FROM DIGITAL TWINS TO METACITIES: ENABLING CITY SOCIAL CO-CREATION VS. THE RISK OF VIRTUAL RELOCATION

BY JOSÉ ANTONIO ONDIVIELA

As advanced digital twin projects provide more predictive, holistic, and real-time alternative simulation capabilities, our cities are turning into metaverse-like virtual worlds. How does this new “phygital” duality of the physical city-digital city lead us to a physical resident vs. avatar presence and what are the consequences?

Let’s discover how digital twins’ evolution into the metaverse will lead us to a moment where we will enjoy two cities: the physical city, which is helping us with physical needs, and the virtual city, which could be the way to get inspired to work and develop our full creativity and potential.

Responding, Recovering & Redesigning

We live in unprecedented times, where cities are rethinking everything, redesigning spaces and processes, and coping with continuous challenges. They are trying to balance the social (understanding citizens’ situations, providing personalized service, and balancing budgets) and physical (monitoring the media, making the city greener, and leading

Dual City

carbon neutrality). The urban data platform combines both sources, extracting the insights we need to make this transformation happen.

Human & Physical

Citizens demand personalized service. We need to co-create new applications so they can participate in city management. On the other hand, we need to monitor and manage the city’s physical components to predict the future and evaluate alternatives to work out potential problems and make cities more resilient. This is the basics of digital twin simulation.

Digital Twins

Through digital twins, we can integrate new technologies to assess a city’s main physical situations. By simulating and predicting the future by testing different alternatives for any given problem, we take advantage of these technologies. To make this happen, we need to evolve our physical cities into the virtual world. We must analyze the physical components—traffic, pollution, water, and energy—and put them into a 3D visualization. Then, using AI algorithms, we can project this information to the future, evaluate alternatives, and make the best decisions.

Phygital Experience

We are representing the physical world but are adding a digital experience. Imagine a vineyard combining the physical experience of drinking wine with the digital experience of all the information around that. Or Disney, whose parks will incorporate virtual reality for children. If you go to the former shipyard in Belfast where the Titanic was built, you can use your phone or other augmented reality technology to explore the virtual Titanic. Or you can fly (with Flight Simulator-like visualization) to your next tourist destination and explore the different points of interest before you go.

Metaverse —> Metacity

In essence, a city is a place where humans meet and encounter. What if I create a virtual place, a virtual person (avatar), and a virtual experience? The metaverse turns into metacity. With this metacity concept, we are materializing imagination. This happened in ancient cave paintings and with most artists. Paradoxically, we are always using technology to virtualize reality; but here we go the other way around: We are materializing imagination. We are trying to do, make, and achieve things we cannot in the real world. We can see three different approaches for metacities: the consumer metaverse for gaming, socializing, and shopping; the enterprise metaverse for new working experiences and interacting with colleagues or customers, like an evolution of popular Teams; and the industrial metaverse, which is a digital twin for our city, where we use 3D representation, test the different alternatives, and try to foresee the consequences.

Gaming / Social

Since Ready Player One, the metaverse has run through many milestones. Roblox and Fortnite are famous because of their capacity to self-adapt to gamers’ choices or organizing massive events; or Minecraft, where schoolchildren are helping different cities co-design their future best spaces.

Enterprise

The workplace will evolve with these new technologies. We’ll share holograms and cooperate with our avatars on conference calls, creating new advanced experiences that will make us more productive.

Industrial: Digital Twins

We are studying 175 cities in our WW Observatory for Attractive Cities. Some are investing in technology to compensate for a lack of attractiveness. The metaverse allows them to create a parallel virtual version. Doha, Singapore, and Seoul are investing in their metacities to attract talented citizens. Will we have two cities, a physical one taking care of my body and other conditions, and a virtual one, where I can develop my talent potential generating wealth?

Physical City vs. Virtual City

Are we facing the traditional platonic duality: body vs. soul? We can go to the Augustinian metaphor of two cities: one where I touch the reality and the ground vs. one that inspires me, elevates and boosts my creativity, and develops my professional activity. Or the duality of a Tale of Two Cities: a city that is physically retaining me and a city that makes me dream.

We will experience this duality, which is unfair for the city our body is in because it provides the physical services—water, safety, food, energy—to maintain our body. But our minds could be in a metacity, developing a professional activity, generating wealth in other places. If we consider technologies like Neurotech, maybe we can connect our brain to a “mother city” so we can all contribute to creating a better city. This is an old aspiration from the American urbanist Jane Jacobs. I am leaving you this as food for thought.

José Antonio Ondiviela Industry Advisor Smart Cities, 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 Universidad Francisco de 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.