Tristan Wilkinson continues to explore how to build smart cities by engaging citizens in the debate
We all have our daily routines. Depending on
where I am, mine either starts at 6am with a dash to London or at 7am with
breakfast and taking the kids to school followed by a day working at home. One
is relaxed and almost entirely in my control, the other is frantic, stressful
and puts me entirely at the mercy of a succession of organisations and
processes I have no control or influence over and that have lost sight of me as
an individual.
Not surprisingly my journey into and out of
London is one of the most unpredictable parts of my day. Every step of the
journey is fraught with potential anguish. Will I be able to park my car at the
train station? Is the train on time? Can I find a seat? Will it arrive on time?
Are the tubes running normally? Will there be a bike for me to use at the
station? Can I dock my bike at my destination? Even when things are ‘normal’ the
possibility for disruption is huge: introduce unplanned events to the system
and the whole thing can come crashing down.
We now live at a time when almost all of us
have in our pockets more compute power and access to information than put man
on the moon, but what are we doing with it? Not as much as we could. With more
than 50% of the world’s population now living in cities we need a more radical
and joined up approach to the way cities are managed and how they support and
provide for a sustainable and high quality life for the people who live, work
and play in them. Much of the investment currently being made into Smart Cities is focused in the ‘systems’ and to improve
efficiency and reduce costs for the service providers, both public and private.
Many of these advancements will pass the users by. Where is the engagement and
public debate about how we as citizens and taxpayers use and interact with our
environment? How do we engage and influence the direction of the investments
being made? There are great initiatives such as your square
mile or talk about local that focus on some elements of the debate,
however these are very local and focus on the very immediate and direct
environments we all have, there needs to be broader interaction that joins the
thinking together.
When it comes down to it most of us want the
same thing; a safe, clean, green environment that provides us with what we need
when we need it. Some thinking has started to bring collective intelligence to
bear. Institutions such as Imperial College have started to research how the
city can perform as a ‘platform’ but the debate is still largely confined to
the academic, policy and business worlds. We need broad public engagement with
the everyday people whose lives will ultimately be impacted by our changing
environment.
One of the more interesting ideas is how social media can be used to start a debate and gather
collective intelligence. One of the most thought provoking pieces on this is
written by Dan Hill and lays out a manifesto for change, ideas
and thinking with which I completely agree. We need to move the agenda beyond
one that is dominated by the need to increase efficiency and drive economic
growth to one that is transformative and has the potential to radically change
the way that people engage with their city and each other.
We need to put people back at the centre of
our cities.