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
26 | Smart City Miami
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
