listening to citizens, applying feedback, adapting to new circumstances, developing new solutions, and starting over again and again. As the famous American urbanist Jane Jacobs said, “We need to create opportunities, solve problems, and innovate. All three are inseparable.”

“LET’S IMAGINE THE FUTURE OF OUR CITIES WITH TECHNOLOGY AS A LOYAL ALLY, OVER THE SHOULDERS OF INTELLIGENT URBANISM AND SOCIAL CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT.”

José Antonio Ondiviela Smart Cities Solutions Director, Microsoft Western Europe Madrid, Spain Professor José Antonio Ondiviela is the Smart Cities Solutions Director for Microsoft Western Europe. He is also an Associate Fellow Researcher and Director for the WorldWide Observatory for Attractive Cities at the University Francisco Vitoria in Madrid. He is very active in the academic area, with a Ph.D. thesis and book titled Beyond Smart Cities: Creating the Most Attractive City for Talented Citizens. He is a frequent speaker at international events and a UNESCO Smart Cities SME Consultant.

Smart City Miami | 27

INNOVATION & CHANGE

THE FUTURE OF WORK:

CIVIC INNOVATION IN THE NEW ECONOMY

BY DAVID GRAHAM

Civic innovation and technology are being applied to talent attraction, culture change, and supporting a resilient economy.

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t’s undeniable that recent years have disrupted how the public, private, and academic sectors work. But what do we do with the lessons we have learned? How do we apply those lessons to the future of work?

How do we gain insight and be innovative in how we continue to work, particularly as it relates to attracting talent for our companies, public institutions, and academic organizations?

I’ve worked on both the public and private sides of local governments for about 20 years. And one thing we see is governments are not agile. We’re not known for being fast. In California, you just need to say DMV, and everybody will go, “Ugh.” It seems to be almost a universal truth that the public does not believe the public sector can be agile—or that we can be innovative. And as I think about the future of work and lessons we can apply, I think there are a couple of key areas we need to focus on if we’re going to adapt to civic innovation in the new economy.

The challenges we’ve seen are agile management and performance metrics.

Key performance indicators and technology tools to measure performance have not been universally adopted in civic institutions and organizations. You sometimes get a newly elected official who brings in their vision of becoming more data-driven, but those longterm investments in strategy and data-driven decision-making wane as new priorities find their way to the surface. So the challenge is one of persuasion but also persistence.

We need to use persuasion and convince the workforce of the persistent change as it relates to them. When you engage with employees, setting a top-down strategy for rolling out KPIs and using additional tools, new software to track performance and goals, it has an impact, and they understand how that

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can affect them and their job for the better.

It’s not just about incentivizing; it’s about really changing the nature of work. After the idea begins to soak into the workforce is when we see real and sustainable change. I term this “changing from evangelists to engineers.” You can evangelize and get people excited about something, but until it becomes a part of the core operations of government, you’re going to see skepticism from your workforce.

The challenge is the messengers that can foster and accelerate the belief. Of course, you need buy-in at the top, whether that’s your elected level or top administrative official. They need to believe not just that it’s a best practice or something that should be done; they need to consistently communicate and speak about the value of this shift in the nature of work.

But it’s not just at the top. The most compelling people are your peers. You need to get a network of those at the peer level to buy into the change in the future of work and begin to foster that by demonstrating that what has occurred is valuable. Those are the people you need to enlist by using strategies like working groups, additional training, or a group of individuals as your cross-departmental innovation team at all levels of the organization.

That’s one way to drive change and drive it quicker as it relates to adapting to the nature of data-driven decision-making and work.

There also needs to be a virtuous feedback loop where the communication from your employees is understood, responded to, and incorporated into what’s occurring. That doesn’t mean every employee’s idea is great or that you need to be surveying employees every week. But they need to know they are heard, their input has been considered, and, in cases where it makes sense in changing the nature of work, they can see they had an impact.

Because ultimately, when you think about

the human side of this, which is sometimes the biggest challenge and opportunity, being valued, knowing that your input is heard and impacting the way work occurs is having some level of long-term sustainability.

Those of us in the public sector see our decisions to work in this sector are to impact our community, that there is value beyond the products and services we provide. There are innate human-scale impacts of doing work in and around government. And it’s not just for the pension or the paycheck. It is for people.

And that needs to be recognized as you’re trying to help your organization adapt to the future of work.

So, what opportunities should we focus on in this particular space? Technology exists to allow for things like remote work, better tracking of progress and performance, and the ability to provide more data to people at all levels. Data analytics and visualization tools are easier than ever. By providing these tools and empowering people to use them, you move from just a small group dedicated to data-driven decisionmaking to infecting an entire organization with a culture of data-driven decision-making. And through that, you can see power and insights you would’ve never expected.

For example, in my team, we do things called innovation sprints, where we don’t come up with solutions, we facilitate conversations through journey mapping, storytelling, and various design thinking methods. We connect an internal set of folks familiar with the city with the subject matter experts; we don’t say, “Here’s your problem, and here’s your solution.” We help them discover the opportunities and challenges in the work we’re doing.

And here lies the opportunity: Employees are a part of solution creation; they have a voice and participate in that change. It’s

“BEING KNOWN AS A PLACE WHERE TALENT LIVES, THRIVES, AND WANTS TO BE… THE TALENTED WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE NEW ECONOMY.” enlisting the entire organization in this concept and idea of continuous improvement.

How do we do this practically? The City of Carlsbad had an almost ready-to-go remote work policy. As we looked at the private sector and the opportunities around a more flexible workforce, we saw the logic made sense—from a financial and a talent attraction standpoint.

Yet it was stuck in the analysis paralysis because the change management aspects were massive.

What happened? We had to shift 60% of our workforce immediately to remote work.

Fortunately, with our investment in communications technology and software, we shifted to remote work without any loss in productivity. And having the workforce, the management and executive teams, and elected officials see this could work, we were able to get our long-term remote work policy put into place.

You can take that on a smaller scale, too.

What is the challenge your workforce is facing?

What areas do you see opportunities but can never get over the finish line? What are some new and different ways of adapting to the new nature of work? How can you demonstrate those changes and shifts work and can be used to inform a broader-scale application. And it’s the same thing we do in product development in the innovation space. But now the product is people and the nature of their work.

One important thing to our city manager was that remote work was a privilege, not a right, and that is driving our employees to do better. It is also crucial as you’re moving to remote work to have clear KPIs, performance management tools, and ways of tracking progress. These things will allow for a more sustainable shift to remote work.

Now I mentioned the new economy associated with this because many of these challenges are on the public sector side. If you are in the private sector, really key in on areas you can help cities better understand performance. Think about previous metrics when it came to management: One of the most important tools was the walkingaround manager. But we know that the worst productivity measure is seeing butts in seats.

Now, the human aspect of connecting with people and interacting is very valuable.

Blending the idea of the walking-around manager and those human connections and creative mashups that occur with performance measures, metrics, and software tools is ideal.

All of this does ultimately relate to the economic development department. We recognize if we aren’t going to fall behind as public sector organizations, we have to adopt and adapt to the new way talent wants to work.

It’s not about snacks and slides in your cool

Facebook office. It is about performance, value, and feedback and also recognizing we have folks in the workforce we’re trying to attract that aren’t going to stay with us long-term. They’re not investing in your pension system. How do you create an accelerated path for them?

Everybody is competing for talent. Carlsbad launched the Life in Action Campaign, where we are funding a talent attraction campaign not just for the city but for companies, global headquarters, and other software and design firms. These are some of the talent tools necessary to deal with the innovation economy and a more resilient approach.

Throwing money at companies doesn’t matter.

Free land and tax incentives will not land you the companies you want for a sustainable economy. But being known as a place where talent lives, thrives, and wants to be… the talented workforce of the future is the lifeblood of the new economy. And as it relates to the long-term sustainability of your city, talent attraction and economic development go hand in hand.

This is our opportunity. We are building toward a better future, listening to the people in our organizations and the people we serve and collectively coming up with a new normal, looking over the horizon and saying, yes, we can be something bigger, better, and more agile.

David Graham Chief Innovation Officer, City of Carlsbad Carlsbad, California A veteran local government advisor, David Graham serves on Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s Executive Leadership team as DCOO for the Office of Neighborhood Services. His work includes the first all-electric car-share fleet in North America, an open-data platform for development permitting, a partnership with GE to deploy sensors in LED-enabled smart streetlights, and using technology to achieve municipal climate change goals. He co-chairs Utilities Advancing Cities, is a Cleantech San Diego board member, serves as an advisor to Smart Cities Connect, and is a regular speaker regarding the municipal perspective on civic innovation.

Smart City Miami | 29

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

CITY OF ROTTERDAM:

THE CASE FOR AN INNOVATION AGENDA THAT IS SOCIAL IN NATURE

BY BAS BOORSMA

When you are living in a system shift, the past stops being a source of guidance for the present and future. That means many things we have learned may not provide the tools we need to prepare for the future. We have to think creatively, talk to our residents, and build new partnerships to ensure we get what we need for our communities. And that’s not an easy task.

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ike many communities, the City of Rotterdam is undergoing a system or paradigm shift. Many call it an industrial revolution. Previous industrial revolutions were all started by new technologies—steam engines, electricity, cars—that influenced human conduct in incredible ways, especially within cities. In fact, entire cities were built around those new technologies. Previous industrial revolutions also resulted in a highly centralized way of doing things. But today, the shift we’re seeing is powered by digital technologies, which means we are moving away from centralization to a networked way of being organized.

Health care, for example, is becoming more network-distributed with the ability of our smart devices to monitor us on a daily basis. Energy grids are also becoming more network-driven. Rather than having a centralized power plant, we’re ensuring we produce energy hyper-locally. And if you are not consuming that energy, you can reroute it to the closest point of demand.

Think about how we learn and work: It’s no longer a centralized affair. That’s an incredible development, and it’s not going to go away; it’s going to move faster and evolve further, and we have to be prepared. And that doesn’t mean introducing more sensors or cameras to your light poles or other typical smart city plays. We have to ensure that our

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innovations are scalable and inclusive. And that’s where the social components come in.

Now, for those who say, “We’ve got a healthy community and economy, and we love digital, but we don’t want to hear about revolutions,” I would say think again. Because, yes, you can be conservative about your community and loyal to its DNA, but in times of system change, in order to stay the same, you have to change. To stand still means to drop off the radar in your ability to make the best of what the future holds. This is where we find ourselves. We have to make those changes.

Mitigating Digital Divides One of the biggest challenges we face as a city administration is mitigating digital divides. Yes, that’s plural, because it’s no longer just the digital divide of the 1990s when it was people who were online and those who weren’t. Today, we have multiple digital divides. There are entire tribes of people that think they’re online because they can access Facebook. But being digitally skilled means that you understand how to build a business on a digital foundation.

This is something we focus on in Rotterdam: bringing digital skills to the neighborhoods.

We don’t just depend on institutes of higher learning. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to talk to people and understand what skills they’re looking for to build their futures. This is one of

the most fundamental elements in getting our social agenda right. It’s not just about access; it’s about allowing people to have the right skills to thrive in a digital era.

Beyond digital skills, we also need to be aware that with this massive shift, many jobs are going to disappear. Think about mobility: Our cars are becoming more driverless. Yes, it may be another 20 years before that evolution reaches full circle, but in the U.S., 14% of all jobs are directly or indirectly associated with mobility. That’s a lot of jobs to lose in 20 years.

The best way to prepare is to give people the skills to ensure that they and their children are preparing for the jobs of tomorrow.

Citizen Participation Platforms To drive our social digital agenda forward, we need a tool for citizen participation that drives social cohesion. In Rotterdam, we are building digital citizen participation platforms from the bottom-up, one neighborhood after the other. We are learning from other cities like Barcelona’s Decidim platform (used by 130 cities worldwide) and Paris’ “Madam Mayor, I’ve Got an Idea” platform, which are very modular and personalized.

The purpose of these platforms is to allow citizens to offer ideas as to what type of innovations and improvements they want to see in their neighborhoods. They can propose ideas and vote for ones they want to implement. Rotterdam is preparing the first

©ROTTERDAM TOURISM BOARD/ROBIN UTRECHT

deployment of these platforms. We expect a lot from it. It’s a lot of work, but it’s valuable.

Design Think Exercise Beyond the strictly social agenda of particular programs, there is something that precedes that, which is our efforts to run a design think exercise, talking to people to understand their fears, aspirations, values, and the type of innovations they long for (or not want at all). We ask questions to help us drive the right type of innovation agenda.

This is a difficult exercise because you can’t project-manage it. You don’t know what outcome you’re going to get. Yes, it puts people in City Hall out of their comfort zones.

But when you’re living in a system shift, the rule has to be: Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And this exercise does that.

Digital Twin Beyond the social agenda, we are about to deploy one of the largest digital twins ever created for a city. Just imagine seeing the energy consumption of one building after another and being able to drive your decarbonization strategy for the buildings, and perhaps the entire city, from one point.

Imagine a neighborhood building a new playground. We can invite local children into the digital twin and have them design it. If that isn’t a great example of citizen participation based on new technology, then what is?

Tech Governance We’re also looking at how to govern technology more effectively and ensure that we’re open and transparent about it. Governance around AI and algorithms is a top priority for our city.

Again, we look for conversations with our residents and stakeholders.

In sum, cities need to set up their innovation agenda in a way that key stakeholders and citizens are number one. Make it a permanent exercise where you have an ongoing, dynamic conversation, and ensure that you are ready to deal with what you find out.

Next, have an innovation agenda that goes beyond the classic smart city play. Too many cities have innovations in living labs or districts, but they don’t scale. In Rotterdam, we bring together innovation hot spots, startup accelerators, living labs, and investors to align themselves so we have a coherent long-term perspective about how to drive these solutions and scale them for the future.

Getting this right requires much more governance and public-private collaboration.

And we should be activists about that. As a government, we need to rethink our roles and understand what we want out of the next few decades. This is what I call a New Digital Deal, which happens to be the title of my book.

I hope you’ll join me in the aspiration of building a new digital deal for our communities. It’s now or never. Let’s build it.

Bas Boorsma Chief Digital Officer, City of Rotterdam Rotterdam, Netherlands Bas Boorsma is a leading urban innovation and digitalization specialist and executive with 20 years of experience in the smart city space. He currently serves as the Chief Digital Officer to the City of Rotterdam, where he is the lead orchestrator, facilitator, and ambassador to the city and its innovation ecosystem.

Boorsma also serves as Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, is Vice President EMEA of the Cities Today Institute, and serves as Chief Innovation Officer for Change=, a fast-growing Living as a Service company. He also serves as a board member at the Smart City Association Italy. Boorsma is the author of the acclaimed book A New Digital Deal.

Smart City Miami | 31

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

CORAL GABLES RESILIENT SMART DISTRICTS

QUALITY OF LIFE, INNOVATION & ECONOMIC GROWTH

BY RAIMUNDO RODULFO

Coral Gables’ smart districts pivot on a robust and resilient cyber-infrastructure to continually improve quality of life and foster innovation and growth.

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he City of Coral Gables is in the center of Miami-Dade County.

We are home to the University of Miami, over 140 multinational corporations, and more than 20 international trade offices and consulates. About six years ago, we started a smart city program, accelerating our building of infrastructure that has multiple functions and capacities.

Coral Gables builds on a solid foundation of high-speed communications that provides digital inclusion and a layer of cyber-physical systems with AI-powered smart city poles and IoT sensors. This foundation is resilient with fault tolerance and failover automation to keep critical services available during hurricanes, power outages, and other disasters. The city’s urban infrastructure provides hyperconnectivity, visibility, automation, and capacity that enhances public safety, mobility, education, collaboration, business development, and comprehensive city services.

As Coral Gables’ smart districts continue evolving with the expansion of fiber corridors, new cyber-infrastructure projects, and urban analytics, the city can augment its business capabilities, delivering resilient citizen services, connectivity, real-time actionable insight, and an entrepreneurship ecosystem that creates jobs and opportunities for our region.

In the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), we bring together stakeholders from every function and department, and we leverage the data from various sensors, like traffic sensors, water canals that detect flooding, and environmental sensors like air quality,

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wind speed, wind chill, and rainfall. Multiple data gives us high visibility for emergency management, urban planning, and public safety. All those systems are aggregated in the Smart City Hub in the Public Safety Headquarter Building.

We bring this technology together at the EOC, including GIS systems, maps that allow us to collect data from the rescue recon from the rain, and drones that give us visibility over areas we don’t normally access. We also bring data from the stakeholders in that connected mobile fleet to provide insight into emergency and normal operations. It starts with a vision of Industry 4.0 technologies to improve quality of life; foster innovation, citizen engagement, and economic growth; and leverage the infrastructure and technology; and integrate all those systems together.

We then talk about how we can leverage those focus areas to deliver quick wins that make a difference for our residents, like lowering traffic accidents and crime and improving public transportation and services with efficiencies, higher accessibility, and digital inclusion. Those quick wins deliver immediate results that make a difference in quality of life.

When we started talking about smart cities, we started building a resilient network and telecommunications throughout the city. We built that infrastructure to provide business continuity, economic growth, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Horizontal integration is part of this strategy, ensuring we have interoperability between systems and data for better business

intelligence and best-practices frameworks so we can deliver results on time, on budget, and on scope. Collaboration with industry and academia is key and allows us to deliver better results and augment capacity.

In Smart District A, we have the highest concentration of smart city infrastructure— fiber corridors, wireless mesh networks, wireless point-to-point networks, public Wi-Fi, and smart city sensors—to provide insight for sustainability. Those districts keep expanding, enhancing those capabilities to other areas of the city. For example, adjacent to U.S. 1 and the University of Miami, we are building fiber corridors that will allow us to continue expanding capacity besides what we already built in the geofence of the city.

We have a second phase of that collaboration to design and build smart microgrids with higher resiliency that can leverage not only the traditional microgenerators but also solar and wind power and other renewables.

We get high visibility from the traffic, pedestrian, and bicycle sensors; environmental sensors like water waves and others we did in collaboration with Florida International University; safety sensors; and behavioral analytics using computer vision, AI, and machine learning to classify objects or multimodal transportation objects to detect, classify, analyze, and visualize those objects in real time—and also to predict how those variables will behave in the future.

We also have sensors for noise, air quality, parking, and lighting throughout the central business districts. Digital kiosks provide data

Coral Gables, Florida

©GMCVB

©EKIN

and interact with the public. We bring that information to the Community Intelligence Center and visualize that data to the public on the Smart City Hub. We also have drone technology for emergency operations or rescue recon to inspect areas where we have fallen trees or accessibility issues or to inspect water damage in rooftops or telecommunication towers.

During a crowded event on Miracle Mile, there was a missing child. Our analysts used this computer vision system with AI and morphological analysis and found the child in just two minutes.

We built this infrastructure to be resilient in a Category 5 building. We also have network resiliency to connect to these services even if we

lose communication channels. We also have network resilience in the sense that we have a secondary data center in another Category 5 facility for disaster recovery.

We have real-time data application. We leverage hyper-converged infrastructure to have that architecture in our stack and our systems for data storage, backups, and servers that are resilient not only to the co-location facility but also to the cloud.

We have received a lot of awards, including an award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for the resilience of our network during Hurricane Irma, where our city had more than 80% power down after the storm, and we were able to keep critical services and service responders intact.

Raimundo Rodulfo Chief Innovation Officer, City of Coral Gables Smart Streetlight The first of its kind in the U.S., the Ekin Smart City Pole aggregates and integrates more than 10 technologies, including environmental and traffic sensors, edge analytics, computer vision, and machine learning analytics with 5G telecommunications and a hot spot for machine networks and public Wi-Fi.

Coral Gables, Florida Raimundo Rodulfo is an engineering and technology leader with over 27 years of experience delivering value, sustainability, and innovation to customers and organizations. He and his team at the City of Coral Gables IT Department work with city leadership and departments as a strategic partner, bringing value, efficiencies, innovation, and process improvements through technology solutions and smart city initiatives.

Smart City Miami | 33

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

FUTURE CITY:

Jaffa Gateway Master-planned community in Tel Aviv, Israel

RESILIENT BY DATA, ADOPTIVE BY DESIGN

BY EREZ ELLA

As architects in the era of information, we must utilize technology to manage urban risk and design resilient cities.

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an data help us better understand the ongoing shift in our societies and the urban environment? How can we use data to create sustainable and smart neighborhoods, improving the quality of urban life while providing opportunities for all?

At HQ Architects, we advocate for datadriven solutions that can shape long-term smart city strategies. We believe in the use of data and technology to help us understand social behavior and community needs, translating them into physical space. Our methodology investigates how to design places promoting well-being, economic diversity, and sustainable growth.

The city has always been influenced by three main vectors: technology, economy, and mobility, which are the backbone of any city at any time. The current information revolution is changing all three vectors, and as urban designers and architects, we have a responsibility to reimagine cities to carry the

most densified population and changes in societal behavior.

As an attempt to do so, we exploit the fact that there is data everywhere; we just need to pay attention and decide where to look and what to use. Also, instead of using data and tech to measure performances, we use data and tech to create experiences. It might sound like a minor difference, but we believe that the combination of data, society, and sustainability can create great experiences and, therefore, great cities.

Jaffa Gateway This neighborhood remains the last area in Tel Aviv with an active local industry.

It contradicts the municipality’s official position to have a resilient city and preserve places for its different populations, including the creative class that mostly uses local manufacturers. We started extensive research, gathering information from many

Sheba Medical Center Sheba Hospital is the largest hospital in Israel and ranked ninth in the best hospitals in the world. To accommodate the needs of the growing population, it needs to triple in size in 25 years. HQ Architects suggested taking advantage of the site’s topography and separating all movements of the hospital into four main networks: the infrastructure, the medical network, the general public and visitors, and vehicles.

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sources, and found that the area is a major destination for young professionals. We also noticed that the nature of manufacturing is changing from dirty and polluting to clean and local—proof that new manufacturing can stay in the city without creating hazardous environments.

Our suggestion was rather simple but radical. We suggested eliminating underground parking and having free-of-car streets. We suggested developing each side on its own, allowing the transfer of building rights from one side to another. And as a tool for the municipality, we created software that documents the businesses, ecosystem, and connections and allows the urban planners and architects to suggest plans allowing essential manufacturers to continue and operate from their locations. Hopefully, this mechanism will create a variety of interesting, resilient neighborhoods that will allow their current inhabitants to stay and live in the city.

Erez Ella Founder, HQ Architects Tel Aviv, Israel

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Erez Ella founded HQ Architects in 2008 after spending several years as an associate at OMA and as principal at REX, where he led the TVCC project in Beijing, the design of the second scheme of the Whitney Museum in New York, and oversaw the design of the Wyly Theatre in Dallas. Today, he leads design work for projects worldwide, including public spaces and infrastructure, cultural and educational projects, offices, hotels, and retail.

Hadera Sea Quarter Master-planned community in Haifa, Israel

Rafi Rich CEO, SUiTS – Smarter Urban iT & Strategies Petach Tikva, Israel

©LEITERSDORF BEN-DAYAN

SUSTAINABLE URBANISM THROUGH SMART DESIGN, LOCALIZED INFRASTRUCTURE, AND COMMUNITY-BASED DATA

BY RAFI RICH

Israeli cities designed for inclusive, long-term growth use dynamic data-based regulations, flexible and mediumscale infrastructure, and cultural-based processes.

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rban planning—the tools, the regulations, and methods—is the same as it was 100 years ago, and this has to change. Instead of continuing the path of fashionable smart cities, at SUiTS, we focus on fixing and disrupting civic planning.

Our process combines governance, policy, regulation, data, and technology with an emphasis on how we can create stakeholder co-creation and co-management of our cities focusing on four key points: No city can be smart without creating and maintaining trust. From 2014 to 2016, I worked for the City of Tel Aviv in developing a smart energy and infrastructure road map.

After the first stage, we decided we needed pilot projects to understand what we had to do and then scale up.

We chose a neighborhood called Maoz Aviv in the northern part of Tel Aviv with about 500 units and 25,000 people. The buildings are pretty old, and some of them are quite neglected. But people love this place because of how the open spaces and buildings combine with one another.

After we finished the sketches and got the budget, we went to the community to see how

we could begin. And the community said no.

Why? Because we didn’t include them in the ideas. We didn’t ask what they wanted or how they would create such a system. They wanted to be a partner.

Urban innovation should be based on the local culture and community and substantial problems and opportunities.

We have to determine the problems and opportunities within a specific area.

In 2018, we were part of a plan for Ofakim, one of the poorest cities in Israel. As part of the housing strategy, the Israeli government is creating large communities between 5,000 and 10,000 units throughout the country. The mayor of Ofakim asked me, “How can you make sure no one will be left behind?”

We created a connection between the old and new parts of the city by designing a circular road as a sort of “necklace of innovation,” using the route for reskilling innovation hubs, networking places, and data hubs connected through a system of shared autonomous vehicle lanes.

We also designed a network of secondary roads that would enable last-mile lanes for micromobility and walking, and all of these

Rafi Rich is an architect, urban planner, and co-founder of SUiTS, Smarter Urban iT & Strategies. He has spent 20 years promoting urban innovation, resilience, and sustainability with cities, governments, and organizations through a synergy between technology, data, policy, governance, and community. He also created MidCityLabs, a think tank focused on secondary cities and the built environment of the developing world.

were connected with broadband.

Cities should implement policies that inspire collaborative innovation. We might have the greatest ideas, but if we don’t find a way to inspire people to collaborate and change their behavior, we won’t create change.

We designed a neighborhood in Hadera with 12,500 units, 1,500 hotel rooms, and a vast commercial strip. It was dubbed the smartest and most sustainable master plan in Israel. Of course, we have all the solutions you would dream of in a smart city, but we also had to create a sense of community.

Plans should reflect uncertainty through data-based flexibility. We might have great solutions for today, but they might not be relevant tomorrow. So plans must be flexible and based on data. In the existing way of planning, we have a master plan that defines the land use, guidelines, and conditions for development. Then we go into detailed plans; then we design our buildings. But we added a step: evaluating the infrastructure, services, and use of these services based on data collected from the community. We then assess the impact, user engagement, and demand and change the urban design, land use, etc., accordingly.

Smart City Miami | 35

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

BETTER GOVERNANCE, BETTER LIVELIHOOD, BETTER INDUSTRY

BY LUIS GUILLOT

Creating a smart city nervous system.

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t Huawei, we see our smart city as a human brain that has a nervous system that’s a network that extends throughout the city and connects all of the sensors and the gathering information points that a city requires to improve its everyday operations. All those sensors throughout the city are gathered through the network, the nervous system, and it goes to your brain, your data center, where everything is processed. New ICT technologies are making it possible to deploy.

The smart streetlight in Latin America was the beacon when smart cities started.

They turn on at dusk, turn off at dawn, and if something happens or it’s not working, then it’s fixed or corrected relatively promptly. Fire hydrants are monitored for water pressure. So when the fire department is deployed, they know that the nearest fire hydrant has proper pressure to be useful.

These are connected to different types of technology through what we call hybrid networks, which are wireless fiber networks where everything is connected. All the information flows through the network to your data center, where your IoT platform, Geographic Information System, and AI platform process and find correlations to help improve your decision-making.

Sensors are one of the most important parts of a smart city because you need to have the capability to grab that information to see what’s happening. In a few Latin American cities, it has been a new trend to create bicycle lanes within normal streets, so everybody started being a little bit more green.

In a big city in Latin America, citizens complained about taking space away from

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the roads for bicyclists. So the city installed sensors to count how many people were using them. They identified that in some parts of the city, bicycle lanes weren’t being used, but in other places, they were really popular. They had the tangible information, not just citizens complaining because they missed wide roads.

And I like this example of the smart streetlight because it changed the streetlight the way the smartphone did for the cellular phone. Before, a streetlight was just there to brighten up the night. But today, they’re doing a lot more things with this technology. You can put weather or air quality sensors and Wi-Fi access points. In Mexico City, I believe they have over 25,000 access points throughout the city.

In some places, we deployed big monitors that can provide information to citizens about what’s happening or tourist information. Some cities have created a way to get income, and they lease time on those monitors for ads.

You can also add emergency buttons or tourist assistant buttons, so if the tourist needs help, they push the button, and they’re connected to the tourist assistant call center.

I traveled throughout Latin America, and parking is always a problem. You can embed sensors into the asphalt and communicate wirelessly to your citizens via an app that tells them where a parking space is available. And they can pay for parking through the app. If somebody parks and doesn’t pay, you can send an alert for the meter maid to place a ticket as soon as possible.

You can also have a system where you can reserve spaces in a parking garage. There’s a great example of this in Shanghai, where you can reserve your parking space at Disney up to six months in advance. On the day of your visit,

your space opens up, you park, and you start paying.

Water is our most pleasurable resource. And through this type of technology in your water system, you can have sensors that can inform your quality, volume, and speed of travel. If something changes, you can detect a possible leak. You can do consumption monitoring instead of sending somebody to measure.

You can create better information and faster response to whatever incident has occurred.

For all these processes, connectivity is the key.

Everything has to be connected to a network.

Having those sensors connect to a carrier network and paying your monthly fee eats up your budget. Some cities have deployed technologies like eLTE in a private network managed by the government to prioritize the information; services go faster, you can deploy better services, and you can extend your network and do things like mobile government.

Your inspectors connect to your network, so they can do everything on-site without having to come back and retype the information.

For a construction inspection, you can have a drone send you live data of what’s happening on the construction site. If you’re going to fix a couple of potholes, you can detect the pothole and deploy your crew who can send you live information.

An example that we did in Gaoqing, Shandong, was a very large eLTE private network. They started to provide remote health services to farther regions. They have mobile policing, give traffic tickets, manage their waterworks, and provide better and more reliable water services. This network covers so much of the sea that they even have some smart agriculture solutions with sensors that detect the

moisture of the soil, so the irrigation system turns on, and they always have the correct amount so the plants can grow properly.

Having this type of solution transforms all of the things that you can do within a city.

Everything is analyzed, all the way to their traffic lights, so they know when they’re green, when they’re red, and what time of day, and they can actively manage this. If they have a big event, they can detect the traffic flow and rapidly reprogram or change the lights’ duration so that traffic flows better instead of sending police officers to monitor.

Another thing we can do is provide Wi-Fi services to improve connectivity to everybody.

We are doing this in a couple of cities in Central America where the mayors detected they had big problems because people didn’t have the money to get proper internet. So they started to deploy Wi-Fi in parks and government offices. It’s also the best way to support tourists.

What we have done with wireless is impressive. Another project we did at a stadium in Amsterdam. Cellular services are designed for medium traffic. So when you have a full stadium, the carriers don’t have the bandwidth for everybody to connect. So, the stadium owners asked us to do full Wi-Fi coverage. When you’re inside the stadium, you will always have connectivity. But we went a step further: If you are a ticketholder, they know exactly where you are in the stadium, so you don’t have to go to the concession stand. You can simply say, “Can you send me a couple of pretzels, two hot dogs, and some soft drinks?”

And they deliver it to your seat.

But when everything’s connected, you now have a lot of information and data that you

have to go through. And on this, we talk about an Intelligent Operation Center, where you gather all of the information from the sensors, tellers, and systems, and you analyze it and run correlations of what’s happening. So you are always aware of the state of the city, and you can take better actions and make better decisions, like the example of why they kept those bicycle lanes.

At Huawei, we have done over 120 projects and have more than three decades of experience delivering complex engineering solutions worldwide. But this is the key success factor: If you’re going to go into a smart city project, you need top leadership. The head of the city has to be involved, and you have to have a strong team to help them execute because there will be barriers. Do this with a strong partner that has the size, capability, and experience to do what you’re trying to do.

Lastly, you need not just a solid investment but a reasonable return on your investment.

You know that you’re going to be spending money, but you have to be reasonable in what you are getting. It’s not a business; it’s improving the city so that your citizens, industry, commerce, and schools can grow and help you grow. So it’s a virtual circle. You are doing better government services so the citizens can have a better livelihood so you can have a better industry and commerce to improve and grow the city. And with that new income, it creates better government services.

A smart city starts with transforming your government services in the back end, so the front end, where the citizens are, is up and running with good, strong technology and services that flow together to create an exceptional experience.

“SENSORS ARE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS OF A SMART CITY BECAUSE YOU NEED TO HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO GRAB THAT INFORMATION TO SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING.”

Luis Guillot CTO of Government Solutions, Huawei Latin America & Caribbean Mexico City, Mexico Luis Guillot is Chief Technology Officer of Government Solutions at Huawei Latin America and Caribbean. Prior to joining Huawei, he was General Director of ICT Governance for Mexico City and Deputy Director of Technological Development at Infotec. He studied administrative and computer systems at ITESM and strategic management of information technology and strategic business management at UC Berkeley.

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RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH SUSTAINABLE STANDARDS

BY RAY WALSH

How artificial intelligence and ICT Standards can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and achieve digital transformation in parallel with sustainability.

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rtificial intelligence is quite broad and is what’s known as a horizontal technology. In other words, it’s one of those foundational technologies that crosses across various sectors. There are lots of these types of technologies like 5G, big data, and IoT, which are multi-sectoral or multi-field oriented.

By looking at where AI intersects with agriculture, automotive, manufacturing, finance, and health, we can get an idea of where these synergies would be with other horizontal technologies. Because with a lot of these technologies, it’s hard to draw a ring around where that ecosystem of AI ends and another begins. It tends to be a mesh of ICT technologies. The logistics end of it is also controlled by AI: prediction, analysis, and identification.

AI is pervasive. We walk around with smart systems in our pockets with our mobile phones.

We use predictor mechanisms on our websites to get better responses from vendors. We use social media AI for bringing content that’s of interest to us. So AI is everywhere. We use it all the time. So then we have the Sustainable Development Goals. And what I found is that AI can affect all of them.

Social SDGs: Zero Hunger, Good Health & Well-Being, Quality Education, and Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions From a societal perspective, we have multiple uses for AI on a global scale. For example, AI can help with more efficient agricultural practices in terms of pesticides and fertilizer, reducing cost and waste and addressing scourges such as viruses.

Technologies can also contribute to public

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health. For example, AI is very powerful and accurate when looking at radiography-type images and X-rays in terms of detecting particularly negative outcomes concerning those scans.

To improve the quality of education, big changes have to happen in broadband deployment worldwide: Over 3 billion people don’t have access to online facilities.

AI is also important for food, water, energy, health, education, climate, and the ocean, and all of these relate to the social SDGs. For example, AI is being used to control robots harvesting plastic from the ocean, and they are automatically or autonomously controlled.

And they deposit their collected plastic to be disposed of from the ocean.

Economic SDGs: No Poverty, Gender Equality, Economic Growth, Innovation & Infrastructure, and Reduced Inequalities We want to create environments where people can be more productive and there is better performance of economic tools being used. For AI in big data, we have to distribute ledger technology, which will create a more secure environment for transactions. The AI aspect would be the smart contracts, which are triggered at the delivery of the goal for the DLT technology. And these create faster and cheaper payment systems.

The human-digital gender gap is a big thing: More males are digitally literate than females. So we can use education and AI tools to do online training. And we can use remote delivery systems once we have the infrastructure for that.

Interoperability and standardization are big things for the economic SDGs. If you want

to have interoperable AI systems that impact SDGs, you need to have standards. And standards allow you to reduce barriers to entry when it comes to technologies, particularly global technologies like the internet and digital communication systems.

Environmental SDGs: Clean Water, Clean Energy, Sustainable Cities, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life on Land Next, we’re going to look at the environmental SDGs. Sensors with AI systems built into them can work in all sorts of environments on land, in the air, underwater, or in water. They’re constantly monitoring the state of our natural environment. And based on the data that’s being collected and aggregated, we can make decisions about what we want to achieve in terms of our environment.

I mentioned we have AI harvesting plastics in our oceans, but you also do the same thing for smart water management, monitoring flow and control. We can also monitor the quality of water. We can look at water and air pollutants.

And all of this can be used to improve the quality of life for citizens.

For energy efficiency and renewable resources, we have AI systems that help not just to design and develop renewable resources but also to manage them and improve their performances. In terms of procurement and construction of performance indicators for smart, sustainable cities, you can have smart systems involved in those logistical parts as well.

You can use AI with e-waste, recycling and managing the complete logistical pipeline associated with creating digital tools, technologies, and services, and then at the end

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of the life cycle as well.

AI and big data can monitor, moderate, and adapt the effects of climate change, including geomonitoring from satellite imagery, monitoring of storms and sea levels, and temperature for climate change. Also, the impact on wildlife: If you can monitor and predict how migrations and deforestation happen and where you have poaching, you can improve the climatic and environmental impact by controlling those situations using satellite imagery.

And then, we have an inclusive digital society, which involves looking at the main standards and developing organizations in that space, which would be ITU, a UN organization, and ISO, which is a global international standards organization, and European Union instruments as well.

United Nations: UNECE WP.6 The UNECE WP.6 looks at a specific SDG. And gender responsiveness is really important when it comes to standardization. The default example is when crash test dummies were

created, they were modeled on the male anatomy, resulting in more females being injured in crashes.

We must be more gender-responsive in creating technologies and standards. It encourages regulatory coherence, which has a critical impact on sustainable development and promotes better resilience and more robustness when it comes to hazards. We promote the use of standards by policymakers and businesses to reduce technical barriers to trade and to foster innovation and good governance. And we advocate the use of standards and implementing UN-wide goals, including implementation of Agenda 2030 and the Sendai Framework for action.

As a result, the UN issued what is known as the Gender Declaration. Most nations have signed it, and now we’re looking at gender action plans and implementing new projects and activities that will support inclusivity and diversity in all aspects of society, but particularly relating to standards of gender responsiveness.

EU Strategy The European Commission, the European Industry Consortia, EU member states, and EU Standards Development Organizations have prioritized ICT standardization as a key enabler of the European Digital Single Market.

To facilitate this, it has been front and center within the policy and strategy of the EU. Global trade requires interoperability and collaboration. ICT Standards Development is interoperability by consensus. It’s the agreement of national bodies worldwide before a standard gets implemented. That’s what we put into the innovative products. If you put all of this standardization paraphernalia into your development of tools, technologies, services, and products, your customers get confidence, quality, and trust.

That’s a quick run-through of AI systems and standardization worldwide and where they can be applied. If this has piqued your interest, you should contact your national body and become active in European and international standardization.

Ray Walsh Assistant Professor, Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland Ray Walsh is a senior researcher at the ADAPT Research Centre at Dublin City University. He joined the School of Computing DCU in 1995, where he delivers AI, IoT, and data governance modules. He has been a digital leader with the World Economic Forum since 2016 and was appointed to the IEEE European Public Policy Committee on ICT in 2019 as the AI WG Lead.

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RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

KYIV SMART CITY:

DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE

BY YURIY NAZAROV

The Kyiv Smart City project shows it is possible to find solutions to smart city technology problems in the new reality.

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oday, I will tell you about Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and about our experience with implementing smart city solutions. When we started Kyiv Smart City, we decided to develop a smart city concept where we identified key areas that we should transform—like transport, municipal utilities, government, medicine, and education—and we defined projects that we should implement in the next five years.

How? We surveyed more than 2,000 citizens.

We included modern tech companies and government employees, and according to their voting, we defined what we needed to do.

Next, we built the Project Office, which consists of city government and civil society.

Civil society is part of the Kyiv Smart City Hub, where we discuss different problems and collaborate with the city government to solve current tasks and issues in our city. We also built the technological platform, where we integrated and started to implement new systems for solving different tasks. We followed two typical smart city models divided into several layers: infrastructure, data, services, business intelligence, and International Operation Center (IOC).

Transparency & Efficiency of City Authority We implemented an open budget where we opened all information, financial transactions for citizens, incomes, and expenses. We opened this information to understand what is

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currently happening in our city.

Next, we implemented electronic procurement. All of our purchases are on this electronic platform, which saved more than half-billion dollars in five years. We also implemented a GIS (Geographic Information System), a platform for collecting and operating data such as land and municipal property management.

Our ERP is a system that includes all city subsidiaries and departments—things that we can control, expenses in every department— that we can analyze in one click. The BI Platform collects information from all modules and systems that top managers and citizens can analyze. Of course, we use this information in the IOC for coordinating and controlling municipal utilities.

With our Contact Center, you can call or use the app to take a photo of a problem and immediately send it to the center. A manager redirects the report to special utility services to solve your problem. e-Democracy In the e-democracy area, we launched e-petitions, where citizens can identify a city problem. If they get 10,000 followers that vote for this petition, the government looks into solving it. Our participation budget is an element where we can spend money on projects and tasks that interest citizens, like building sporting grounds, building schools,

repairing apartments, etc. According to that, we realized more than 1,000 citizen projects, and citizens are happy that the money was spent for the needs they decided.

City Services Through the Kyiv Smart City app, we provide services like paying for utilities, parking, and using public transportation to bring children to kindergarten or go to the doctor.

The Kyiv Resident Card is a banking card where residents pay for different municipal services with a discount. For social groups, we can provide different programs and discounts.

For example, when pensioners use the card, they get discounts on bread and drugs and can use public transportation for free. The card also helps us identify the city’s inhabitants, conduct personal history, and give access to city information and communication infrastructure.

If you subscribe to the city informing system, you can receive different information via SMS. It promptly informs about events in Kyiv, including changes in traffic, roadblocks, disconnection of utilities, energy events, blood donors, etc.

There is also a system where you receive immediate information about urgent situations like fires. We also deployed city Wi-Fi in public places and public transport, which is very useful for our citizens and tourists.

It is very important to open all data and provide it to citizens. But our key issue and

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strategic vision is not only to open data but provide access to this data so our innovative community can develop services and solutions for citizens. The portal was created to improve the quality of services offered to citizens, in particular to ensure open access to data published by the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA), district administrations, enterprises, institutions, and organizations with ease of use, clear visualization, and accessibility through one access point.

We installed GPS records on all public transit, and we built a Command Center for things the city can manage. Using this data, we support innovators and companies to build their businesses and provide these services to citizens.

Safe City In an area of the city, we installed more than 7,000 cameras. We deployed a cloud platform for collecting data and implemented a video analytics system with car number recognition, facial recognition, and other opportunities.

We built 12 monitoring rooms for municipal needs, national police, and special security services. We solved not only the public safety task but also municipal tasks like transport management because we can calculate traffic flow. And we use this system for controlling road repairs, garbage removal, snow removal, etc.

We use city drones for different tasks for monitoring the city and urgent situations. For example, our firefighters and police use drones for situations in public places or criminal incidents. We also deployed alarm buttons in public places that connect you to an operator in the national police.

Technological Solutions Smart lighting is an element of reducing the cost of lighting and increasing its intensity. We deployed this platform and installed different sensors like air and water quality. At our Command Center, we collect the information from cameras, dispatching systems, and IoT to react to different incidents and coordinate municipal services. We also have a reserve data center for disaster recovery and replication information. For solving city tasks, we built a network infrastructure.

We deployed fiber-optic channels throughout the city, connecting schools, hospitals, and kindergartens.

Support of the Innovative Community We built the Kyiv Smart City Hub, where we provide access to data and information systems through API for building new startups and services for our citizens.

We use our city like a living lab. For example, if you have a new sensor or camera, it’s not a problem to install on a bus stop and connect to our IoT or CCTV platform for testing and launching this solution and for making products and future services for our citizens.

In our Smart City School, we have different coding courses for children where we discuss problems and tasks in our city and support our innovators.

Forum And, of course, a key element is promoting the smart city in our country and Eastern Europe. Every year, we have the Kyiv Smart City Forum, where we have an exhibition zone and a speaker zone where we discuss solutions, tasks, problems, and how the smart city can support modern cities.

Yuriy Nazarov Smart City Committee Chairman, Ministry of Digital Transformation Kyiv, Ukraine Yuriy Nazarov, Chairman of the Smart City Committee of the Public Council at the Ministry of Digital Transformation/Innovations and smart city technologies expert. He was also the head of ICT at the Kyiv City Council from 2017 to 2020). In 2015, Nazarov became an adviser to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

He also co-founded the Kyiv Smart City project, which developed and implemented online tools that helped attract Kyiv residents to city development. In 2017, Nazarov became the Head of the Information and Communication Technologies Department of the Kyiv City State Administration.

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RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

THE RACE TO RESILIENCE

BY ALBERT SLAP

What is the role of the human element in the lack of progress in city sustainability and resilience?

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esilience is the ability to prepare, adapt, and thrive in a disruptive and changing world. It is the ability to recover from or be resistant to the impact of natural and man-made disasters, as well as the long-term effects of climate change.

Resilience is about embracing the changes that we’re encountering. Sustainability is about protecting our resources. And they’re quite different.

Why do I say the “race to resilience”? Why are we talking about existing buildings? Why not just spend time imagining what a resilient future will look like? The short answer is that if we don’t win this race to resilience, we probably won’t succeed in creating a cool, calm future.

The fact is that 95% of all existing commercial, multi-family, and industrial buildings are not ready for what Mother Nature is dishing out, let alone what’s coming in 2030, 2050, and beyond. If we can’t help the existing buildings where most of us live and work, how will we get to a better future?

To put things into perspective, since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 298 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage exceeded $1 billion. The total cost was nearly $2 trillion. As of July 9, not including the Western wildfires, 2021 had already seen eight climate disaster events exceeding $1 billion.

This means that the annual average of $1 billion disasters has more than doubled in the past 40 years.

America’s “Resilience Deficit” Approximately 57% of homes, schools, hospitals, office buildings, and factories in the U.S. are located in hazard hot spots. And more than 1 million buildings lie in hot spots for two or more hazards. At the residential level, there are 5 million homeowner flood policies through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), but 40 million to 60 million homes are actually at risk of flooding.

There are very few, if any, standards or even industry best practices for commercial real estate due diligence for natural disasters.

There’s a lack of private risk-mitigation investments and government tax and financial incentives or insurance programs to incentivize risk-mitigation investments that we need.

We also lack risk education, the human element. Why aren’t we doing more on the resilience level? Some people say that we’re drowning in data and starved for knowledge. I think that is an accurate description.

Drivers of Resilience There is some hope that some things are changing. For example, Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler says investors want mandatory disclosure on climate risks this year. Other drivers of resilience include ASTM International, which sets standards for thousands of different activities around the world; the Environmental Bankers Association, which is advocating for a more holistic process for commercial real estate transactions; and the

U.S. Green Building Council, which has a new RELi hazard assessment certification program featuring RiskFootprint technology to provide high-quality climate-risk analyses for buildings, communities, and cities.

Climate Disclosure Domino Effect As physical climate disclosure becomes a requirement, investors and regulators are going to demand disclosure of physical risks to the assets. The investees must assess their portfolio assets for hazards and climate change impacts and disclose this to investors.

The regulators will see the vulnerability and materiality of the at-risk assets and seek more information on plans to mitigate those risks.

Then, the investees will develop plans and capital programs to mitigate risks at the asset level, and the investors and regulators will monitor the progress of the investees to reduce risk to assets and profitability over time.

What Should Building Owners, Operators, Investors, and Lenders Do? They should use new environmental riskassessment tools to better understand floods, natural hazards, extreme weather, and climate risks at the purchase/opportunity, investment, mortgage origination, due diligence stages.

And they should consider making resilienceenhancing investments in properties with high risk where there’s a good return on investment.

Together, we can achieve a resilient future, but we have to start the race to resilience now.

Albert Slap President and CEO, Coastal Risk Consulting Boca Raton, Florida Albert J. Slap is co-founder of Coastal Risk Consulting, a geospatial technology, modeling, and analytics company in Plantation, Florida. He is also the President of RiskFootprint, a technology startup that provides online hazard assessments and resilience accelerating advisory services for properties in the U.S. Slap was a nationally recognized environmental attorney whose Clean Water Act suits brought billions of dollars of reinvestment into wastewater treatment plants and created tens of thousands new construction jobs.

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©TEL AVIV-YAFO TOURISM BOARD

TRANSFORMING THE CITY

BY GUY ELAD

An overview of Tel Aviv’s digital services for residents, a real-time management system of city data, and cooperation with startups to accelerate innovation.

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hen Tel Aviv began its smart city program a few years ago, we started by taking many services and making them e-services. We opened a digital club for citizens called Digi-Tel, a personalized web and mobile communication platform that included those e-services. If you want a yearly parking permit in your neighborhood, you can only get it online. If you want to see your building rights, they are online. If you want to register your child for kindergarten? You can do that as well.

But for us, this wasn’t enough. We had to personalize the service to each one of our residents. But first, we had to learn a little bit about them: their age, marital status, how many children they have and their ages, their hobbies. By knowing this set of data, we can proactively send them personalized information and services.

Personal Proactive Information So what is proactive information? Let’s say a water pipe on your street breaks. We can send you an SMS saying that the pipe is broken, and it will be fixed in the next few hours. Or, say we have an activity for children in the community center in your neighborhood. If you have a child in the relevant age range, we will send you an SMS invitation. We also cooperate with the city’s theaters and cinemas, so when a show is not fully booked, we offer tickets to residents by sending them an SMS with a discount.

We also arrange a lot of free events in the city. For example, every Friday, we offer a yoga class on the rooftop of city hall. We also developed an app that allows people to rent beach chairs and parasols with a discount for residents.

Does It Work?

In the eight years that we have been working with Digi-Tel, we have more than 240,000 people registered, which is around 80% of the population with whom we can interact. That’s really powerful.

The most important community is parents with children around 3 years old. We have about 20,000 parents that already belong to this mini club, and it’s very successful. We also have a club for the city’s dog owners called Digi-Dog, where we provide discounts to pet businesses and public activities for dog owners.

The app even provides a reminder of their dog’s vaccination date.

Resident Engagement Now, is that a smart city? We wanted to do more. We wanted to engage residents and make them our partners. So we did a lot of participation events. For example, we have a project of renovating each neighborhood, but before we started, we asked residents what they thought should be renovated.

We also have an app to report hazards in the city. We send feedback that we received the report, and residents can see the status. When the problem is fixed, we report back to the resident. We are trying to make the residents understand that the municipality supports them and enriches their life in many ways.

But we wanted to do more. We wanted to be able to run the municipality in a smarter way. Therefore, we developed a real-time system that integrates data from reports from residents, municipality workers, and supervisors and IoT devices spread all over the city. Each department in the municipality gets an online view of the data that is relevant to them. We are also trying to encourage community

©TEL AVIV-YAFO TOURISM BOARD/GUY YECHIELY

©TEL AVIV-YAFO TOURISM BOARD

involvement by organizing hackathons that address real challenges in the city.

Creating a smart city is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. You have to plan your vision and the goals you want to accomplish. It’s important to share your ideas with many departments to change the mindset and lead them to change.

When you engage the citizens, do a lot of publicity, and encourage them, you will find you will have a strong partner.

Guy Elad Deputy Chief Innovation Officer, City of Tel Aviv Tel Aviv, Israel Guy Elad is the Deputy CIO and Director of Operations & IT Services in the Division of ICT & IT in the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.

Before his current position, he was Lieutenant Colonel at the C4I branch in the IDF.

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RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

BANGKOK:

THE POROUS CITY Designed by Kotchakorn Voraakhom of design firm Landprocess, Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn Centenary Park is a green engineering masterpiece and winner of the 2020 UN Global Climate Action Award.

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s climate change causes sea-level rise, storm surges, and heavy rainfall, cities across the globe are bracing for flooding disasters. Bangkok is one of the most atrisk cities from climate impacts, yet many developers are ignoring its delta landscape and porosity.

Fortunately, there are companies that understand the urgency of the climate crises, including Landprocess, a landscape architecture and urban design firm led by Kotchakorn Voraakhom that collaborates with vulnerable neighborhoods throughout Bangkok to design solutions to address climate challenges.

Opened in 2017, Landprocess’ Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park is the first critical piece of green infrastructure in Bangkok to reduce urban flood risk. With on-site water management, sustainable drainage systems, a green roof, wetlands, and a retention pond, the 11-acre park can collect, treat, and hold up to 1 million gallons of water, alleviating public sewage during heavy rainfall. In addition to being Bangkok’s first park in 30 years, it was also the first city public park led by a female landscape architect.

While also helping to recycle and reuse runoff water from surrounding areas, Chulalongkorn Centenary Park is equipped with underground rainwater tanks that collect enough water to irrigate itself for up to a month in times of drought. In 2019, the park’s Thammasat Urban Rooftop Farm was opened, repurposing rooftop space to address food and water scarcity. Among many global awards, the park received the prestigious UN Global Climate Action Award in 2020.

Landscape porosity is a natural survival mechanism for climate change. Its solutions can help water-based cities like Bangkok increase their resilience. Through the Porous City Network, Landprocess aims to build more productive spaces in dense urban areas while protecting low-income households from the displacement of climate-vulnerable communities.

Projects like the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park and Thammasat Urban Rooftop Farm demonstrate the possibility for city-scale implementation of green spaces that can provide climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, as well as sustainable food, energy, and economies.

Chulalongkorn Centenary Park At each edge of the pond are special water treatment bikes, where visitors can ride stationary bikes to introduce more oxygen into the water.

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Chulalongkorn Centenary Park 2020 UN Global Climate Action Award Winner •

By sitting at a 3-degree angle, the park collects rainwater from its green roof, which slows runoff up to 20 times more than concrete surfaces.

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Some of the water is stored in underground tanks, and the rest is sent through a series of ecological components, including a detention lawn and wetlands that filter, aerate, and purify the water. The water flows down to the retention pond— capable of doubling in size to handle severe floods—where it is available for irrigation and distribution to surrounding facilities.

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The Thammasat Urban Rooftop Farm, Asia’s largest, has repurposed 236,806 square feet of abandoned concrete roof space to grow crops.

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RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

GREENING OUR GRAY CITIES WITH NATUREBASED SOLUTIONS

BY ROBERT BREARS

Cities around the world are turning to nature-based solutions to enhance resilience to climate change while creating livable spaces for their residents.

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raditionally, cities rely on gray infrastructure —pipes and drains—to move stormwater from houses, buildings, streets, roads, etc., into the nearest waterway to stop localized flooding. These systems combine with wastewater sewer systems, and all this water is led to a treatment plant before being discharged into the natural environment. In most cities, this water leads into streams and local waterways, which causes some major issues.

For example, these combined systems impact water quantity and quality, are easily overwhelmed during heavy rainfall, and increase downstream flooding risks.

They also transport excess stormwater into waterways, which exposes people and aquatic life to toxins, chemicals, rubbish, pollutants, oil spills, etc.

Nature-Based Solutions: Blue-Green Infrastructure Cities are turning to nature-based solutions to manage water quantity and improve water quality at the same time. These solutions, commonly referred to as BlueGreen Infrastructure (BGI), are semi-natural or natural systems designed to restore the natural landscape while improving water quality and managing excess water. BGI projects come in various shapes and sizes. They range from rain gardens to green walls, green streets, and urban forests. Combined, they can manage our excess water and clean the water simultaneously, and it’s all for free because nature’s doing it for you.

Multifunctionality of BGI A key aspect of BGI is multifunctionality, which means one BGI site can provide multiple benefits and serve numerous functions. For instance, a green wall can reduce stormwater runoff, improve water quality, reduce the urban heat island effect, insulate the building, and provide a habitat for species. During the warmer months, the wall can reduce cooling costs, and

46 | Smart City Miami

in the cooler months, it can reduce heating.

BGI can also provide enhanced biodiversity in cities.

It can protect your buildings and infrastructure from climate change. It can create green jobs with people getting training and education and then careers in this field. It can reduce infrastructure costs because gray infrastructure is more expensive than BGI. It also provides space for recreational and social activities.

Fiscal Tools to Encourage BGI Fiscal tools are financial tools that cities can use to encourage uptake of BGI. They come in stormwater fees, grants, or subsidies, and they encourage BGI on private properties, public spaces, new developments, and retrofits. They’re easy to implement because you can tailor the fiscal instrument to the type of community you serve. They also provide an opportunity for a city to pilot small projects, and if they take off, BGI could become a citywide thing.

In Berlin, they encourage businesses to incorporate BGI on the premises as part of the Berlin Strategy for Biodiversity Preservation. The city’s water utility has increased its rainwater fee to incentivize companies to provide BGI in their private premises.

Raleigh, North Carolina has created the Raleigh Rainwater Rewards program, where a business or organization that implements BGI is reimbursed up to 90% of those costs for the project. The person has to put the money down first and then make the project happen, which takes the risk away, rather than having a grant that could lead to a project that fails.

Non-Fiscal Tools We also have a range of non-fiscal tools to encourage BGI, such as information and awareness campaigns and fast-tracking of BGI project applications, which encourages new developments and retrofits to get BGI installed quicker than going

©PUB/ABC WATERS

Robert Brears Founder, Our Future Water Christchurch, New Zealand

Singapore: Greening Gray Infrastructure Singapore’s Public Utilities Board has an active BGI program called Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters, where they are finding ways to incorporate BGI into existing gray infrastructure. This particular project took part of a flood diversion canal designed to prevent localized flooding and installed BGI features: rain gardens, new shelters, benches, fitness equipment, and jogging and cycling paths. They’ve created a wetland that’s designed to bring people closer to the water, experience nature, and restore the natural habitat but also prevent localized flooding.

New York City: Green Infrastructure Grant Program NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection offers the Green Infrastructure Grant Program to encourage private property owners to retrofit with green roofs.

They provide the grant but also offer workshops to explain how it can be done.

©NYC.GOV

through a slow regulatory process.

They can also be seen as pilot and demonstration projects to show how effective BGI can be. These tools are less intrusive and create less resistance from stakeholders because there are no fees attached. For instance, you might encourage the uptake of green roofs for a grant program and then say, “In two years, we’re going to make green roofs mandatory for new developments or retrofits.” It gives time for people to get used to it, installing it, and seeing how it runs, but it gives a leeway of a few years.

San Francisco’s BGI projects are always tested against a triple bottom line analysis.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission ensures its BGI fulfills multiple community, environmental, and economic benefits. One of the community benefits is an opportunity for stakeholder engagement but also for training, education, and awareness-raising.

To really get the community involved, they’ve created the Rain Guardians program, which fosters community spirit where businesses or individuals look after rain gardens in their

Robert Brears is an International Sectoral Expert (Water) Consultant with the Green Climate Fund, established within the framework of the UNFCCC. He is the author of nine books, including Regional Water Security, The Green Economy and the Water-EnergyFood Nexus, Blue and Green Cities: The Role of Blue-Green Infrastructure in Managing Urban Water Resources, and Developing the Circular Water Economy. He is the founder of Our Future Water, which has knowledge partnerships with the World Bank’s Connect4Climate initiative and the OECD/World Bank/UNEP Green Growth Knowledge Platform.

neighborhoods. That also helps maintain them, so it’s a way of reducing the costs.

Melbourne is getting people involved and up-close with BGI by creating a movable green wall that can be taken across cities to show people what it’s actually like. They take it to different neighborhoods to expose people to see how it works and the multiple benefits it provides. They have city representatives on hand to answer questions.

Sometimes demonstrations come in other forms. For instance, a city may say, “For our City Council buildings, we will have green roofs or rain gardens.” That means that people can see not only a demonstration of how it works but also see the government leading by example, which is another non-fiscal tool that cities can use to encourage people to think about BGI. Overall, we can see that BGI allows cities to manage stormwater or improve water quality.

But BGI cannot be done on its own. It has to become a network of things. That network accentuates that multifunctionality. The sum is greater than the parts. You will create huge economic, environmental, and social benefits.

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SECTION NAME

INVESTING IN THE FUTURE

SMART & SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

BY LEXIE ASSUNTO

How smart city technologies are enabling smart tourism by implementing resilient and decentralized infrastructure.

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he idea of smart cities came about in the 1970s, but it didn’t gain much traction until the 2000s when cities worldwide began to test their envisioned smart initiatives.

With advances in technologies and monitoring, every industry that impacts the quality of services to our communities is continuously being reimagined. From increased connectivity to waste management, EV charging, smart lighting, and smart tourism, smart cities aren’t possible without decentralized tech.

ClearWorld provides aesthetically pleasing source lighting infrastructure with robust battery storage. It hosts multiple IoT applications providing sustainable and resilient infrastructure for our city and utility partners.

Sustainable and smart city infrastructure lays the foundation of power for technologies as they grow. ClearWorld works with industry leaders on P3 partnerships developing largescale, smart city solutions. These partnerships drive innovation by leveraging and sharing open data and technologies so that our cities can make better decisions and monetize their data. We increase efficiencies, drive economic development, and improve the quality of life. While smart tourism has lacked a clear definition, technology has developed and cities have begun to narrow down their vision of a smart city. Sustainable and smart city initiatives go hand in hand with smart tourism. Without a smart city plan of action, smart tourism is much more difficult to attain and even harder

to monetize. Smart city infrastructure and applications aren’t referring to technological advances alone, but the interconnection and the operational synchronization of those technologies. Collaboration and access to open data through these interlinked databases help develop new tourism activities and services.

We are at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution. We can choose where we want to visit and what we want to experience. With all of these apps, cities are getting an incredible amount of data. With smart infrastructure in place, we are paving the way to optimize smart tourism. And when we can monetize our data, we can better support our community.

ClearWorld and our partners leverage core infrastructure for an intelligent corridor with multiple use cases. We have been playing catchup on an antiquated grid, but sustainable solutions like what we provide maximize efficiency and create additional revenue streams for our cities.

With initiatives in place, now is the time to build for our futures. Each streetlight gathers and sends data, which opens a world of opportunities. By connecting streets and infrastructure, we enable cities to avoid costs and increase efficiencies through connectivity.

Cities implementing smart strategies are deploying easily discoverable and accessible EV charging stations and real-time parking sensors. They are optimizing efficiencies within

Lexie Assunto Vice President of Business Development, ClearWorld New Orleans, Louisiana With over 15 years of experience in construction and sales and a background in disaster response, Lexie Assunto joined ClearWorld in 2020, bringing green tech solutions to cities pursuing smart and sustainable initiatives. She focuses on bringing cities turnkey microgrid solutions to increase efficiency and resiliency and drive economic growth.

48 | Smart City Miami

their public transit and water systems and using environmental alerts with weather monitoring.

This data translates to gold and a more efficient city. We can monitor and regulate our traffic flows and relieve congestion in real time.

We are also seeing cities use digital billboards and kiosks to provide interactive information to direct visitors and residents for entertainment, transportation, and in an emergency.

These technologies are for data, energy, and efficiency, but they’re also useful for tourism.

Until now, the costs associated with sustainable technologies have been a huge deterrent.

But cities now have the incentive and federal financial backing to become more sustainable while creating additional revenue streams that go back into public services and programs.

Tourism has always been an integral component of our economies. These technologies support new forms of collaboration and innovative partnerships. Not only can we attract more visitors but we can also assure they’re accessing the best our city has to offer. And, more importantly, they share their experiences with their friends.

No matter the size of your city, sustainable smart infrastructure ensures that visitors get the most out of their stay. Tourists don’t only financially contribute to our economies; they share our story. When putting together a smart city plan of action, we ask, “What do you want your city to look like?” Then we lay out a network infrastructure to support that vision.

When we’re expanding smart tourism, the question is a little bit different: “What is your city’s story? In a digital age, our visitors preview that story and plan how they want to experience our culture long before they get here. How can we better tell that story by implementing sustainable solutions? The stage has been set to make changes that will drive our economies. What will that look like?

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

SMART & RESILIENT CITIES TOOLS FOR CITY LEADERSHIP

BY AMY HOCHADEL

The intersection between “smart” and “resilient” cities is coming into sharp focus. City managers must use resources more intelligently to cope with dramatic shifts in demand and mitigation planning for the future.

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hat is a smart city? What is a resilient city? Are they the same thing? Can you be smart and resilient? Can you be smart and not resilient or one or the other? Smart and resilient are two issue areas that must be addressed hand in hand if we hope to have economically successful and healthy cities moving forward.

So, how do we think about cities if we’re going to make them smarter and more resilient? We don’t think about individual verticals of transport, energy, water, etc.

We think about cities as layers, where everything is dependent on the other layer: Your transportation strategy is dependent on your energy strategy, which is dependent on your urban policy strategy. It’s all interrelated.

And it’s not until we get to the surface of this layered model that we can think about what that means for the built environment. And then, lastly, we think about what types of technologies we need to enable that smart city.

Cities are already some of the most resilient entities throughout history. They existed long before national boundaries. They grow, shrink, adapt, change, and reinvent themselves all the time. As environments, politics, and economic situations changed, cities learned to reinvent themselves. But today, we have an added gift: advancements

in technology and innovation that we can use to help us think through that reinvention.

Smart resilience is the premise of a datadriven response, at a systemic city level, to guide and maintain city readiness and capacity during times of shock. This means integration and guiding and maintaining city readiness. We don’t know what will happen next, but we can put things in place that can help us sustain these shocks. So, what do practitioners need for smart, resilient cities?

Find (and use) information more effectively. We need to understand how to find the right data—and how to map, categorize, and organize that data relevant to a resilient agenda. This ensures practitioners are aware of, have access to, and effectively use the information that is already there to inform a coherent, holistic, and efficient data strategy that facilitates a resilient agency.

Drive urgency for action in the present.

City leaders want to see results. They want to show early wins and long-term gains.

This helps practitioners demonstrate how mitigation plans or projects for the future incorporate benefits for the present and help practitioners make a case for investment.

Global networks of cities like C40 are amazing ways to learn how to plan for the long term while getting examples from other cities, sharing learnings, and having really good short-term wins at the same time.

Integrate city subsystems and stakeholders. We need to help practitioners demonstrate the interrelationships between different elements of the city system and the impacts one part of a system has on another.

This will allow them to identify opportunities to put single assets to multiple uses across different silos to mitigate shock, rather than having to invest heavily in new capacity.

“SMART RESILIENCE IS THE PREMISE OF A DATA-DRIVEN RESPONSE, AT A SYSTEMIC CITY LEVEL, TO GUIDE AND MAINTAIN CITY READINESS AND CAPACITY DURING TIMES OF SHOCK.”

Amy Hochadel Director, Connected Placed Catapult London, England Dr. Amy Hochadel is an expert in global cities and is currently the Director of Global Business at Connected Places Catapult in London. She works with local leaders, entrepreneurs, and city and national governments worldwide.

Author of Local Leadership in a Global Era: Policy and Behaviour Change in Cities, Hochadel specializes in enabling local governments to build global innovation economies and future resilience.

Smart City Miami | 49

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

THE DIGITAL TWIN:

COLLABORATIVE SUBSURFACE INFRASTRUCTURE

BY ALEX SHALASH

Uevo helps manage aging, complex infrastructure by enabling stakeholders to visualize, manipulate, and create subsurface elements in a real-time 3D interactive environment.

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hen it comes to subsurface infrastructure, information is inaccurate, fragmented, outdated, and in different formats, and is not shared between infrastructure providers, operators, municipalities, users, and other stakeholders.

This results in project delays, accidents, high operational and public safety risks, and inflated construction costs (sometimes by up to 30%). In the U.S., there are more than 400,000 accidents every year due to unreliable location information, which inflicts $50 billion to $100 billion a year drag on the economy.

Subsurface Infrastructure Mapping Typical infrastructure maps are twodimensional, featuring thin, straight, colored lines connecting points where the coordinates of infrastructures were collected. These maps often omit depth information, which is critical to avoid accidents; they lack real-time data and updates, especially if a company just changed its pipes or repaired after an accident; they are cumbersome to use on-site; and they are unintelligible to most stakeholders.

The Uevo Approach Uevo is a digital twin platform that offers a 3D visualization of the subsurface infrastructure and street-level environment. It is a collaborative, cloud-hosted platform that allows multiple users to access it simultaneously.

It also offers live updates, real-time data feeds from IoT sensors, a precise and persistent environment, and VR and AR capabilities for immersive use on-site and off-site to help with planning, works, and accident avoidance.

We first ingest existing information about subsurface infrastructure. To improve data quality, we use Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for subsurface infrastructure scanning; photogrammetry of the open pit, which can be used for ongoing updates; multiple BIM visualizations; and aboveground LIDAR scans.

Benefits of the Digital Twin A digital twin is a reliable, shared platform for better and faster decision-making. It decreases operational and public safety risks, provides substantial costs and time savings, and tracks real assets over their entire life cycle. You can run multiple copies of your digital twin to plan for replacements or upgrades and engage

stakeholders in the process by bringing them into the virtual environment, independent of their physical location. The most common use is updating the location of pipes and other assets in case they were moved or replaced or for planning purposes. These changes can be done by multiple utility owners and surveyors in different locations at the same time without disrupting the work of others.

There are also indirect benefits of digital twin implementations, including lower insurance costs; decreased construction related to traffic and pollution; and increased efficiency in emergencies. You can use it to collect data, analyze it, build multiple scenarios, and run simulations. You can provide low-cost training, especially to new employees. This will help to build better and bounce back faster from natural disasters. A Penn State University study found $21 in cost savings for every dollar invested in improved subsurface infrastructure location information.

A digital twin is not a product; it’s a process and a long-term commitment. No city remains the same. A digital twin should be able to evolve with the city it represents; otherwise, it’s just an outdated 3D model.

Alex Shalash Co-Founder, Uevo Zurich, Switzerland

Uevo Uevo is a digital twin platform that offers a 3D visualization of subsurface infrastructure and street-level environment.

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©UEVO

Alex Shalash is the co-founder of Uevo, a subsurface infrastructure digital twin platform answering the call for a unifying platform to actuate data-driven actionable intelligence.

He is an international tech entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in software development, IT consulting, investment banking and investment management.

NEXT-GENERATION INFRASTRUCTURE & SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY

BY ALOISIO PEREIRA DA SILVA

©INFRACITIES

With a focus on innovation, efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability, Infracities System organizes and shares the underground space to implement utility networks inside a standardized structure made from plastic waste.

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ities need more efficient, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure. In the U.S. alone, demand for infrastructure exceeds $2 trillion over the next 10 years. But our infrastructure is designed and built without integrated planning. We need to rebuild infrastructure with a purpose for the 21st century, focusing on integration, intelligence, and climate resilience.

Infracities System is the result of my doctoral research developed at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil and Texas A&M Transportation Institute and more than 20 years of my professional experience working on large infrastructure projects. The motivation for the research came from the high costs of constructing and maintaining traditional infrastructure networks, frequent accidents, and environmental impacts.

Infracities is a safe, effective, organized system that moves all natural gas, telecommunications, water, power lines, and servers to recycled plastic bays underneath sidewalks and bike lanes. The system has been upgraded with a drainage system and a new system for electrical charging incorporated in the lamp post.

The construction starts with the opening of a trench about 1 meter deep, then compacting the ground with water. Then comes the assembly of the structure, which is snap-on, not requiring special tools. Interconnection boxes for consumers’ networks are also easily and quickly fitted to the structure. They are installed at a depth of about 90 cm, facilitating their installation and reducing the risk of accidents.

The entry system is covered with sand, which facilitates compaction and its removal during maintenance. Paving is done with interconnecting concrete blocks. For maintenance, simply remove the concrete blocks and sands. Afterward, the same materials can be used to cover the bays, avoiding the generation of waste and use of new materials, plus removing the need for street demolition or interrupting traffic.

This system can be used for both private investors and public authorities. The opportunity to share construction and maintenance costs between utilities reduces costs to users while providing centralized management. We built and tested a pilot project in a technological park in Brazil with successful results that showed a reduction in construction costs by 30% and a 70% reduction in maintenance and operation costs. Without special construction equipment, it can be built in any city of any size in the world.

“WE NEED TO REBUILD INFRASTRUCTURE WITH A PURPOSE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, FOCUSING ON INTEGRATION, INTELLIGENCE, AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE.”

Aloisio Pereira da Silva Founder & CEO, Infracities Florianópolis, Brazil Dr. Aloisio Pereira da Silva is the founder and CEO at Infracities and creator of the Infracities System. Since 1997, he has worked in transportation and infrastructure with an emphasis on utility engineering, design, field construction, and construction supervision phases, as well as in research and teaching. He is a speaker at the world’s most relevant events and courses in infrastructure, mobility, transportation, and smart cities.

He has received international recognition for his work, including an international agreement for the development of his research with one of the top infrastructure institutes in Europe.

Smart City Miami | 51

CLIMATE ACTION

IF WE ACT°TOGETHER KEEPING 1.5 C ALIVE

BY EDWARD MAZRIA

We are at the crossroads of the most significant crisis and the greatest opportunity in modern times. Cities, architects, and planners must develop and repurpose the built environment to meet the 1.5°C carbon budget.

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here’s an old saying in the U.S.: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else. So when we talk about keeping 1.5° C alive, we need to know where we’re going.

The International Panel on Climate Change established a carbon budget in order to meet the 1.5° C maximum global warming, and that is between 300 and 400 gigatons of CO2. That’s how much we can release into the atmosphere and meet the 1.5. What does that mean? Well, today, we emit about 40 gigatons of CO2 a year, which means we need to have a 50% to 65% reduction by 2030 and a phaseout by 2040. That is our timeline. Is it possible?

Building operations are about 25%-27% of emissions worldwide, but if you add in

constructing buildings—cement, steel, and bricks—plus interiors, plumbing, site work, and roads—that adds in another 10%. Roughly half of all emissions are attributed to the built environment. How do we achieve a zero-carbon built environment? It’s a two-step process.

Design/Planning & Construction The first step, design/planning and construction, can get us 70% to 80% of the way there at no cost or low-cost options. And that includes electrification, on-site renewables, no on-site fossil fuels, establishing growth boundaries, transit development, bringing agriculture into the city, designing our buildings correctly, orienting them the right way, the right kind of fenestration, glazing and shading, and

Sustainable Sites Sustainable sites maintain and/or regenerate soils and vegetation, manage and filter stormwater, and create advantageous microclimate conditions, like at the Bürkle-Bleiche Senior Living Center in Emmendingen, Germany, by Rolf Disch Solar Architecture.

©ROLF DISCH SOLAR ARCHITECTURE/2030 PALETTE

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what materials and how we build our building.

We can even sequester carbon and create carbon-positive structures.

Renewables The second step is designing for renewables.

You need to power the built environment with renewables, which gets us the other 20% to 30% of a zero-carbon built environment.

Renewables can be building-integrated renewables or bringing in renewable energy from off-site such as wind, solar, and hydro.

The 2030 Palette is a free online resource for designing zero-carbon, adaptable, and resilient built environments, everything from how we develop our cities and a region down to buildings and building elements.

“THINK OF WHAT WE HAVE TODAY. WE CAN DESIGN ANYTHING, STRUCTURE ANYTHING, AND BUILD ANYTHING.”

East/West Shading Vertical fins, overhang/fin combinations (eggcrates), awnings, and drop-down shades block the low morning and afternoon sun at the Edith Green - Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland, Oregon,

by SERA Architects and Cutler Anderson Architects.

©JEREMY BITTERMAN/PALETTE 2030

The Zero Carbon Code So we have the strategies, and now we have Zero Carbon codes, which can get you very efficient buildings up to 70% reductions in energy consumption. And then, you can use all those other strategies listed above. The formula is the same for existing buildings.

High-rise skyscrapers represent about 2% of the total building stock but are the biggest emitters. So we need to start from the largest buildings and work our way down. Cities and districts should provide incentives such as lowinterest loans, tax abatements, equipment, and discount rebates. When a building is sold, a new owner should get it zero. When you come for a zoning, same thing. And governments need to provide incentives for that to happen. If we do that, we get the entire building sector to zero carbon by 2040. But there are hundreds of thousands, even millions, of materials. So how do we get that other 20% to zero carbon?

Just two materials are responsible for almost half of all industrial emissions: concrete and steel. And if you add in aluminum, it goes over 50%. So what do we have to do? We need to change the conversation. And the good news is there’s competition. Mass timber is now being used in high-rise construction. It provides an alternative, and if it comes from sustainably managed forests, it could actually be a carbon-sequester material. CarbonCure has factors where you inject CO2 into concrete and remove it. And we have the first steel company, Econiq, putting out rebar that is net-zero carbon. So no one’s standing still. No one wants to lose market share, and everybody is moving forward.

Think of what we have today. We can

design anything, structure anything, and build anything, and look at its energy consumption, whether that’s daylighting, airflow, you name it. And now solar is the cheapest electricity in history, and every year it gets cheaper.

How Are We Doing?

In the U.S., as floor area increased since the Industrial Revolution and we added more buildings, obviously, energy consumption and CO2 emissions went up. But in 2005, something happened: Energy did not go up.

It flattened out and went down about 5%. It started to separate from building growth. So we could build but not increase our energy consumption. And CO2 in the U.S. is down 30% from 2005 levels. This decoupling of emissions from floor area growth is unprecedented in U.S. modern history.

How are we doing worldwide? Between 2010 and 2020, building floor area increased 22%. Energy use rose but not as much, and then flattened out from 2018. CO2 emissions essentially fell off a cliff beginning in 2018.

And then going through 2020, even though energy consumption didn’t decrease, it was still about the same. We were using the same amount of energy in the building sector, but suddenly, emissions dropped. Why? Because we’re now transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency projected the new normal, renewable power, was the only energy source for which demand increased in 2020. All fuels declined except renewables.

And that’s why we’re seeing the reduction now, and we have to keep that up. So we have everything we need now to keep 1.5°C alive. If we act together, we succeed.

Edward Mazria Founder & CEO, Architecture 2030 Santa Fe, New Mexico Edward Mazria is an internationally renowned architect, author, researcher, and educator. His seminal research into urbanization, climate change, sustainability, and energy in the built environment has redefined and dramatically expanded the role of architecture, planning, design, and building in reshaping our world. He is the founder and CEO of Architecture 2030, a think tank developing realworld solutions for 21st-century problems. His innovative architecture, planning projects, research, programs, and advocacy have garnered him numerous awards, including the National Wildlife Federation National Conservation Achievement Award and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Council for Science and the Environment and Design Futures Council.

Smart City Miami | 53

CLIMATE ACTION

WATER AS LEVERAGE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

BY HENK OVINK

Bridging the gaps between communities, experts, policymakers, and financiers in developing a sustainable future for all.

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eventy percent of the world’s surface is covered with water. But only 0.4% of that water is ready for human consumption.

Water is also critical for challenges and opportunities of health, biodiversity, and climate, and we see it: 90% of all disasters worldwide are waterrelated. Secretary-General António Guterres says, “This is the time of action but also the time of science and solidarity, of thinking, of understanding, and of partnerships, empathy, and collaboration.” We’re not moving toward this 1.5°C world. And we see it in the impact. More floods and droughts occur every year, and they’re happening everywhere.

The cities we invest in are most vulnerable to climate change. We tend to urbanize faster in places that are already risky along our coasts and rivers. And this is why investment capital is more at risk in the next decades. We have lists of cities that hit the bar of $200 billion or almost $300 billion at stake, Miami leading that list. And the world bank and OECD estimated there’s a trillion-dollar cost every year, let alone the risk.

There’s a financial and inequality aspect to that because the most vulnerable in these cities live in the most vulnerable places. There’s also a health cost because climate change is increasing health uncertainties. And there’s an environmental aspect with biodiversity loss. And in the heart of all these challenges is water. But at the same time, water can also be part of that solution, mitigating the risk and adapting for a better future.

But for that, we have to look at that future more holistically, more sustainably, because if we look ahead, we only replicate the mistakes of the past.

There are business cases for debt infrastructure of yesterday, financial business cases with short-term returns. But with every dollar spent, we make ourselves more vulnerable.

Instead of continuing with our non-responsive approaches, moving in a reactive “let’s build better”

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approach. We have to become radically proactive, not go from crisis to crisis, but drive catalytic projects forward to build resiliency and sustainability in society.

We must start investing in people to capacitate them to implement and deliver on the projects we need.

And we know from an economic perspective, if we do that, we maximize opportunities and their impact.

Investing in water has a trickle-down effect across all the SDGs. It turns water into a leverage for sustainable development.

That means we have to integrate needs and opportunities, work across all scales and interests and take a sustainable perspective. Long-term comprehensive plans need short-term, innovative projects. With inclusive collaborations and a transparent approach, we can build capacity institutionally and individually.

We need design and planning to inspire. We need innovative, catalytic, and pragmatic solutions to spur actions. And we need solutions that connect across scales, times, and interests. If we really want to deliver on the promise of the sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement, we have to move mountains.

And changing course will demand inspiration, that political and societal capital that design can bring.

That means we have to invest in each other. We have to invest in and trust the process of bringing people together who might disagree, but because they are in a safe space, they can create opportunities that add value.

This part of building coalitions and alliances is the culture of the Netherlands and how we deal with water. Dating back over 900 years, we built institutional capacity for safe drinking water, protecting our coast, increasing the capacity of our rivers, opening up our streets to ensure the water can come in and go back to the aquifer. A delta commissioner leads a program to help us be ready for the future and plan our cities accordingly.

Programma Maaswerken, Netherlands In South Limburg near Borgharen, Netherlands, the floodplains have been widened for greater safety at high water.

Henk Ovink Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands Doetinchem, Netherlands Henk Ovink was appointed as the first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs in 2015. He is responsible for advocating water awareness around the world, focusing on building institutional capacity and coalitions to address the world’s pressing water needs. He is principal for Rebuild

by Design, a resilience innovation competition developed for President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. In February 2020, he was awarded the IHS Urban Professional Award for his contribution to the field of resilient cities. © J. VAN HOUDT/RIJKSWATERSTAAT

New York City After Hurricane Sandy revealed alarming infrastructural, environmental, and social vulnerabilities, Rebuild by Design assembled teams of architects, engineers, planners, and environmental scientists to undertake a research-intensive design process to identify environmental concerns and develop strategies for the region and its communities.

©BIG/REBUILD BY DESIGN

This is also the culture that brings me to the world, where I go to places to build awareness, help build capacity in the context of disasters, and, of course, drive innovations. This is where we offer to finance with coalitions, financial partners, and government-to-government partnerships. Driving leadership of the world to address water as an opportunity and building a global coalition on adaptation to drive climate action forward in the multilateral space. We have to scale up and replicate these projects.

I’m doing this in Asia with the Water as Leverage program, which is designed to overcome climate-related challenges. Focusing on three cities in Asia: Chennai, India; Kuma, Bangladesh; and Samara, Indonesia, we look at water-related challenges, why they build up and where these challenges come together.

We also deliver aspirational and inspirational catalytic projects that connect all these needs and interests.

In Chennai, we moved the city from a scarcity system (where water was abundant, but it leaked out of this urban system, polluting,

using a massive amount of energy, and increasing our carbon footprint) to a closedlooped system where we have nature-based solutions, investing in historic infrastructure, creating new infrastructure based on culture, investing in forestry and wetlands, bioswales, rivers, and canals, and also mixing solid and liquid waste for revenue streams and adapting our infrastructure, housing, and buildings.

These projects mitigate the risk of climate change and adapt for a better future. They take many boxes of the SDGs and set an agenda we can replicate across the world. In all three cities, we work the same: building the capacity we need for fixing infrastructure and building an enabling environment to address the needs on the ground.

We have to step up, scale up, and replicate these efforts. We have to put our money where our hearts and minds are. We have to look at water as an enabler for sustainable development and as a leverage for making a difference. We have to change course now.

Not for me but for future generations.

Smart City Miami | 55

CLIMATE ACTION

TRANSFORMING STREETS TO ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

BY JOHN L. RENNE

In the 21st century, urban areas will need to adapt to a changing climate and simultaneously act to significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

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oday, we are faced with an existential crisis of climate change. And the question is: How can we address these issues? How can we transform our streets to save our planet?

In my book, Adaptation Urbanism and Resilient Communities: Transforming Streets to Address Climate Change, my colleague Billy Fields and I make the case that bouncing back is not enough. We cannot just design our infrastructure to be able to withstand disasters. We need to leap forward and adapt our infrastructure to solve the climate change problems. We need to integrate adaptation and mitigation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cleaning up the environment.

Adaptation Urbanism is based around four core elements: sustainable transportation, compact development, blue-green infrastructure, and doing this in an equitable way. We evaluate resilience plans in each

of our case study cities and emphasize the concept of resilient streets or districts.

At FAU, we are using VR to get the public to see the effects of climate change firsthand.

We turned the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ model for what high tide would look like in the year 2100 into a simulation. We also replicated this experiment in Honolulu and found that 95% of people said that others in their community would benefit from that simulation. The level of comprehension was incredible. Genuinely seeing is believing.

We have partnered with Virtual Planet Technologies and a researcher from the Virtual Reality Lab at Stanford University to develop a model to engage with the community in West Palm Beach. We can also use this to develop adaptation strategies such as sea walls, vegetative walls, vegetative coastlines, and other techniques and figure out what the community may like to see.

Adapting our infrastructure by building walls and other mechanisms will not solve our problem. We need to adapt our infrastructure to withstand greater climate change threats.

Now that is complicated in South Florida, where our bedrock is on limestone. But there are strategies and solutions that we need to consider, including where we direct future development.

Adaptation Urbanism is about learning lessons from places that are making radical differences. We need to develop strategies to direct future development to high ground in an equitable way. We cannot displace poor and marginalized communities. We need to think about adaptation urbanism, sustainable transport, compact development, revamping our infrastructure, and making future investments to get people out of their cars. I hope we can figure out a solution to take South Florida to the next level.

© GHB LANDSKABSARKITEKTER/STEVEN ACHIAM

John L. Renne Professor, Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida John L. Renne, Ph.D., AICP, is a professor of urban and regional planning at Florida Atlantic University. He is a leading expert in transit-oriented development, sustainable and resilient land use and transportation planning, and resilience. In 2020, he co-founded Priority Funds, LLC, which focuses on investing in real estate in walkable communities via crowdfunding and off-market opportunities.

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Tasinge Plads, Copenhagen One of the case studies for Adaptation Urbanism was Tasinge Plads in Copenhagen.

It once looked like a typical asphalt plaza that experienced flash-flooding events known as cloud bursts. The city replaced asphalt with brick pavers, public art, greenery, and engineering that can retain the water without flooding the homes.

©THE CLIMATE OPTIMIST

CHOOSING CHANGE: HOW BOLD MINDSETS WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

BY ANNE THERESE GENNARI

What future could we find ourselves in if we kept room in our hearts for the unimaginable? When it comes to climate change, the only hope we truly have is to be found in that courage.

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Anne Therese Gennari Founder, The Climate Optimist New York, New York Anne Therese Gennari is an entrepreneur, speaker, and environmental activist. She’s the founder of The Climate Optimist, Role Models Management, online community The Collective, and “Hey Change Podcast,” a show where she interviews activists and thought leaders to inspire positive change. As an educator and consultant, she helps shift the narrative around climate change so that we can act from courage and excitement, not fear.

“WHAT IT REALLY COMES DOWN TO IS FINDING THE COURAGE TO CHOOSE CHANGE.”

hen I was in my early 20s, I read a quote on my Instagram feed that changed my life. The quote said, “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” Ever since reading that, my life began to change in the most unbelievable ways because I realized that I have no idea what the future looks like. When you think about it: what does it mean to imagine the unimaginable? How do we envision something we’ve never seen or experienced? More importantly, how much are we holding ourselves back because we forget those unimaginable futures exist?

If we were to go back 100 years and tell someone that in the future, everyone is going to have this thing in their pocket that allowed them to see their family in real time in just a few seconds, they would’ve thought we were crazy, right? That is what makes me so excited. I get this question a lot: What does it mean to be a climate optimist? What do I base my optimism on? There’s a lot to unpack there, but the thing that makes me optimistic more than anything else is the ability to choose change and come back to this realization that we don’t know what the future looks like. Then I use that excitement and curiosity to fuel my commitment to do whatever we can right now to pull that future closer. What future is possible if we only dare to dream and believe?

If we’re busy talking about what the world looks like now, how will we find the time to envision a new one? And if we can’t envision a new world or believe that things can get better, how will we ever find the courage to choose change? Because what it really comes down to is finding the courage to choose change.

As Greta Thunberg famously says, “Change is coming whether we like it or not.” But what if change isn’t a bad thing? What if change is the best thing that could ever happen to us?

We just have to see it, to actively work for what we want to happen instead of trying to avoid

what we don’t want. Maybe it all comes down to choosing change before change chooses us.

We tend to worry because we don’t know what the future looks like. We fear change because we don’t know what that change will bring. But we also know that everything we’ve ever built, invented, or created has come from an ability to look beyond what we know to be true now.

When we talk about climate change, we’re usually asked to panic. We hear that we have to act now, or we’ll be failing future generations.

We’re told that it’s our duty and responsibility to do the right thing. Yes, it is. But it’s also our opportunity to step into the roles of heroes and do the things that have never been done before.

We have to come together and collaborate across borders. We have to let go of old habits and beliefs. Now is not a time to be right or wrong. No matter how many retweets or likes you get for your opinion, now is the time to ask questions, expand our horizons, and continue to find the courage to choose change.

The renowned American architect William McDonough famously said, “The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stone.

It ended because it was time for a rethink about how we live.” We’re there right now at the bridge of a new era. You get to help write the script of what’s next to come.

As a climate optimist, I often get asked: Why even bother? Isn’t it too late? My answer is because we don’t have a choice, and we have nothing to lose, only to win. We don’t know what kind of future we will find ourselves in if we keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable.

We can do this. We have all the thoughts, ideas, and creativity in the world to rethink society as we know it. All we have to do now is tap into those resources and choose change. I think that we will look back at these times and say, “We will forever be grateful for those who had the courage to question everything.”

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CLIMATE ACTION

INTEGRATING EQUITY INTO CLIMATE PLANNING

BY ALISSA FARINA

The City of Miami is addressing its climate and equity crises simultaneously with innovative resilience, adaptation, carbon mitigation, and stormwater master plans.

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iami is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to the impact of the climate crisis. We not only have billions of dollars of assets at risk, we have millions of residents at health and financial risk.

In Miami-Dade County, 17% of households are in poverty, and 37% are working but are ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained but Employed), as defined by United Way. Our income inequality is second only to the New York metropolitan area.

When we talk about the climate crisis in Miami, we typically talk about extreme heat, floods caused by sea-level rise, and intensifying storms. But climate is a threat multiplier, meaning that existing threats, which can be social, financial, or health-related, are worsened by climate impacts. This also means that in instances of environmental racism, the impacts tend to be more intense as the climate crisis worsens. For example, as flooding becomes more of a nuisance and a threat, it makes sense for developers to move inland. However, this leads to an increased risk of climate gentrification, as the development of this land would displace vulnerable residents.

Miami Forever Climate Ready Miami’s adaptation plan was released in January 2020 post-Hurricane Irma. We got a lot of feedback about how we could integrate equity into emergency preparedness

and response and how basic education could bring about equity by helping people understand how climate change is impacting their communities. One of our most ambitious projects, Resilience Hubs, was designed to enhance our park facilities with more community amenities so that they can also serve as post-emergency convening centers.

Stormwater Master Plan Our updated Stormwater Management Plan takes into account sea-level rise projections from the Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact. The plan includes data collection and digitization and developing a citywide capital improvements plan that is prioritized by areas of greatest need (as opposed to the greatest ROI). The projects are spread across the city, and they are related to not just flooding but also community engagement.

Miami Forever Carbon Neutral The goal of our carbon mitigation plan is to develop a road map for the city to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, with an interim target for 2035. We have addressed our greenhouse gas emissions through the GREEN model: how we Get around, Renewable energy, Electric vehicles, Energy efficiency, and building a New Green Economy for Miami.

Defining Climate Justice In South Florida, vulnerability is different from other places: Our most physically vulnerable

Alissa Farina Resilience Program Manager, City of Miami Miami, Florida Alissa Farina is a Resilience Program Manager for the City of Miami’s Division of Resilience & Sustainability. She currently focuses on carbon mitigation, communications, and community engagement and is the project manager for Miami Forever Carbon Neutral, which outlines the city’s path to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

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places are not the most socially vulnerable.

We also debate what “people of color” actually means in Miami. So we decided to be explicit about what climate justice meant and how we would integrate that into our planning. The definition was co-developed with Catalyst Miami, a climate justice organization: “Climate justice communities are historically underinvested neighborhoods... populated by individuals that are low-income, predominantly Black, and recent immigrants.

These neighborhoods tend to be viewed as less physically vulnerable to climate change... but their residents are relatively more socially vulnerable than other parts of the city.

Equity at Action Level Another way we integrated equity was via a tool called ASAP (Action Selection and Prioritization), which was developed by AECOM with the C40 Cities network. We evaluated every action in the plan for cobenefits and feasibility. For equity, we included considerations for employment, cost of living, and climate justice. Some actions scored negatively for climate justice, so we reviewed those actions and where we could add provisions to address those concerns.

Climate Justice via Green Economy As mentioned, we had a section in our carbon plan called the New Green Economy, where we think about how the actions we are committing to can generate economic opportunity, create jobs, and build and diversify our economy.

Nationally, jobs related to green infrastructure and sustainability are well-paying jobs, but our research shows that Miami lags behind national averages, underscoring the need for workforce development and training to truly deliver on a local green economy that provides living-wage jobs for people of all ethnicities and races.

Sea Wall Rendering Local real estate developer Swire Properties commissioned an alternative sea wall plan for the City of Miami. It is more complicated than a simple concrete barrier: It involves multiple levels; it catches water and pushes it back into the sea; there’s vegetation, oyster beds, and mangroves, and it would create a kind of amenity for the city.

© CURTIS & ROGERS DESIGN STUDIO/SWIRE PROPERTIES

MIAMI IN 2050

A DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE

BY JASON KING

Even though it is situated in one of the most vulnerable places on Earth, Miami’s focus on climate mitigation and adaptation puts it ahead of cities with twice its natural advantages.

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iami is on the front line of climate change— but innovations and solutions are born on the front line. And if Greater Miami is the front line, Miami Beach is the front of the front line. It’s an offshore barrier island where we used to experience dramatic sunny-day flooding. Eventually, news cameras appeared to communicate a lesson to the rest of the world: Climate change is coming.

In 2013, Rolling Stone published an article, “Goodbye, Miami,” saying that by century’s end, rising sea levels will turn the urban fantasyland into an Atlantis. People seemed to delight in the idea that Miami was on its way out. But quite the opposite: Miami is working hard to survive—and has been doing that for a long time. The beach that makes Miami Beach famous was built in the ’80s on a kind of levee with concrete underneath the sand that pushed the ocean out a quarter-mile.

In the mid-2010s, the city started lifting streets, placing pumps underneath to solve the flooding problem. The roads were suddenly not flooding anymore. Eventually, leaders paused the effort and reoriented toward a less expensive but, ultimately, ineffectual approach. It is understandable: Taxpayers had a hard time with $100 million general obligation bonds and were tired of living in construction zones.

But experts kept saying the same thing: You’re in an existential moment; you have to do what you can.

Then the city started to pivot, and there were new

funding mechanisms to pay for lifting, draining, and pushing back the ocean. Then, the mainland started to get serious, and the Army Corps of Engineers drafted a plan to wall off a large part of the city. It was expensive and brutally ugly.

Real estate developer Swire Properties commissioned an alternative plan to turn the wall into a kind of promenade. People started to imagine large breakwater islands in Biscayne Bay to stop the 25-foot waves expected with certain storm conditions.

Was this enough? No. In 2014, the City of Miami called in experts from around the world to the South Florida Resilient Design Workshop, for which I designed what I call the Virginia Key Boulevard levee that attempted to solve the problem with a large construction of new land along Virginia Key that would provide all the gates, pumps, and elevated land we’d seen in other projects. I still can’t tell whether it’s a bad idea or an idea whose time has simply not come.

Around the world, there are climate change success stories. My book is about those stories. We need to think about the short term, midterm, and long term. We need to look at the future the way someone with a terminal disease does: with dignity, self-compassion, value, and hope. And we need to have a good bedside manner. We need to preach a gospel of resilience and optimism. No one and nothing lasts forever. Let’s not dwell on that. Let’s do what we can to live as long as we can.

Jason King Principal, Dover, Kohl & Partners Miami, Florida Jason King, AICP, is a city planner who has directed multidisciplinary teams around the world. He has served as the project director on over 200 plans for cities, towns, neighborhoods, and corridors. From the first plan he worked on for Thailand’s Tarutao Islands to multiple plans in coastal Louisiana, Southeast Florida, and the American Southwest, King’s work has focused on social, economic, and climate change resilience. He is the author of the book The Climate Planner.

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CLIMATE ACTION

LIVING SEAWALLS

BRINGING MARINE LIFE BACK TO CONCRETE COASTLINES

BY MARIANA MAYER PINTO

Living Seawalls has developed an innovative approach to bringing marine life back to the thousands of miles of concrete coastlines around the world.

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iving Seawalls is a program from the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, which was founded by the four main universities in Sydney. It has developed an innovative way to deal with the uncontrolled expansion of urbanization and artificial structures in the marine environment.

Usually, people think that urban sprawl is only a land problem, but we know that the majority of the big cities are located on the coast. And more and more, we are building in our seas, either for coastal defense to protect ourselves from sea-level rise, recreational activities like marinas and ports, and even offshore green energy facilities.

These structures do not only destroy the natural habitats where they are built, but they modify the area of the seafloor surrounding them. We have natural materials, of course, in natural shorelines, but we also have differences in color, light, and complexity. Artificial structures are flat and featureless; they don’t

have all the nooks and crannies and crevices that organisms need to grow and protect themselves from predators or environmental stressors.

Living Seawalls is inspired by nature. We attach panels that mimic natural habitats onto artificial structures. We have panels that mimic rock pools, crevices, and sponge gardens made with a blend of ecological concrete and reinforced with metal bars. The way the panels are built, we can actually include upcycled materials. So we have panels that we put recycled oyster shells or sandstone, which is the natural stone in Sydney Harbor. And, increasingly, we are working to decarbonize some of these constructions.

Importantly, Living Seawalls is based on rigorous science. We have over 20 years of research that has led to our solutions. And after two years, at our installation at Harbor Bridge, we found that our sea wall has 91 species compared to less than half of that in

© LIVING SEAWALLS

some of the unmodified sea walls in the area. In a very short time, we can see the panels being colonized by seaweed and other marine life.

Living Seawalls is a holistic program.

We think that outreach and education are extremely important. We engage a range of stakeholders from industry to government and public and educational programs.

Of course, another important thing is that Living Seawalls are usually installed in public areas where people work, live, and play. So they need to look good. And this is thanks to Reef Design Lab. They are pieces of art in themselves and have been exhibited in art galleries around the world.

Only after three years of our first installation, we now have 11 sites in Sydney Harbor alone, 14 sites in Australia, three sites internationally, and more in progress. And that managed us to be recognized by the Earthshot Prize from the Royal Foundation as finalists in the Revival Ocean category.

Mariana Mayer Pinto Scientia Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia

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Sawmillers Reserve, New South Wales, Australia

Mariana Mayer Pinto is a Scientia Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Science at UNSW. She obtained her Ph.D. in marine sciences from the University of Sydney and holds an MSc in zoology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a consultant, leading data analyses of one of the biggest environmental projects in Australia (Gorgon Project, Chevron).

FINANCING GREEN RESILIENT URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

BY JULIA AMBROSANO

Opportunities in integrating climate mitigation and adaptation and resilience criteria into mainstream infrastructure planning.

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ailure to incorporate climate change impacts into infrastructure planning presents serious economic risks at national and project levels. For long-term investments, climate impact can easily translate to financial losses, so when we talk about green finance, we see an opportunity to mitigate financial risks.

Integrating climate mitigation resilience and adaptation criteria into conventional infrastructure planning can create financial opportunities to project developers by offering investors financial risk reductions.

If I’m delivering a project in an area I know will have a change in precipitation patterns that will have a cost of the appreciation of my assets, I will be offering a greater risk to my investors who consider the climatic factor crucial for making decisions. So there is also an opportunity to reduce risks and attract a new pool of investors through green finance—those looking exclusively for green-aligned investments.

So, the question is: What is green? What is climate risk infrastructure that can be financed via green bonds at a city level? Sectors with great potential for green investments generate a high impact on the urban infrastructure, which is a substantial part of the portfolio of public authorities: low-carbon transportation, water infrastructure, waste management, buildings, energy, and industrial efficiency.

The U.S. has one of the largest green bonds markets, led by muni-bonds and climatealigned issuers like the New York MTA and the California Control of Pollution Control Financing.

In general, the greenness of a project is based on two components: climate mitigation and climate adaptation and resilience. For climate mitigation, your project first needs to demonstrate that it is aligned with the net-zero emissions trajectory until 2050.

For water, the project must decrease or not

increase emissions over its operational life. For transportation, it must be zero carbon.

We also have the adaptation and resilience component, which is investments that improve the ability of assets and systems to persist and adapt in the face of climate-related stresses in a way that reduces risk and creates benefits to the broader system. The investment can be either asset-focused, when it ensures that the asset or activity performance fits the purpose over its lifespan, or system-focused, when it delivers climate resilience benefits to the broader system.

Accessing green finance depends on the regulatory framework of the country where the infrastructure is located. It also depends on how stakeholders access capital markets. This is an important reminder because before any green bond is green, it is a bond, which has an extra layer of labeling to safeguard investors from green-washing.

I mentioned how in the U.S., muni-bonds are scaling up the green bond market and green climate-resilient infrastructure. But in Brazil, municipalities have some regulatory hurdles, so using loans in partnerships with private market actors is critical to financing local infrastructure development. Things will be different in other markets, yet there are key players who can access investment opportunities in the infrastructure market.

For example, financial entities can integrate green investments to a larger share of the operations, benefiting from aggregating loan portfolios of green projects or green sectors or providing loans. This is known as green tagging.

Then they can refinance their aggregated green portfolio in the green bond market to expand their credit capacity, ultimately benefiting municipalities and other public sector borrowers.

We have financial institutions that are extremely relevant to implementing green infrastructure projects. They have mandates

Julia Ambrosano Infrastructure Manager, Climate Bonds Initiative São Paulo, Brazil As Infrastructure Manager for CBI, Julia Ambrosano leads the infrastructure agenda and efforts to drive the development of a Brazilian green finance market. She manages a number of programs for leveraging financial instruments for climate risk mitigation through technical assistance, public policy, and capacity programs.

to support developing countries, and these mechanisms are becoming ESG-aligned, including credit enhancement, risk reduction, collaterals, anchor investments, and others.

Another key actor is private companies involved in public-private partnership structures to manage, deliver, or maintain the urban infrastructure. In many countries, these structures have been the primary model for delivering urban infrastructure.

It is important to note that these projects can come from public planning, so public municipal authorities need to be aware of how to plan climate-resilient infrastructure and offer private stakeholders the opportunity to access green financing through the delivery of these projects.

We also have the local public authorities that can directly access green capital markets.

For example, Massachusetts completed its successful green issuance in 2013—a $100 million deal whose proceeds were used for clean drinking water projects, energy efficiency, river revitalization, habitat restoration, and others. The success led the state to pursue a larger program in 2014 and beyond.

There is a lot to learn from Massachusetts because it was offering green and non-green bonds at the same time with the same rating.

In some ways, the state had an even easier time marketing the green bonds because they could tell potential investors a more persuasive story about the impact.

Another example is the DC Water and Sewer Authority, which issued a green bond for the Clean Rivers Project. The deal was oversubscribed multiple times.

Green capital has a large demand from investors that hasn’t yet been met. Integrating climate mitigation and adaptation and resilience components to projects and assets can yield positive financial outcomes for developers, issuers, and, most importantly, investors.

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TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

BUILDING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE GOVERNMENT

BY JEREMY GOLDBERG

A strategic approach to mobility provides a blueprint for effective public sector digital transformation.

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echnology never exists separate from the past. It exists alongside technologies that are sometimes phased out or replaced, or others persist. We can’t always start from scratch. For example, a century ago, air travel changed everything. But centuries prior, humans imagined it might be possible. Now, our cities and mobility systems are changing. And much like commercial flight, we need to build the systems around technologies that allow us to support, regulate, and enable their operation.

In 2018, the UN Development Program reported about 55% of the global population lived in cities. By 2050, the number will rise to 68%. And as city populations grow, we must support the increased demand. That means improving data capture and analysis and cloud systems that enable the necessary scale. It also means sustainability. Cities are also on the front lines of the fight against climate change, which means they can also be at the center of a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery.

Antwerp, Belgium Antwerp built an application to manage inter-modal mobility in the city, serving as a baseline for transportation options like directions and mass transit routing. It has an immediate positive impact on residents and visitors and their ability to get around the city.

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Mobility is at the forefront of addressing many of these problems, And it requires using all the available tools. In my opinion, mobility has four key areas critical to success. They are also central to governments’ broader digital transformation efforts: resident impact, sustainability, digital infrastructure and data, and partnerships. And if we can get these right for mobility, we are putting in place a blueprint that can be applied to other digital transformation efforts.

Resident Impact It starts with a people-centered approach to how government operates and how partners and ecosystems engage with government to deliver for people. In my time as CIO for New York state, I saw that when a project did not have a strong, positive impact on people, the long-term chances of success went down dramatically. Mobility is a daily challenge in cities. And it has a high impact on everyone, but especially the most vulnerable who rely on public transit for work and recreation.

For example, in 2018, the Metro Vancouver System Transportation Authority developed a proof of concept for a solution to improve departure times. TransLink engaged partner T4G, an applied data company and a member of the Microsoft partner networks, for support. TransLink used a modeling approach running on Azure that produced the most accurate predictions using real-time bus location and road condition data. This worked because accurate bus departure information helps riders, helps people feel more comfortable and confident, and contributes to the overall livability of the region.

Using machine learning, the number of riders who had to wait for more than five minutes went from 18% to 4%. So better use of data led directly to a drop in people who had to wait.

Digital Infrastructure & Data Where are transit organizations headed?

Shared digital infrastructure and data platforms or platforms to gather insights from across modes of transit. Residents do not want to be bogged down by which transport options are owned by who. They want to get where they are going. This creates a unified system and helps transportation departments plan for long-term needs, expansion, and energy sustainability. It also allows publicly available real-time data and recommendations to help individuals decide which modes of transportation to use for their needs.

Data from a transit system will help leaders understand the transit and non-transit needs of the population. It will connect people with the public services and private businesses they want and need. And it’ll reduce transmission of disease and infection through touchless payments. And it will drive route optimization, improving the transportation flows in a dense urban environment.

Dutch Railways Dutch Railway migrated to Azure to create a platform that enabled data analysis that led to more efficient use of space on their trains, leading to an additional 20,000 person capacity daily.

“IF WE CAN GET THESE AREAS RIGHT FOR MOBILITY, WE ARE PUTTING IN PLACE A BLUEPRINT THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO OTHER DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS.”

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Sustainability Mobility has dominated the discussion on sustainability and energy efficiency, both in the EU and in the U.S. . And it’s only a matter of time before EVs are the norm. That discussion extends to every part of digital infrastructure and other public sector operations. Mobility provides a model for thinking about sustainability that can extend to all operations.

Partnerships I’ve worked on partnerships in government for a long time. Why do they matter? Well, partnerships help get people the services they need. A problem-solving-focused approach helps align public and private partners and leads to results that generate more support for ongoing efforts. Well-crafted partnerships can help governments move quickly on projects that would take years.

Partnerships that work for the public sector and cities are critical to solving the problem because the problems are so complex, and no single entity or organization can do it all.

The keys to partnership success and working with cities are: getting creative, finding ways to engage with top-performing companies outside of the traditional monolithic procurement model; demonstrating success early, and then continuing to build upon that; demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency

of playing well with others; and committing to future-proofing, building systems that can survive or enable future shifts in the way that we move.

As we electrify our vehicle fleet to reduce emissions, we must promote sustainability in our overall grid to ensure that electricity is generated from clean sources. That’s a great way to build upon the sustainability portions of the discussion that we’ve had today.

Partnerships that promote accessibility are also critical. Automated vehicles have a strong potential to help people who have difficulty using other modes of transportation.

And partnerships that help drive and enable social equity enable cities to identify existing infrastructure that amplifies inequality and funding to remediate the problem.

When I was working for the City of New York, I led the NYCx challenge program and saw firsthand the power of partnerships.

We had Moonshot Challenges, which were citywide challenges that encouraged global entrepreneurs to partner with the city to propose solutions to real-life problems. And we had Co-Lab Challenges, which enabled community members to voice concerns on the neighborhood level and work with entrepreneurs to co-create prototype solutions, apply tests, and grow emerging technologies.

We put out a public call for solutions, and

challenge participants responded. For the Moonshots, they proposed technologies with the potential to disrupt the global EV paradigm. And for Co-Lab, they proposed a mix of charging technologies and an adoption plan to maximize the portion of vehicle miles powered by electricity. Ultimately, it worked because this effort was about results-focused problem-solving, and it led to proposals that could have a real impact across NYC. A few final points related to this overall discussion: Inclusivity and accessibility aren’t optional. Governments need to serve all residents, which means accessibility is a high priority. Using data to identify accessibility challenges helps get to the heart of the problem quickly, whether in an app or helping people navigate the physical environment.

Additionally, we need to look at the world a little differently. The world is easy to navigate, unfortunately for just a certain subset of people because we built it to be that way. Government serves everyone, and that same ease should apply to everyone. Accessibility isn’t something extra. It needs to be, and it should be a baseline. It needs to be done in a way that’s not in addition or after the normal building. It needs to be built in from the beginning—using tech to improve accessibility in the urban environment, the physical environment, the digital environment.

Jeremy Goldberg Director of Critical Infrastructure, Microsoft New York, New York Jeremy Goldberg is the Worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure at Microsoft. Prior to joining the company, he served as the Interim CIO at the State of New York and the Deputy Secretary for Technology and Innovation.

He also served in technology leadership roles in the Mayor’s Offices in New York City, San Francisco, and San Jose, California. In 2020, he was recognized as #2 in City and State New York’s Government Technology 50. He is also a Senior Innovation Fellow in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center.

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TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

URBAN MOBILITY: BICYCLES, E-CARGO BIKES AND THE CITY

BY EYAL SANTO

How bicycles and e-cargo bikes impact our cities.

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magine the day when we’re all rewarded for leaving our cars at home and travel to work, school, or errands using our bicycles; the day our employers incentivize us to commute using active transport: walking, cycling, riding public transit; the day when our local businesses are encouraged to switch from using dangerous and polluting delivery vans and trucks to clean, quiet e-cargo bikes. Imagine the impact all this would have on our emissions, pollution, noise, collisions, and casualties, on our urban life quality, and, essentially, on our very own health and wellness. So, it is time to decide: Which city do we want?

The world’s most successful cities are ones whose elected officials and executive management realized flipping the transport hierarchy pyramid is the key: Pedestrians come first. A city should be a city for people, not cars.

Cyclists come second. And to avoid creating conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists, make sure no cycling on sidewalks and offer a continuous network for bike lanes segregated from traffic where needed and shared with vehicle traffic on traffic-calm streets.

Public transit comes after cyclists: robust service, efficient and effective, to all parts of town, reliable and frequent with a continuous network of dedicated bus-only lanes. The easiest way to move people from cars onto public transit is to build easy access to sheltered bus stops and build reliable service where riders do not need to mind the timetable. It always excites me to quote Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, who built one of the most robust and profound mass transit systems in the world: “If we are all

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equal in front of the law, then we must accept that a bus carrying 100 passengers has 100 times more right of the way than a car carrying a single passenger.

Let’s look at bikenomics, the economics of the bicycle system. In every city where car lanes have been removed for bike lanes, local businesses along the way have thrived. The more bike infrastructure, the better bike culture is formed, and more people will switch to biking.

Our urban quality of life will improve. And our urban society will be healthier and happier.

Car dependence comes with a price. It does not only end with more than $9,000 annually for car maintenance and ownership; it continues by increasing our cost of living through parking requirements and wrongful zoning codes that fuel our housing prices.

Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen is an excellent example of a cycling city. In 2019, there were five times more bicycles than cars.

Imagine what could happen when a city reduces car ownership by only 15,000 cars.

This is exactly what happened in DC from 2005 to 2009: the population increased by almost 16,000 people, but car registration went down by 15,000 vehicles.

Living and working in a bikeable city has value beyond personal convenience. It also allows more money to stay closer to home, fueling the local economy instead of inflating deep pockets far away.

In Copenhagen, Lund University researchers concluded that for each kilometer cycled instead of using a car in the city, the profit for urban society is 31 euro cents from 15 euro cents loss in cars up to 16 euro cents gained in cycling. The Danish Minister of Health also concluded that for every kilometer cycled,

Shanghai, China

The Netherlands

© ALAIN DELORM

© TOLKAMP METAAL SPECIALS

Copenhagen, Denmark

Berlin, Germany

© CITY CHANGER CARGO BIKE

© HERMES

© CITYCLE

Eyal Santo Founder & CEO, Umo – Urban Mobility Tel Aviv, Israel An urbanist, entrepreneur, and avid cyclist, Eyal Santo is a physicist by education who served 20 years in Israeli hi-tech. Traveling to the world’s leading bicycle cities from 2010-2015, he became an urban consultant in 2015, advising Israeli cities on cycling infrastructure, culture, and bikenomics. In 2017, he established Umo – Urban Mobility, a technology startup developing AI solutions to help cities save billions of dollars by incentivizing and rewarding people for adopting more sustainable lifestyles.

instead of driving a car in the city, the health benefits alone are worth almost 1 euro, 90 cents per kilometer.

Cyclists are also proven to be better shoppers. It might be that bikes don’t carry as much as the car, so they shop less per visit, but that changes with e-cargo bikes. It was not long before businesses recognized the potential of cycling customers. In Melbourne, a study found that a 145-square-foot parking spot can produce an average of $27 on shopping per hour by a single driver—or $97 an hour when it is turned into six bicycle parkings. The lesson has been learned in many cities. In Tel Aviv, we turned a single car spot into 12 bicycle spots using mobile bicycle parkers.

And with that, we’re turning the chapter to discuss urban cycle logistics. Think about replacing dangerous and polluting delivery vans and trucks with clean, quiet e-cargo bikes or carrier cycles, which can carry hundreds of kilograms. Existing distribution models where each vendor supplies separately, each business causes lots of trucks to drive on our streets while at the same time being far from optimizing load capacity.

For example, the European Cycle Logistics Federation found that a 3-ton van is typically loaded with only 130 kilograms. In a distribution model based on carrier cycles, trucks from huge traditional logistic centers do not drive into town. Instead, they haul the goods to microhubs at the edge of the city from where the carrier cycles distribute the goods.

One of the immediate impacts of moving to carrier cycle logistics is a huge drop in

VMT (vehicle miles traveled) by heavy trucks.

City Changer Cargo Bikes, the EU project coordinator for cargo bikes, found that cargo bikes can answer 77% of families school runs, errands and shopping; 50% of service by handymen, street cleaners, plumbers, carpenters, public workers; and 32% of all good deliveries in town, products, parcel, etc., allowing small businesses not only to survive but to thrive by doing home deliveries.

Cities can also harness the power of e-cargo bikes for street cleaners, road maintenance, etc. Carrier cyclists or rickshaw taxis lower congestion and get people faster across town.

In Groningen, Netherlands, PostNL distributes all mail and parcels using carrier cycles, collaborating with service provider startup Dropper. Copenhagen collaborates with the CCCB, the City Changer Cargo Bike, to help refugee women to start their own cargo bikes-based flower business. In San Sebastian, Spain, Cycling Without Age is a heartwarming operation where volunteers on cargo bikes take elderly people to cycle in the sun, breathe fresh air, and feel the breeze in their hair.

In Strasbourg, France, the municipality uses e-cargo bikes for public works, road safety, and mobile libraries catering to disabled people. In Manchester, UK, the rebalancing of the city bike share is done in a sustainable manner using carrier cycles. New York City also launched an e-cargo bike pilot for home deliveries where Amazon is a major player.

In Berlin, the KoMoDo pilot succeeded in flying colors: Five courier companies ditched their delivery vans and serviced the city center by e-cargo bikes, erecting a tactical

micro-hub just three miles north of the city on a lot allocated for the project. In Tel Aviv, we did a cargo bike pilot along similar lines in three micro-hubs on the edges of the city. We recruited Post IL, FedEx, DHL, UPS, and Israel’s largest supermarket chain.

Carrier cycles are far more environmentally friendly than electric vehicles, as the effects show manufacturing an electric van is 50% more polluting than a similar model by diesel.

An e-cargo bike is more efficient than any other means of hauling.

Today, last-mile logistics are being packed into micro-containers using standard crates and pallets. Containers in international freights are arranged in a bulk manner. In last-mile logistics, optimization is essential. Enter the physical internet. The same way an internet bid is broken into smaller packets to be sent over and then reassembled, the physical internet arranges the parcels into micro-containers that maximize space in a last-in, first-out manner.

In the last few years, e-cargo bike manufacturers have wanted to go higher on the value chain, so they’ve diversified their operations by offering more than bikes. Veloce was the first to stop selling its squad carrier cycles and instead manufacture e-cargo bikes to operate micro-hubs and delivery services throughout the Nordic countries.

So, we should never stop dreaming, but at the same time, we should strive to make our dreams come true. As said by the great urban planner Fred Kent, “If you plan a city for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. And if you plan a city for people and places, you get people and places.”

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TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

AMERICA’S TOP 100 BICYCLING CITIES:

NEW DATA POINTS THE WAY ON GROWING ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION

BY MARTIN MORZYNSKI

A look at ridership across America’s top 100 cities—and what the winners are doing to succeed in 2022 and beyond.

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treetlight is the only source of nationwide information about bike ridership. How do we understand bike volumes without installing an impossible-to-imagine amount of really expensive physical counters? Well, we all carry cell phones, which provide a tremendous amount of location data points. We can pick up on patterns based on how fast devices move, how frequently they stop, and how long trips tend to be. We’re able to decipher populations of vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, and transit to give us a perspective on how busy every road, bike lane, or sidewalk is.

In the summer of 2020, we got excited in the industry with the media talking about bicycles selling out and the suburbs lighting up with biking and walking. And we measured a remarkable 11% nationwide gain in bicycling. It may not sound impressive to folks not working on active transportation; but we’d take 11% year-over-year growth in a heartbeat. Cities like Omaha; Cape Coral, Florida; and El Paso gained more than 50% year-over-year in total bicycle miles traveled.

In the summer of 2021, Streetlight took our latest pulse check (we chose summer to make weather less of a factor for regional comparison). And it turns out, the U.S. was still 10% above, so that’s reason to celebrate and a country looking to become more sustainable.

But where the gains were happening had shifted. The good news is that places like Atlanta and Las Vegas showed only modest gains during the summer of 2020, but they

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were actually up 25% by the summer of 2021.

New Orleans lost ridership in 2020 and was up 25% by 2021. And that’s one of the many midsize cities that showed growth over the last year. Also, three metros in Florida—Cape Coral, Jacksonville, and Northport-Sarasota— were helped by extensive recreational infrastructure and more happening now.

Five midsize metros—Birmingham; Charleston, South Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; Little Rock; and Nashville—moved into the top 20 list for ridership for the first time, all of those reaching gains of about 50% for

summer 2021 versus 2019. So that’s massive gains. Why? Well, it turns out it’s local cycling activism, incentives from corporations, and active support from City Hall. So it’s a little bit of a trip-whammy.

For example, Amazon’s new commuter benefit gives Nashville employees an incentive of $175 every month to bike to work.

Community groups organize outreach events and safety programs to encourage safe ridership. Last year, Walk Bike Nashville used Streetlight’s cloud software to analyze traffic volume and speed on Greenwood Avenue and

Nashville, Tennessee Various initiatives in Nashville, such as Walk Bike Nashville, are actively advocating for calmer streets to support the city’s Vision Zero program.

© VISITPITTSBURGH/DOUG RIEGNER

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh has been deploying various initiatives to make streets safer for bikes and people. It's a great case study for using data to plan a smarter, more sustainable city.

Martin Morzynski Senior Vice President, Marketing StreetLight Data San Francisco, California

other streets in East Nashville and found that average vehicle speeds on the road increased in 2020. They took that data to advocate for calmer streets and support the city’s Vision Zero program, and they’re now working with City Hall on protected bike lanes and better crosswalks. The group believes Nashville can do even better.

What about the rest of the top 100?

Miami actually moved up from number 80 in 2020 to 53 this summer. It’s a big gain, and it’s actually up a respectable 15% versus the summer of 2019. So despite the Miami Herald giving Miami a hard time last year for not keeping up with the cycling boom, we have to give the city credit for its many efforts, including the Underline, whose awareness is bound to introduce locals and visitors to active transportation. I also want to point out that when considering the full metro region, which spans Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach, biking was actually up 11% in 2020.

Looking at the bottom 50, what are the cities we’re concerned about, where the bike renaissance is losing speed? Sacramento, Central Valley was up in July 2020, nearly 20%, but by July 2021, it was down 10%.

Fresno, California, about 170 miles south of Sacramento, was up 15% in 2020, but down 5% in 2021.

These are places where wide streets and car culture are alive and well. Distances are long, short trips are few, and we see old habits creeping back in. And this is where there’s no data to support what’s happening to the

bicycles that everyone bought, but the drop in ridership probably means that some of these bicycles are back in the garage, and anecdotally, that’s what we see in the Central Valley; they’re just not as busy in terms of people walking and biking in the suburbs.

This decline wasn’t limited to California’s Central Valley. Bridgeport, Connecticut; Denver; Minneapolis; Cleveland; Akron, Ohio; Rochester... These are all cities that saw their initial gains from 2020 evaporate.

Interestingly, Pittsburgh is one metro in the Great Lakes region that bucks the trend, staying firmly at plus 50%. The city has been busy deploying various initiatives to make 1,300-plus miles of city street safer for bikes and people, addressing many of the city’s unique challenges—topography, scarcity of available cartway space, high demand for on-street parking, and unusual road geometry.

So it’s a great case study for using data to plan a smarter, more sustainable city. And I encourage you to look at the case study to learn more at streetlightdata.com/pittsburgh.

I had alluded to wide avenues and carfriendly infrastructure in particularly sprawling metros, which brings me to the topic of safe infrastructure. Where do we go from here? On the upside, many cities took the opportunity of emptier streets in 2020 to build bike lanes.

New York City planned to build 30 miles in 2021. Seattle built nine miles in 2020. San Francisco has been fast-tracking a network of separated bike lanes, better signals and crossings, particularly in its tech-heavy South

Martin Morzynski is the SVP of Marketing at StreetLight Data, the pioneer of big data analytics for transportation. Morzynski is a frequent guest on public radio, news programs, and podcasts and a regular contributor to analyses conducted by The New York Times, Bloomberg, and other media organizations.

of Market neighborhood, where bicycling, historically, was for the strong and brave.

The challenge that most cities face when planning safer bicycling is a lack of data.

Even when citywide crash data is available, ridership data isn’t. For example, in New York, there is a high amount of biking in Lower Manhattan. But when you overlay crashes on top of where people are biking, you start to understand exposure. Uptown, despite lower ridership, lower crashes happen per bicycle miles traveled. Ultimately, we think this kind of picture is critical to making progress on safety at scale across an entire city or a state.

In the transportation data space, we see this trend as a transfer of congestion from the city core downtown, if you will, to uptown. And we see that really as active transportation traffic.

So, in other words, people aren’t walking where they used to. They’re now walking in the suburbs. But the problem is the suburbs aren’t set up for walking.

Ultimately, these analytics are just another example of the technology that is here, available, really being used across the U.S., that can help us move much faster to address bike and pedestrian safety, which is such a massive lever to driving adoption and getting more of us to trade our cars for other modes of transportation.

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TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

WHERE ARE SELF-DRIVING CARS TAKING US? EQUITY IMPACTS IN THE DC METRO AREA

BY RICHARD EZIKE

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to transform transportation. Policymakers need to design frameworks that allow for safe, efficient operation while helping those in need.

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utomated vehicles (AVs) are moving from design and testing to commercial development with a promise to reshape our cities. But without appropriate policy interventions, AVs could exacerbate the current transportation system’s problems, resulting in increased congestion and pollution while perpetuating access inequities.

To shed light on these challenges and opportunities, the Union of Concerned Scientists partnered with transportation firm Fehr & Peers to study several scenarios of the effect of AVs on the DC metro region transportation system in 2040. Using the travel demand model from the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, we studied how differences in vehicle occupancy and investments in mass transit would affect congestion and job access for different populations across the region. We compared the effect on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color to understand how AVs may affect transportation equity and environmental justice. Key findings include: • AVs operated as part of higher-occupancy pooled fleets more than doubled the number of jobs accessible by a 45-minute car trip. In contrast, increased congestion led to a loss of 80% of this benefit if AVs were not pooled.

• Investments in a better transit system reduced roadway congestion and doubled the number of jobs accessible by transit, ensuring

that people retained the choice of whether to use a car or mass transit.

• AVs caused the total amount of driving to increase by as much as 66% relative to the year 2040 with no AVs; however, the increase was only 46% in scenarios with policies to encourage pooling and transit investments.

In the absence of a rapid transition to electric vehicles (EVs), this increased driving will exacerbate global warming.

• People in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color were subjected to increases in congested driving in all AV scenarios, with 6 to 12 times as much congested driving as in the projected 2040 regional average. Exposure in these neighborhoods was about 50% higher than the region as a whole.

Policymakers must mitigate the risks and maximize the opportunities of AVs. The following policy recommendations can steer the DC metro region toward a more equitable, efficient, and clean transportation future: To avoid congestion, AV deployment must prioritize the movement of people over vehicles by encouraging pooling. If AVs fulfill their promise of providing more convenient, affordable transportation to a larger share of the population, they will dramatically increase demand for travel, potentially leading to increases in congestion. AVs deployed predominantly as part of shared transportation

© DAIMLER AG

services that pool riders going to similar destinations can move more people in fewer vehicle trips than would AVs following today’s single-occupancy usage patterns. Pooling AVs could reduce congestion that would otherwise compromise their potential benefits.

To maintain multimodal access and improve equity, mass transit must be modernized and improved. Although AVs combined with pooling could make car trips more convenient, accessible, and affordable, high-capacity mass transit provides a complementary service, particularly because it connects dense, urban job and housing centers while facilitating a healthier and affordable multimodal transportation system. Continued investment in and enhancement of highcapacity mass transit can ensure that AVs and mass transit complement one another and support smart growth goals.

To reduce pollution associated with increased driving, AVs must be powered primarily by electricity. In all scenarios, AVs increased total driving, and the increase was especially severe in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. These increases can be limited by AV pooling and enhancing mass transit, but a rapid transition to EVs is also required to ensure AVs do not undermine efforts to reduce global warming and local air pollution.

Richard Ezike Director, CHPlanning Washington, DC Dr. Richard Ezike is an expert on transportation equity, environmental sustainability, and STEM education outreach. He works as Director of Infrastructure and Engagement at CHPlanning, where he leads the firm’s projects around infrastructure and community engagement. He worked for the Urban Institute, Union of Concerned Scientists and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. He has advised on transportation issues for federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency; and organizations such as the Transportation Research Board.

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Stationsplein, Utrecht, Netherlands Utrecht’s Stationsplein is the largest bicycle parking garage in the world.

SMART DESIGN IN DUTCH CITIES

Rotterdam Central Station © UTRECHT TOURISM BOARD/JURJEN DRENTH

BY GEORGE LIU

Smart cities are not just about dazzling people with technology but about good design that makes human interaction easy and intuitive.

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y message is about smart cities and smart mobility, but it’s also room to contemplate and reflect on why smartness isn’t always a solution to everything, that something as simple as a bicycle can be the solution to many of our mobility needs.

Rotterdam Rotterdam is a unique Dutch city; it is very modern, but much of the cycling and pedestrian-friendly characteristics from before WWII has been preserved.

And along with the crazy architecture, they also have my favorite thing: grassy trams, which, in addition to being so much more beautiful for the city, also contributes to better water management, and it helps reduce the noise levels around the area.

At Rotterdam Central Station, you can catch highspeed trains to Belgium and Paris, as well as trams to Amsterdam, the airport, and the surrounding area.

There are many ways to get across the river, including the 1-kilometer tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists.

The other way to get across the Maas River is the Erasmus Bridge, where you have all modes of transport, including trams, automobiles, bikes, and a fairly generous pedestrian pathway.

Utrecht Utrecht is a more historic city than Rotterdam, and it shows you what can happen if you preserve the city center from a time when people mostly walked.

Utrecht Central Station is the Netherlands’ busiest train station. From here, you can catch a train to anywhere in the country. Utrecht is also home to the

busiest bike path in the Netherlands—and perhaps the world. This is a main route toward the Central Train Station shared with two bus lanes in the middle. When it gets really busy, you can see a whole lineup of cyclists waiting to get across this intersection.

The Dafne Schippersbrug is a bicycle bridge built specifically for cycling and walking. They made a loop detour to ensure a single-gear bike could easily climb the grade. From Central Station, this bridge cuts cyclist commutes by about 1 kilometer.

What are the lessons for America? How do we plan our cities like European cities while also navigating the political environments? I see no good reason why the U.S. transport system has to be different from Europe.

It was a political choice, not an engineering one, that led the U.S. to be more car-centric. While we may increase the freedom of people who drive, we’re also decreasing the freedom of those who cannot or choose not to drive.

A smart city is not solely based on technology or intelligent vehicles; it’s intelligent in serving the needs of its people, allowing them to get from A to B in the manner they choose. In a smart city, you can walk to the grocery store, bike to see friends. And if you want to drive, car sharing is available, but it doesn’t constrain you to being in the driver’s seat or tethered to car and insurance payments, which is not a very smart way to spend your income. Moving away from the car, the simple matter of increasing liberty, opportunities, and freedom. What could be more American than that?

© ROTTERDAM TOURISM BOARD/CLAIRE DROPPERT

George Liu Online Education Strategist, Cycling Research Review Amsterdam, Netherlands George Liu is an educator, YouTuber, and Ph.D. researcher studying how ideas from urban design can guide the creation of attractive environments that encourage cycling as a practical and desirable mode of daily transport. His “City Unboxed” series has received over 100,000 views on the Urban Cycling Institute YouTube channel, showing audiences around the world how design choices can bring delight in the way that people move around.

Smart City Miami | 69

QUALITY OF LIFE

CLAIMING SAFE STREETS FOR LIVABLE CITIES

Rue Picardstraat, Brussels, Belgium Filter Café Filtré Atelier imagined what this busy street in Brussels could look like without cars.

BY ANNEKATRIEN VERDICKT

How a citizen movement of parents of schoolchildren wanting clean air, safe streets, and more livable cities led to a nonprofit organization empowering architects and urbanists to show how the city could evolve.

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rchitects have a double role.

On the one hand, we are practicing architects with a commission. We have a question, and you try to answer it as best as you can, taking into account all climatic and mobility challenges in your project. That is what we are doing at Architectuurplatform Terwecoren Verdickt. On the other hand, we have taken up a new role with Filter Café Filtré Atelier, and that’s an agenda-setting role where we ask for vision and a higher ambition, where there is no question or project. Society is our client.

The second part started for us in 2018.

A report on TV was talking about how bad the air quality was both outside and inside school environments. That really struck us. So we had a meeting with other parents, and we decided to close down the street and protest. We invited the press and politicians. It was much bigger than we could have imagined. It was everywhere in the press, on television, in newspapers. It was such a success.

We knew we had to repeat this. So we then created a manifesto of 11 points where we wanted to see change: more public space, more public transport, better transport, more traffic safety, fewer cars, more measuring stations where you monitor the air quality, and so on. We did a call to action to other schools and asked

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for additional protests. Politicians love to come to our actions and drink coffee (that’s our name, Filter Café Filtré), and we explain what we want.

The movement grew, and in the end, we had 170 schools. We saw a lot of creative actions coming up. We had someone who made the most beautiful and most creative actions. We also posted a lot of information online so that people could be more informed about topics surrounding air quality.

We also had some bigger actions. For one, we gathered all the schools in the most dangerous and polluted space in Brussels.

For another, we closed down the highway and biked from Antwerp to Brussels. Wim Vandekeybus’ Ultima Vez, a famous choreographer, made a protest dance. All the schools practiced this, and we did it together in the center of Brussels.

After a while, a lot of architects and urbanists got involved in the movement, and so we created a workshop called Air for Schools, where we invited all these people that were standing every Friday closing down the streets to create dreamlike images of places in Brussels, along canals, in front of schools, busy traffic streets, and more.

We imagined how the city could evolve and become more healthy and livable.

In Molenbeek, a really dense part of Brussels, a lot of children live in small-scale

Brussels Canal Zone Filter Café Filtré and Architecture Workroom Brussels worked together on a green plan for the Brussels Canal Zone.

Annekatrien Verdickt Founder, Filter Café Filtré Atelier Brussels, Belgium Annekatrien Verdickt graduated cum laude as an architect from Sint Lucas Brussels in 2000. Parallel to her independent practice, she has committed herself to social housing in Brussels. After meeting Jan Terwecoren, they decided to work together and formed Architectuurplatform Terwecoren Verdickt in 2019. Part of the work concerns projects between city and port and focuses on the productive city. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Ghent. © FILTER CAFÉ FILTRÉ ATELIER

© FILTER CAFÉ FILTRÉ ATELIER

apartments without gardens. In summer of 2020, we decided to open up the street and organize some low-tech activities. What we saw was incredible. From the moment the street was opened, you saw everybody coming out. It’s a diverse area with a lot of cultures. Normally, the street is full of cars, and there is no social interaction. But children were playing in the streets. Older people came out and talked to each other.

This was quite impressive what happened that summer.

Again, we did a co-creative workshop where we imagined the future. By adding this image after the experiments of people experiencing what it means when there are fewer or no cars in the street, they believe this image is possible.

The work of doing these two elements together—the imagination and the actions— is important. We strongly believe that the street is a key space for transition.

So all these challenges—climate, social, etc.—are all coming together in the streets.

You can see the underground as a tool to extract energy. You can plant trees to reduce heat stress. You can manage your water problems.

This summer, we wanted to multiply what we did the first year in Picardstraat and went to other streets in Brussels. We collaborated with the cultural institutions and did some performances in the street.

The last event we did is called Critical Friends. We have a broad network of people who really want to take action about how the city could evolve. We had a big meeting where we gathered everybody around the table. We did 10 thematic tables, where we are thinking about what we can do. We will use it for the coming year and upcoming actions.

We know that we still have to do something about air quality. We know about the climate challenges. But still, there is not enough happening. So this is a call to everybody to take action and do what needs to be done.

Smart City Miami | 71

QUALITY OF LIFE Kalasatama, Helsinki Kalasatama is a brand-new district in Helsinki where Parkly created a pocket park, which successfully tackled the challenges like the lack of greenery in streetscapes and a lack of community in a newly built area.

POCKET PARKS

BY DANIEL BUMANN

Welcoming public places are important for the overall development of cities.

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’d like to share some insights we have learned with three pocket park projects that Parkly has executed with the City of Helsinki.

Kalasatama The word Kalasatama would be translated as “fish harbor” in English. It used to be a harbor not too many years ago. And now, it has been turned into an area predominantly for housing.

They’re building thousands of newly built flats; the whole area is completely new.

There are challenges associated with it, such as the lack of green space, the lack of identification, lack of community, and lack of services. The City of Helsinki asked us to test a small pocket park to see how this would help the residents build a sense of community. So, we have been planting edible plants and herbs that residents can pick and cook with. We have also attached sensors, which can measure, for instance, the number of people using these places daily. This helps the city understand the real needs of such an area.

The feedback was predominantly good.

People have been using the area way more.

The safety feel has been rising. There was also feedback that people feel more active and that they get to learn the community much better. It is especially hard for new-build areas to create a sense of community and identity for a place.

This newly built pocket park has been used a

lot, especially by children and families. It has also led to people encountering each other more, which is a very important thing for the resilience of an area.

Vuosaari This is a very diverse part of the city. But as is common in the suburbs, there has been a lack of architectural vision, resulting in many abandoned spaces, wasteland, and nondefined environments. There is a cultural center that was built roughly 10 years ago with a beautiful big space in front that had absolutely no function whatsoever. We were asked by the City of Helsinki, together with the stakeholder Vuotalo, which is the cultural center, to turn this place around and to activate this area to bring more life onto the street, raise the safety feel, and also add new functions that are of use for the people of that district.

Public seating is often underestimated as simply a bench, a place to sit down and rest.

But it is much more than this. It creates places to meet and greet, exchange with each other, have encounters, and rest and look at the city from a different perspective. You don’t need to rush. You take a breath and sit down. And this is what it is all about.

One thing is to see our ultimate vicinity as a huge potential to create a nice environment where we can work, live, meet people,

Daniel Bumann Co-Founder, Parkly Helsinki, Finland Daniel Bumann is co-founder of RaivioBumann, a public art, placemaking and urban design studio. There, he co-founded Parkly to fast-track the transformation of public places and accelerate sustainable urban change. Bumann believes that happy places and happy people go hand in hand.

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© PARKLY

and exchange. We have also, on request, installed a book-exchange cupboard, which to everyone’s surprise, is vividly in use. People bring their books, pick up others. It’s another way of getting in touch with each other.

The learnings from this testing phase are being used for a future architectural competition that will take place, and it will possibly help to build the environment that the people really need.

Kauppatori This area in the center of Helsinki is a prime location, and the city has had no better function for it than a parking lot. So, one summer, we took the cars away and started to refurbish the area. It was only after a couple of minutes that the place was filled with people enjoying themselves, and no further service was needed. It was beautiful to see how people adopted a new place. It also gave them a new perspective on an area they have passed by but never had the chance to embrace. It also helped the local businesses get more foot traffic and more potential clients.

With these cases, I hope you see how easy it is to turn places around, to change people’s narrative, and shift perspective away from an underused space into something that can potentially change an area. It’s always fantastic to see how little it actually takes to change the narrative, to make people understand more about their own environment and raise the sense of communal spirits.

To summarize these three pilot projects, we learned that people want to rediscover their environment from a new perspective. People want to feel safe. People want to get together.

All they need is places.

VISUAL UTOPIAS

BY JAN KAMENSKY

Visual Utopias and the power of images.

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ast year, I no longer wanted to wait for the increasingly urgent global change; I wanted to contribute myself. I started by looking around at what surrounded me and many other people every day. Where did I see an urgent need for action in my environment?

The empty streets at the beginning of the 2020 made me realize I wanted to look at a city without cars. As a communication designer who knows Photoshop for image editing and After Effects for animation, I realized this is it—this is where I can use my talent. So I started this experiment.

In a way, this also makes me a translator.

Art helps to translate theoretical insights and knowledge into an accessible language: the language of images. In doing so, images develop a special quality that reaches viewers in a low threshold and catchy way. Images speak a universal language. Images have the potential to generate feelings and enthusiasm.

The utopian approach of my animations has a decisive function. After viewers visit the utopia, they return to reality with a sharpened view. This is an invitation to reflect on our reality and hold a mirror up to society. The expansion of consciousness is in the foreground, not so much the feasibility of my visions. Although, I would certainly be happy about the implementation.

The bicycle plays an essential role in my animations. Compared to other methods of transport, it is unsurpassed in its ingenuity. It is emission-free, takes up little space, and can be used in many ways. It not only promotes the health of those who ride it but also of those who do not. And, cycling is often a great pleasure. These characteristics have a positive effect on pedestrians, as well as on the environment. It’s about getting from A to B safely and

Skalitzer Street, Berlin Visual Utopias imagines what this street in Berlin would look like if there were no cars on it.

© VISUAL UTOPIAS

in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

This requires cooperative mobility that is characterized by solidarity. At present, there’s little sign of this. Competition and dominance of the automobile prevail in road traffic. This is highly antisocial. If we move in an environmentally friendly and safe way, there’s another decisive aspect: It is fun and very healthy. We will all benefit from new mobility—even if it will hurt the car at first. The mobility revolution will only be a success when it is not only implemented on the road but also in people’s minds.

In addition to a transport infrastructure geared toward people’s well-being, we need a new attitude, a changed mentality towards mobility. We need to be aware of the impact our locomotion has on our planet, even if it looks green at first glance. The people in the cities have proven that a life without a car is possible. Let’s use our technological progress so we do not have to switch back to horses and carriages. Let’s use it in a way that makes mobility truly sustainable. Besides, the most ingenious means of transport has already been invented: the bicycle.

View Jan Kamensky’s Visual Utopias in action at vimeo.com/jankamensky.

Jan Kamensky Art Director, Visual Utopias Hamburg, Germany Jan Kamensky lives and works in Hamburg. In 2020, the communication designer and artist started the project of his utopian animations. The deserted streets of Hamburg at the beginning of 2020 inspired him to playfully transform car-dominated streets into people-friendly places that hold a mirror up to society.

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QUALITY OF LIFE

ARCHITECTS AS HEALERS BUILDINGS AS MEDICINE

BY ANGELA MAZZI AND MEGAN MAZZOCCO

As future-proofing cities becomes critical to securing quality of life amid density, grassroots groups and policymakers have the potential to bring vitality, health, and resilience to communities in urban areas.

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here are personal and external factors that can be detrimental to health. Studies show that when the personal impacts (such as social connection, safety, education, financial stability, diet, housing stability, and transportation) are combined with external impacts (such as the effects of light and noise pollution, traffic, air and water quality, and the amount of green space), the body produces very real biological responses that impact everything from how we age, epigenetics, inflammation, metabolics, gut microbiome, and gene expression. These factors are precursors to many health problems and diseases.

To understand why that impact occurs, think of a video game like Super Mario Bros.

You navigate the world with a “resource bank.” If you have a lot of resources and you encounter a threat, it doesn’t really impact you. On the other hand, if you don’t have resources (back to those social factors), you will be severely impacted. This is why one person can be more resilient than another in the same situation. The good news is that we can leverage the built environment to embed those resources, building resiliency for the people that live in your cities.

Blue Urbanism Why do we want to resource our citizens for resilience? We want to create quality of life and longevity, which together equal a healthspan.

Rather than lifespan, a healthspan is living a long, independent, high-quality life. This is happening around the world in places called Blue Zones. What if we could reimagine and

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create a Blue Zone in your city?

According to the WHO, air and noise pollution are the number one and two causes of death worldwide. Noise pollution impacts sleep habits, which is problematic because sleep is the top predictor of physical and mental health. Light pollution is also a nuisance to sleep, and several studies have shown that continued exposure to artificial light increases the risk for prostate and breast cancers. Flicker is also a health disruptor to highly sensitive people and can trigger those with seizure disorders.

The design of the built environment can exacerbate these kinds of public health epidemics, but it can also work to resolve them. For example, smart footprints like green walls can mitigate air and noise pollution

Active Design On Rue Montorgueil in Paris, we see an example of a thriving pedestrian-active streetscape.

simultaneously. Other strategies involve softening semipermeable boundaries around buildings with greenery, benches, and walking paths, making for a more desirable and pleasant pedestrian experience.

Active Design A lot of the things we talk about in our club are ways we can activate health by creating pedestrian-friendly spaces that encourage people to socialize in a way that’s normal and natural, thus expanding a person’s support network for more of a safety net.

We can see the difference between big-box shopping centers and a more pedestrianactive streetscape. A shopping center is destination-based and encourages car culture, which is sedentary, polluting the air,

Blue Urbanism The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has recognized Milan’s Bosco Verticale for its balconies that extend beyond the envelope and have planters with full-size trees up each facade, creating a veritable vertical forest in the middle of the city. The greenery purifies the air, improving the air quality, and the foliage acts as an acoustic buffer in absorbing excess noise and vibration.

Angela Mazzi Principal, GBBN Cincinnati, Ohio

© BOERI STUDIO/DIMITAR HARIZANOV

not providing a meaningful place for social interaction, and creating a heat island through the asphalt. And yet, this is how people have become accustomed to consuming space. On the other hand, giving people opportunities where it is fun and meaningful to be on the street, where you can encounter interesting things and it is easy to get exercise and cultural stimulation without having to go through great effort helps us have healthier spaces.

When we live in a freeway world, we lose the scale of humanity. When we can change that scale and get people biking or walking, they can experience the environment at a more granular scale where they can start to recognize faces, patronize certain shops, and encourage local businesses to want to be in their neighborhoods.

Urban Acupunctures Architecture professor Diana Agrest talked about “ urban acupunctures,” where you take a needle-sized intervention into a city that has a huge effect on the energy and the vibrancy of the pedestrian experience.

Some urban acupunctures are parklets, streeteries, or even activating alleyways by stringing lights overhead. Another example is

© COLOR CORPS

creating a term I call “dynamic midscapes,” which was discussed by Erik Olsen in his articles for Fast Company. He called it the “mid-doors,” spaces that join several buildings under a semipermeable glass roof, providing natural ventilation, daylight, and gardens at a pedestrian scale, which adds visual interest and opportunities for a vibrant civic life.

One of our guests on “Architects as Healers: Building as Medicine” was Laura Guido-Clark, who has an organization called Color Corps, which revitalizes underserved buildings to create more vibrant and energetic spaces.

Another company, Studio Gang, designed a series of sports courts in Chicago called Polis Station, which provides the opportunity not only for physical fitness and safety in the community but also has the residual effect of mentorship between the police and the younger people in the neighborhood.

In Europe, they have a program to introduce community gardens, which brings people together intergenerationally. It’s also a sleep tool because people who garden are shown to have better-quality sleep. This one urban acupuncture improves air quality, acts as a noise buffer, and provides an activity that also promotes healthy sleep hygiene.

The Center for Conscious Design, a decentralized global grassroots think tank, is a fantastic resource of people, including behavioral economists, theoretical economists, neuroscientists, architects, designers, and planners. Reach out to your local chapter or create one yourself and generate more ideas and resources for urban acupunctures and dynamic midscapes so that you can create your city as a Blue Zone.

As an architect, devoted yogi, and practitioner of ancient Chinese art of feng shui, Angela Mazzi’s work incorporates “salutogenesis” (health-generating design) to target architectural strategies that impact well-being. Being part of “the profession that eats its own” has been a source of inspiration and frustration throughout Mazzi’s career, prompting her to found The Patron Saint of Architecture in 2010.

Megan Mazzocco Sustainability and Wellness Director, Spring Architecture + Design Chicago, Illinois Megan Mazzocco is an architecture and design journalist fascinated by the power of the built environment as a conduit to positive health outcomes.

She began teaching in a corporate setting in 2018, and when she observed her positive impact, she started yogaXdesign to guide architects and designers to a path of ease through yoga. Her “A+D Toolkit for Daily Creative Renewal” offers a restorative experience for design professionals.

Join the Conversation

Angela and Megan host the Clubhouse room “Architects as Healers: Buildings as Medicine” every Monday at 9 a.m. EST where they discuss issues around the culture of design, therapeutic landscapes, social justice, and more.

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QUALITY OF LIFE Smart Cane The smart cane has a powered omnidirectional wheel at the tip, which can pull slightly to one side or the other, either to create a momentary change in their path, to avoid an obstacle, or to tell them when it’s time to turn to stay on their route to their destination.

HEALTH TECH WILL MAKE SMART CITIES SMARTER

BY ALFRED POOR

As architects in the era of information, we must utilize technology to manage urban risk and design resilient cities.

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hether it’s a product, service, or smart city, there is a need for diversity in the design process.

Certainly, how somebody interacts with an environment is colored by their background and attitudes. But there’s also the physical component: Individuals have varying physical capabilities. And for everyone to enjoy all the benefits of a city, we need to make sure that we take all their abilities and limitations into account.

Smart Cane People who are blind or visually impaired often use a white cane to help them navigate. This technology has not changed in hundreds of years. But researchers at Stanford University have created a smart cane using the same technology available for autonomous cars, including LIDAR, which can detect objects in the user’s path; GPS to locate them; and motion-detection sensors. Combined, it provides more information about where © WHILL

the user is and how they can go from where they are to their intended destination—even if they’ve never been there before. This is just one example of how we can use smarter technology to help make it easier for individuals to access all the parts of the city environment.

Aira A fascinating service called Aira helps visionimpaired or blind users navigate and perform useful tasks by pairing the user with a sighted companion who works remotely using the camera in VR glasses or a smartphone to see the environment around the user.

The City of Chula Vista, California, has started a one-year pilot program to provide this service for free within its downtown area.

Sighted companions can help users do things like read a menu or describe the colors of clothing in a shop. They can even help them determine whether the bus that’s arriving is the one they need to get to their destination. So, incorporating technology like this in a city can open it up and make it much more available to people with limited vision.

Smart Wheelchairs There are a lot of interesting improvements in terms of wheelchairs, including the Whill, which comes with all-terrain tires that can roll forward and sideways. They can climb obstacles up

© STANFORD UNIVERSITY/ANDREW BRODHEAD

to 3 inches tall, and they aren’t limited to just concrete and paved surfaces.

Other wheelchairs go beyond this. For example, Shirley Ryan Ability Lab Standing Wheelchairs raise the user to a vertical standing position so that they can access things that they wouldn’t be able to reach.

These sit-stand chairs provide a lot more accessibility to services and products and can make a big difference in people’s lives.

Personal Exoskeletons There’s been a lot of exciting progress made by Wandercraft in terms of personal exoskeletons.

Even if a person is paralyzed from the waist down, they can still walk with them. Some newer models balance the user standing vertically without using their arms or outside support. They’re also developing ways for these exoskeletons to support the body to walk with a more natural human gait, so they’re able to climb steps and more. There’s a new realm of accessibility as these exoskeleton products become more refined and more available.

The bottom line is that we have an opportunity to make our cities more accessible and make their benefits more readily available to more people, no matter their limitations.

It’s important to consider what impact those limitations might have when they try to access the things you’re building for them.

Alfred Poor Editor, Health Tech Insider Whill Wheelchair Whill comes with all-terrain tires that can go through gravel, over grass and fields and more, and open up lots of destinations that people in wheelchairs might not otherwise be available.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The founding editor of Health Tech Insider, Alfred Poor, Ph.D., is a technology speaker, writer, and analyst with an international reputation. Author of more than a dozen books, he continues to be fascinated by things that can make a difference in people’s lives.

HUMANS + NATURE + MINDFULNESS = RESILIENT SUSTAINABLE CITIES

BY SUZANNE JEWELL

Beyond the built infrastructure, mindful resilience is a key, learnable skill set for humans to wisely navigate storms, both internal and external.

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Suzanne Jewell CEO, The Mindful Entrepreneur Miami, Florida Suzanne Jewell is a thought leader in modern-day mindfulness spaces, offering mindful resilient leadership training for Babson College’s Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab, the Idea Center at Miami Dade College, and PhilanthropyMiami, as well as corporate clients like Credit Agricole, Allvue Systems, and the first World Happiness Summit. A former global TV executive, Jewell became a “green space connoisseur” as she bounced back from burnout, which led to her concept of the “park with a purpose,” the Mindful Pocket Park Project.

“WE NEED TO LOOK BEYOND THE BUILT INFRASTRUCTURE TOWARD THE HUMAN CAPACITY TO LEARN TO STAY PRESENT IN THE MIDDLE OF DIFFICULTY.”

e are reaching a fascinating time in history: Not because of the code red that the IPCC issued in August.

But also because for the first time in history, the majority of people live in urban centers. We’ve moved from an agricultural society to an urbanbased lifestyle. We’ve lost our connection with nature. From personal experience with climate change, I learned how to fall and get back up again. And that is the definition of resilience.

The resilience I’m speaking about is tied to human infrastructure—not built infrastructure, not the roads, the septic system or sewers, but the ability for humans to not just survive the storms but thrive during them.

Most of us are distracted for the majority of our lives. According to Harvard’s Lazar Lab, 47% of the time we’re awake, our mind is either in the past or the future, when our mind and our body are not aligned in the present, which is really the only moment you have to be alive.

We have approximately 70,000 thoughts run through our minds every day. And when you are in a crisis-oriented mode, your thoughts look like a whirly, monkey mind, and you are in a sense of overwhelm. This is what happens when you are in a flood, storm, or fire. When your body is in this state, you don’t make good decisions.

And this is one of the reasons why nature and mindfulness in the urban areas of our lives need to be threaded together. Because when you are in a moment of stress, or emotional flooding, you flip your lid. Your mind goes offline, and you go into fight, flight, or freeze. This has been occurring for many of us already without having the words to speak about it.

Beyond building sea walls and putting pumps near our roads, we need to all learn how to weather the storm. And that is what the practice of mindful resilience can do for you.

I came to these practices not because I’m a

yoga teacher but when I became a modernday climate refugee. I was in my home, we’d had rain for two days straight, and I realized that water was coming above the baseboards and rising through the floor. And I had one of those moments, which was, “I have a matter of moments. How do I get out? What should I do?

What do I bring?” And before I ran out the door, I turned off the breakers.

In that process, I was so thankful for my training about how to breathe, respond versus react, pay attention, and turn toward what was occurring in me that was difficult. And those skills, which I call grit, helped me ground myself, resource myself, integrate myself, and let me be resilient in the face of an actual storm.

The University of Michigan has proven that 20 minutes in green space lowers your cortisol levels. Why is that so important? Because you can’t think straight if your brain is hijacked. And when you are around too much concrete, you don’t feel as well.

Fascinatingly, when you learn to breathe intentionally, ground yourself, and resource your skills, you can build resilience. When you know how to respond instead of react and do so in nature, you reduce all those cortisol levels. You bring the prefrontal cortex back online, and you will make more rational, logical decisions.

We need to look beyond the built infrastructure toward the human capacity to learn to stay present in the middle of difficulty.

We need to have our rational mind be online and not emotionally flooded, overwhelmed, or in fight, flight, or freeze.

I hope that you’ll look into what it means to build human resilience, human infrastructure, and to do so in a mindful way within the basis and foundation of nature. Because this is how we will build resilient, sustainable cities.

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QUALITY OF LIFE

URBAN PLAYGROUND HOW CHILD-FRIENDLY PLANNING & DESIGN CAN SAVE CITIES

BY TIM GILL

Child-friendly planning and design boost the case for healthy, sustainable, joyful public spaces and neighborhoods that work well for everyone.

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ere’s something that you would never hear a parent say: “This is a great neighborhood, but I’ll never let my child walk to school.” Here’s something that you’d never hear a child say: “I love my city, but there’s nowhere for me to play.” These insights give us a clue as to why child-friendly urban planning matters and what it’s all about.

What Is Child-Friendly Urban Planning?

If we ask what makes neighborhoods work for families, it falls into three categories: suitable housing; services like school, childcare, and healthcare; and parks, streets, and public spaces. It’s that third plank where children start to enjoy life as citizens and claim their space in the city.

Child-friendly urban planning breaks down into two dimensions: things to do and mobility.

A child-friendly city has a lot of choices for children. But that’s not enough. You need mobility: How easy is it for children to get around a neighborhood on their own?

Why Does Child-Friendly Planning Matter?

Cities fall into three groups in terms of reasons they were interested in this idea. The first

was children’s rights, health, and the benefits to children themselves. The second was sustainability issues and realizing a sustainable city looks like a child-friendly neighborhood: green, compact, and easy to get around. The third was economics: A city unable to attract and retain families has a bleak future.

If we ask children what they like about their cities, their answers are surprisingly clear and consistent. They want the ability to get around and greenery; they don’t like traffic and untidiness. Their views map perfectly onto this framework I’ve adopted. When we look at the correlations between cities and economic growth factors, we see evidence of that link between a city’s economic prospects and the presence of families.

Which Cities Are Leading the Way? Vauban, an eco-suburb of Freiburg, Germany, is essentially car-free, and any families or households that own a car have to park their car in one of the peripheral car parks.

That means the whole of the public realm is available for play, recreation, and socializing.

Rotterdam is an example of a city that 15 years ago was having problems attracting

and retaining families. So the city put money, time, and effort into tackling the problem.

They improved parks, streetscapes, and sidewalks; created new play spaces and sports facilities; and introduced traffic calming.

These measures helped attract families to the targeted areas in the city.

In Boulder, they are involving children in planning across the city. The city did a range of workshops with a varied population of children to develop a design for the city center. They also created a kid-friendly map for the city.

Kaboom! is an NGO looking to weave in play opportunities in cities across the U.S.— not just in conventional playgrounds but into other parts of the city.

If you pull all this together, you get a quote from the former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, who talks about children being a kind of indicator species for cities, that if we build a successful city for children, we’ll have a successful city for all people. I really like that image of the indicator species. Seeing children in a city is a sign of the health of human habitat, just like seeing salmon swimming up a river.

© GROWING UP BOULDER

Boulder, Colorado The city involves children in planning, including this playground at Boulder Public Library.

Tim Gill Global Advocate, Rethinking Childhood London, England Tim Gill is a global advocate for children’s outdoor play and mobility and an independent scholar, writer, and consultant. He is the author of Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities and No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-Averse Society.

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CREATING CHILDFRIENDLY SMART CITIES

BY LETICIA LATINO

A child-friendly approach can be the thread that unites stakeholders, prompting collaboration in the challenging task of becoming a resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and conscious city.

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am a mom and a communications expert who lives in a vibrant city. In my opinion, the “smart” in smart cities is not about technology; it is about how we implement it.

It will be our kids and their kids living with the decisions we make today, which is why it is so important to consider our children’s needs and perspectives as we embark on upgrading our cities to become viable and sustainable for the future. To me, a smart city marries traditional infrastructure and modern communication infrastructure to fuel sustainable economic growth and high quality of life.

The promise of smart cities is exciting. But we will not transform the way we live overnight.

There needs to be incremental transformations through a combination of small projects and wider infrastructure changes underpinned by data-sharing. Making cities child-friendly is a complex urban development issue and is hugely affected by socioeconomic demographics. Some city officials argue it makes more economic sense to prioritize citizens without children who bring a net economic gain over families who bring a net loss. After all, kids don’t make big purchases or pay taxes, and schools can be the biggest expense for local governments.

But this mentality greatly disfavors the disadvantaged. It may seem a city’s affordability for families is a matter of market

“OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR WELLBEING COULD BE THE UNIFYING FACTOR THAT PULLS A SMART CITY STRATEGY TOGETHER.”

forces, yet specific policies shape whether city life is within reach. Many cities are undergoing efforts to link the dots between childfriendliness and sustainability. But there is a gap between required and existing knowledge on what children deem important.

If we roll out smart city plans by focusing only on traffic, trash, or telecommunications, we disassociate with the human component of the equation. Our children and their wellbeing could be the unifying factor that pulls a smart city strategy together, uniting a range of progressive planning and design agendas.

Urban95 is a foundation that focuses its work around one question: If you could experience the city from the height of a 3-year-old, what would you change? By answering this question, the program advocates for children and caregivers who rarely have a voice in city policy and planning. The foundation also works with city leaders, architects, planners, and engineers to encourage cities to create spaces where children can grow, imagine, and play across all neighborhoods. The motto of the program is: “A city that works for babies, toddlers, and their caregivers is a city that works for everybody.” No one can argue against the idea that a good measure of a city’s vibrancy is the presence of children and families.

UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative

provides guidance for integrating child-related demands into smart city creation. It introduces a global framework and step-by-step guidance to professionalize and streamline this initiative globally while leaving adequate room for adaptation to local context, structures, priorities, and needs. It emphasizes the importance of measuring and demonstrating the change the program brings to children.

The premise is every child has the right to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and secure and have access to basic services, clean air and water, and places to play, learn, and grow. We need to consult with children to ensure their existing and future needs are understood and met.

The repercussions of decisions we don’t make today will be more visible than ever.

There are so many benefits to inviting the children to partake in smartening our cities.

We need to count on our leaders’ long-term visions while putting people before policies. But we also have to get more involved because our impact and feedback are crucial to redefining our cities and making them accessible for all ages and abilities. We live in one world, and if we don’t do what’s best for it, we’re doing a disservice to the next generation. A sustainable urban future is part of a healthier, happier way of life for children and families. Family-friendly places are people-friendly places.

Leticia Latino van-Splunteren CEO, Neptuno USA Hollywood, Florida With over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry, Leticia Latino van-Splunteren went from working for Merrill Lynch and Nortel Networks to extending her family business, Neptuno Group, in the U.S. in 2002. Her father founded the company in 1972 in South America, where they helped deploy some of the first cellular networks in the region and built over 10,000 towers.

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INCLUSIVE & SHARING

ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR SUSTAINABILITY

BY EDNA PASHER

Young people realize they must acquire multidisciplinary skills and entrepreneurship abilities, and they are eager to participate in projects that promote sustainability.

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ur World Our Classroom is a projectbased learning platform that offers online courses to students worldwide.

Why project-based learning? Because when young people want to change the world, they need to learn what entrepreneurship and innovation are all about. So we don’t teach them; we become mentors and help them create their own projects.

I got the idea for Our World Our Classroom from Marshall McLuhan, who inspired the Ph.D. program at NYU I graduated from many years ago. As early as the 1970s, he wrote a book called City as Classroom, in which he said children would learn much more if we opened up school and let them study from the people in the city. The inspiration comes from the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” He says, “If it takes the village to raise a child, why not the city as a classroom?”

When the headmaster of Hamanhil, an elementary school in a city close to Tel Aviv, asked me to come and teach children about smart cities, I told her that I don’t like to teach; I like to make people learn. So we adopted a project-based learning setup, and the children developed smart solutions to make the city smarter. Within one year, we had eight startups from one school, children ages 9 to 14.

The solutions are so inspiring—a smart bus, a

smart water fountain, and a smart trash can.

When they were done, one of them was courageous enough to go and present to the mayor. This was the inspiration that led us to Our World Our Classroom.

The first project we did was in collaboration between our institute and a university in Hong Kong. Using project-based learning, children from Israel and Hong Kong created projects committed to the SDGs. It wasn’t easy the first time because of a cross-cultural communication barrier. Even though all the children knew English pretty well, the Israeli children were more courageous.

There is a saying that Israel is a startup nation: Israelis have chutzpah; we are not afraid to say what we want. The children from Hong Kong were shy. But we are slowly learning how to overcome shyness and cross-cultural barriers.

For example, we have a WhatsApp group in which the students can get to know each other better, and they become less shy when we meet once a week online via Zoom.

We would love to collaborate with anyone affiliated with a university or a school that would like to experiment with us with what the world looks like when we collaborate and how we can contribute to making our cities and the world smarter and more sustainable.

Edna Pasher Founder & Chair, Israel Smart Cities Institute Tel Aviv, Israel Edna Pasher is the founder and Chair of the Israel Smart Cities Institute, a think tank made of local and global experts who focus on providing smart solutions to municipalities and startups that make our cities smarter and more sustainable.

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Our World Our Classroom Five main values lead us in our projects: Collaboration: We don’t want anybody to do any project alone. We always work as teams.

International Teams: We want different cultures and backgrounds.

We learn so much from people from other countries and mindsets.

Practical Tools: Specifically, clean management—how to decrease waste, how to do things better, faster, and cheaper, and improve the processes we do.

Impact: We want to do something that makes the world a better place— something that comes from our heart that would usually line up with the UN’s SDGs but doesn’t have to.

Engagement: We want all the students to take part. Usually, we have at least 15 or 20 minutes every class where we have breakout rooms where every student can share their ideas.

“IF IT TAKES THE VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD, WHY NOT THE CITY AS A CLASSROOM?”

CIRCLE SCAN

BY JORDI PASCUAL

How cities can use data evidence to inform their innovation process and the circular economy.

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ircle Economy is an impact organization dedicated to the practical and scalable implementation of the circular economy. Our mission is to deliver practical and scalable circular economy solutions to businesses, cities, and nations but also provide insights and research to the wider public across all these different agents.

Our vision is to contribute to a prosperous world with finite resources by accelerating the transition toward the circular economy.

What Is the Circular Economy?

We are trying to transition from the linear economy, where we waste most of the sources that we extract, manufacture, and consume, toward a circular economy where we capture the value of resources without generating any waste.

The reality is that our world is only 8.6% circular, and the trend is going down. The linear economy is about this process of sourcing resources, refining them, producing, selling, using them, and disposing of them via incineration or landfilling. In a circular economy, resources are maintained at their highest utility. We value those resources for as long as possible by closing the loops, keeping products in the use phase, reusing them, refurbishing them, and, as a last option, recycling them.

At Circle Economy, we have the seven key elements framework, which summarizes all the different strategies that compose the circular economy: regenerative resources, preserving and extending what’s already made, reusing or using waste as a resource. Those are the core elements. But we also have the enabling elements such as design, rethinking the business models, collaboration, and incorporation of digital technologies.

Half of the global population lives in urban areas, two-thirds of global energy is used in

cities, 80% of global GDP is generated in cities, and 75% of global resources are used in cities. We see the potential of circular cities for value creation, job creation, better air quality, competitiveness in global markets, and reduction of CO2 emissions and resource use.

We see circular cities as the drivers for resilience in our society, and the circular economy is a key lever in bridging the emissions gap to a 1.5° pathway.

Circle City Scans The Circle City Scan is an action-oriented approach to help build road maps for circular economy projects. We use analytical tools and assessments to translate the complexity of data and resource flows into understandable insights that can provide information for cities to make decisions. Then we identify the key impact areas are and where the opportunities might be to overcome those impacts. We like to call it a multi-stakeholder approach. We bring together local changemakers and stakeholders from businesses, academia, the public sector, research institutes, and civil society so that they own the process. Our Circle City Scan approach has four main phases: Socioeconomic Analysis: We engage with a group of key stakeholders and develop a baseline analysis of the current state of the circular economy.

Material Flow Analysis: We try to build an evidence-based analysis to identify the main challenges in the different sectors.

Circular Strategies: We try to develop actionable circular strategies and define scalable pilot projects to test if those strategies can work on a city level.

Action Plan: We develop the pilot projects’ action plans. What actions need to be taken, by whom, what’s the type of investment, what’s the financial investment needed, and what steps need to be taken?

Jordi Pascual City Strategist, Circle Economy Amsterdam, Netherlands Jordi Pascual is driven by systemic transformation and creating a new economic model that delivers prosperity within the boundaries of our planet. In his role as a strategist in Circle Economy’s cities team, he works with cities to analyze their socioeconomic system, scope their opportunities, and realize innovative, practical, and impactful circular economy strategies.

Circular London In our recent Circle City Scan of London, we linked the circular economy to consumptionbased emissions. We called it a Carbon Scan because it tried to link carbon to resources and climate change. London has set the target to become a zero-carbon city by 2030 and is tackling consumption-based emissions.

First, we did some baseline assessment and analysis to understand the sector, and we then mapped the resources flows and the supply chain and how those link to emissions and carbon impacts. We found that 15.5 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions are being emitted via London’s food system—the same as the energy use of about 1.8 million houses for a year. About 78% of greenhouse gas emissions of London’s food system occur outside of London. And more than 1 million tons is the total food loss and waste before reaching households.

We looked at how the circular economy could help in reducing consumptionbased emissions and improving resource management. We found three key intervention points: 1) Reducing meat consumption by 20% can decrease food-related consumptionbased emissions by 20%; 2) Reducing food loss and waste by 50% can decrease emissions by 10%; and 3) making better use of waste can decrease emissions by an additional 0.4%.

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INCLUSIVE & SHARING

INVESTING IN RACIAL EQUITY THROUGH SMALLSCALE MANUFACTURING

BY ILANA PREUSS

How to improve your economic development programs to better support diverse business owners in the future.

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hat does it mean to have a smart city and create an equitable economic recovery? The personality of the place, the personality of our storefronts, the uniqueness of our community, and the people and places we have left behind in our economies all come together in our downtown and are essential not only to our recovery but to ultimately filling those storefronts and creating the smart cities where people can thrive. Because we can’t have smart cities without an inclusive and equitable economy.

More Black- and Latino-owned businesses had to close for an extended period of time in 2020 than White-owned businesses. We’ve had an enormous impact on our employment; we’ve lost them low-wage jobs. We also have this legacy of a racial wealth gap. And when we look at the impact on Black households, it’s not just because of the lack of equal-paying

jobs, but it’s also because of our history of excluding Black households, jobs, and homeowners from a lot of the opportunities that people had over the last 50-60 years.

We are at a transformational moment and an opportunity today to build a strong, inclusive economy and create thriving downtowns for our smart cities. But we need to invest differently. We need to invest with intention and purpose and address our racial and place inequities to create places that people love and that draw in others. This means that we’re investing in the people and businesses that live there now. We need to create a new structure to support all of that and invest in it. And we need to think longterm, but we need to act now. The need to act right now is so extreme that we need to figure out things we can do in the next six months, maybe nine months, that really have an impact on our small businesses, on our people who

live in our community, and help people build wealth and become a part of the success that’s their community.

One way we do this is by engaging with small-scale manufacturing businesses. These are businesses that create tangible products that we can replicate or package. Sio Ceramics is one great example. They create ceramic jewelry and different kinds of household ceramic items. Employees work out of a microretail storefront where they do production and retail in the same space. They are selling at street festivals, out of their storefront, online direct to consumer, and wholesale to other shops all across the country. That means this business has four revenue sources, making them incredibly nimble, and in many cases, disaster-proof and able to be a part of our growing economy.

One example of small-scale manufacturing is Woodhaven Custom Calls in Heflin,

Ilana Preuss CEO, Recast City Washington, DC Ilana Preuss is the founder of Recast City, which works with communities to bring smallscale manufacturing into downtowns and neighborhood main streets to create places that are resilient, inclusive, and equitable. And yes, that can be the building blocks of a smart city of the future. She is also the author of Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with SmallScale Manufacturing.

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© RECAST CITY

Woodhaven Custom Calls The turkey call manufacturer has become a downtown destination in Heflin, Alabama.

© REINGEIST.COM

Alabama, which has a production space that employs a few dozen people. In 2020, people started stopping by their workshop to see the production of their turkey call product.

They talked about creating a retail frontage with a glass wall to showcase the production.

They became a part of the destination for this community and brought people downtown, even though they’re predominantly selling online or wholesale.

These businesses are all different kinds: They’re hot sauces, handbags, and hardware; they range from artisan producers to advanced manufacturing and everything in between. And in many cases, they are the hidden gem in our community. They’re these missing pieces because they just have their head down doing hard work, but they create a number of benefits for our communities.

We can build more inclusive opportunities to bring wealth into our community. There are people who make things across every different part of our population. These businesses sell inperson and online, and they can fill storefronts by doing their production and retail in the same space. But because they’re selling online, they’re not dependent on the foot traffic that may not be there right now, but they can be a draw to help attract that foot traffic. And when they’re filling vacant storefronts, they’re also helping us break out of these cycles of loss and exclusion and grow those property values.

At Zeke’s Coffee, they have a coffee shop up front, coffee roaster in the back. Wholesale production goes out the back door. And so, when they came into a block that had very little foot traffic, they weren’t dependent on that foot traffic for survival. But they did attract a lot of foot traffic, which helped fill other storefronts

Island Soap & Candle Works Kauai, Hawaii

© RECAST CITY

along that block.

And when we take care of these businesses with the right kind of real estate space, the right kind of business development support, and the capital for growth, we attract other business owners that want to be a part of what we’re building—entrepreneurs from within our community and entrepreneurs from the surrounding areas that want to be a part of this growing opportunity. And all of these pieces are part of a thriving economy.

We had a chance to work with the business loop in Columbia, Missouri; they recognized very quickly that this was a hidden part of the economy no one had capitalized on. These businesses are in every community, and it’s a question of what kind of opportunities we are creating for them in our community.

They recognized a need for commercial kitchen space, and they could only scale their package product to market if they were using a commercial kitchen. The other part of it was to change the zoning. Something very simple, but needed to make sure there was no barrier for these businesses to move into the area.

We have this unique opportunity today to make big changes in our local economies because of the access to the American Rescue Plan Act in the U.S. and other funding internationally, the recognition that downtowns are essential for entrepreneurs, and the understanding that if our small businesses fail, we all fail. They were the entities that kept us afloat last year. Here are five steps to think about right now: 1) How do you create affordable space for a diversity of small businesses in your downtown or your neighborhood main street? That might be micro-retail space with shared facilities

behind them. How can that grow home-based businesses into your storefronts to create more opportunities for a diversity of people and energy along the street?

2) Look at how you can fill in the gaps in business assistance. That might be assistance in multiple languages. That’s definitely new partnerships to help you get the word out to people with whom you don’t have existing relationships. That also might mean focusing on existing part-time businesses and helping them scale before working with new startups.

3) Look at how we create targeted investment models—investments for growth, low-cost loans, microgrants—what are the barriers that small-scale manufacturing businesses face and create targeted programs for that and ones that specifically support Blacks, Latinos, women, veterans, and other business owners that have historically been excluded from the opportunities.

4) Look at our policies, including zoning and permitting processes or any policies that might be in place that would prevent a product business from being in a storefront and doing modern manufacturing, where they can be that draw and not create negative impacts on the community.

5) Think about this community pride. What is the programming we can pull together?

Think about it as an incubator of your business sector. All these vendors are small product businesses within your community that could be storefront users growing businesses within your community. Use these opportunities not only to bring people together but to also give these business owners access to their own opportunity to grow within your community.

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I-395 Bridge The Florida Department of Transportation selected Archer Western De Moya Group Joint Venture to rebuild I-395 and construct the “Bridge for the Ages” that will redefine the Miami skyline and its connection to Miami Beach.

© WALSH GROUP

MIAMI MOMENTUM Miami-Dade County was rated the Best Region for Investment in 2022 by World Biz Magazine.

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iami-Dade received the prestigious distinction of Best Region for Investment in 2022 by World Biz Magazine, the global journal for the leaders of international companies. The selection comes after evaluating 50 cities and regions worldwide to identify those with the most compelling value propositions for companies exploring international investment. MiamiDade was selected because of five key reasons:

Seamless Connectivity Miami-Dade is easily accessible to all areas of the globe, thanks to the region’s three international airports handling more than 2,000 daily flights. PortMiami, the only Panamax-ready port south of Virginia, plays a leading role in global commerce and is the driving force behind $43 billion in economic activity. Miami is also known as the Cruise Capital of the World.

Business Friendliness Miami-Dade is a great financial decision.

There is no state or local personal income tax, corporate income tax is low, and businesses can rely on a favorable regulatory climate.

Highly Skilled and Diverse Talent South Florida residents are part of a tricounty market of 6.1 million and a combined workforce of over 3 million. They are highly educated: Miami is top in the U.S. for percentage growth of adults with graduate degrees and second for foreign-born residents with advanced degrees.

There are more than 250,000 college students and 345,000 K-12 students being trained at award-winning institutions.

Gateway to the World Miami is the perfect pivot point to manage operations in North and Latin America. The South Florida area is home to over 1,400 multinational businesses staffed by skilled and energetic residents speaking 128 languages.

There are over 5,200 financial services and legal and accounting firms. Miami-Dade is also home to the United States’ third-largest number of consular corps, foreign trade offices, and binational chambers of commerce.

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A Global Cultural Capital Miami offers endless opportunities for worldclass shopping, dining, and entertainment. For adventure and outdoor activities, Miami-Dade offers world-famous beaches and an average of 250 days of sunshine annually. For sports fans, Greater Miami is the only metropolis with

professional basketball, football, baseball, hockey, soccer, and Formula 1 teams. Miami is a capital for art and culture with world-class museums, performing arts, and music events.

Miami’s success in attracting major corporations while ensuring a friendly business environment for innovative startups and the unparalleled competence of the experienced team at Miami-Dade Beacon council were also strong factors in the selection.

“OUR DOORS ARE OPEN TO WELCOME NEW INVESTMENTS AND INDUSTRIES THAT WILL HELP US GROW AND OFFER EVEN BETTER OPPORTUNITIES.” — DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA, MAYOR, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY

MIAMI:

THE NEW AMERICAN CAPITAL Miami has evolved into one of the most important cities in America

© GMCVB

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etween creating its own cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, and being the “world’s best city for entrepreneurship,” according to Globalwire, Miami has a momentum that does not seem to be slowing down any time soon.

The city is booming with revolutionary advancements that make it look like it could become the next Silicon Valley. Forbes declared Miami as the “top city for small business growth where people are now coming to have a career instead of simply for tourism.”

City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is helping the city rank high with tech-related movements. A study by moveBuddha showed a 145% net migration to Miami, and the city ranked first for tech job growth, as seen in CompTIA Analysis.

Miami is also setting itself up to be the new tech leader by hosting the largest Bitcoin conference in history, along with Smart City Expo Miami. As per Mayor Suarez’s request for climate action, the city is developing a climate technology industry right before our very eyes.

As the top U.S. city in startup activities and venture capital investment earnings, Miami is proving to be a welldeserved top-ranking emerging tech hub.

“We are on the forefront of creating the best and most dynamic city in the world,” declared Mayor Suarez. “The capital of capital.”

© GMCVB

“WE ARE ON THE FOREFRONT OF CREATING THE BEST AND MOST DYNAMIC CITY IN THE WORLD—THE CAPITAL OF CAPITAL.” — FRANCIS SUAREZ, MAYOR, CITY OF MIAMI

© GMCVB

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CIRCULAR WATER CITIES CHALLENGE Participate in the first ever Hack-a-Town

Water plays an important role in creating a more sustainable cityscape - the quality and amount of water an urban area uses, reuses and exchanges with the wider watershed is intrinsically linked to the health of the local environment.

The challenge calls for solutions which help close the loop on water use and which create circular water cities that deliver social, economic and environmental benefits.

Submit circular solutions that help make circular water cities reality at CIURBE.ORG Powered by

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Smart CITIES Americas

CitiesHub.TV THE STREAMING PORTAL WHERE YOU CAN WATCH PRESENTATIONS FROM THE SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI® —LIVE AND ON DEMAND—

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SAVE THE DATE

SUSTAINABLE IS THE NEW SMART DECEMBER 12-14, 2022 DECEMBER 2022 Going HYBRID James L. Knight Center, Miami, FL Add to Calendar Become a Partner: SmartCityExpoMiami.com

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