It's raining conferences!

Following my last article on the interest of a variety of stakeholders in this new concept of Smart Cities, it seems that this Autumn 2011 comes full of interesting events around the issue for them. As far as I know, there are 5 global conferences approaching, 3 of them in Europe, 1 in America and 1 in Asia:

Intelligent Cities Expo 2011, Hamburg, Nov 8 - 10

The 2011 edition of the Intelligent Cities Expo is taking place in Hamburg. As usual, the event will have a conference and an exposition section where stakeholders will discuss around solutions for sustainable cities.

The chosen topics for the conference include the core elements identified as essential for building smart, sustainable global cities: Smart Energy, Intelligent Water & Waste, Intelligent Mobility, Intelligent Security and Intelligent ICT.

The conference fee for 3 days is $1395.

You can follow the Intelligent Cities Expo 2011 Twitter account.

Changes in the conferences dates!

Smart Cities Global, Washington DC Nov 8 - 9 March 20 - 21, Kuala Lumpur Nov 15 - 16 March 27 - 28, Amsterdam Nov 29 - 30  Feb 1 - 2

These series of conferences will be happening during the month of November in three separate coins of the world, three areas know to be hot spots for Smart City development: South-east Asia + Australia, Europe and America.

The conference topics include Smart solutions for: Energy, Transportation, ICT, Water and Sustainability. Besides, the main page of Smart Cities Global has an interesting blog around the issues that will be treated during the conferences.

One of the top thinkers in Smart City solutions Carlo Ratti director of SENSEable City Lab will be speaking at the three events.

The conference fees are: Washington DC USD1500, Kuala Lumpur AUD1500 + GST, Amsterdam GBP950 + VAT.

You can follow the Smart Cities Global conferences’ Twitter account.

Smart City Expo, Barcelona, Spain, Nov 29 - Dec 2

This event is going to take place Barcelona and I am so excited about this happening in my city.

It is the first edition of a world event aimed at staying for long in the scene of Smart City conferences. The event will have two sections: the conference itself and an exposition of Smart City solutions. Its main inspiration theme will be “Smart society for innovative and sustainable cities”.

The list of confirmed speakers so far has an outstandingly good level providing an excellent balance of visions ranging from top private companies like IBM, Cisco, Telefonica I+D or Accenture to top research institutions and universities like MIT, IESE or LSE. Maybe what is left from my point of view here is the academic vision of those caring about the social aspects of Smart City solutions in cities and the vision of the Citizeneers as end-users.

What excites me is that it includes various of the thinkers I have been following for long:

- Anthony Townsend from the Institute for the Future.

- Adam Greenfield from Urbanscale.

- Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSEable City Lab from MIT (who is participating in 3 out of the 5 conferences here. He is not human, he is u-man)

- Carlos Leite, lecturer and expert professor on sustainable cities and architecture.

- John F. Moore from Gov in the Lab.

The conference fee is not published yet.

You can follow the Smart City Expo Twitter account.

The paradise of the Smart Cities

The use of the word Smart Cities has become extremely popular over the last years in the agenda of many decision makers in all society sectors. The fascination for this term has motivated the production of many literature in this area. The Smart Cities term is relatively new although the idea of using technology to modernise the city is not. Popular terms in the past included Intelligent Cities, U-Cities, Cities 2.0 or Digital Cities, the past two having fell slightly into disuse. Here follows a comparative graph of the three most used terms these last years using Google Trends today:

It might be because of this rapid popularity and a variety of interpretations that there is not a clear definition of what a Smart City is. Despite of this, the Smart city revolution represents a unique opportunity for many. For IT stakeholders (that is the case of IBM or Cisco to name some), the “Smart City” labelling has become a fantastic marketing strategy to push the market for their solutions and products for cities and urban areas. For city managers, this term seems to be the ultimate help with which to compete in the global innovation run towards worldwide recognition.

In the framework of a financial crisis whose end we are still unable to foresee and the public incomes decreasing dramatically, cities are starting to compete in the global world regardless of their nation-states with the aim of attracting talent, investment, entrepreneurs or big multinationals landing in the renewed cities and, ultimately, to promote new opportunities for local companies and entrepreneurs. In this context, the Smart City run represent a great chance to (re)urbanise cities with the help of innovative solutions based on an intensive use of new technologies.

Thinking in this, many cities worldwide have been tempted to start defining and implementing their own Smart City plans. However, is there a common model for them to follow? Regarding the help of IT providers, can all private solutions be tailored to fit every city's unique casuistry?

The first attempts to implement Smart City strategies have proved that, even with close cities, there is no common Smart City model and every city has adapted it to their own constraints. In Europe, for instance, we can find the examples of Malaga focusing on creating infrastructure of sensors for the city whereas cities like Amsterdam are opting to implement a wide variety of actions from opening public data to energy efficiency actions. Outside European borders, cities like Kochi have started building new business districts equipped with the latest technological solutions and some cities like Masdar have started construction from scratch. It seems that there are as many Smart City models as cities willing to become one and common assets are still unclear.

The future of the Smart Cities is, however, promising. Despite the initial conceptual disparities, Smart Cities seem to be a unique ecosystem that brings together traditionally opposite stakeholders that work together for the benefit of urban areas. These stakeholders are:

- local public entities - municipalities and councils that need to have a clear view on their needs and constraints to be able to manage the Smart City change, providers of user-driven scenarios

- private sector - SMEs, entrepreneurs, big companies that have seen an enormous potential market in this new ecosystem

- university & research centres & living labs - facilirators of co-creation models

- end users - citizens / citizeneers, companies...the key piece in this puzzle

This scenario is exciting and the changes to come will surely be worth witnessing. Hopefully we will be able to do so in this blog!

Citizeneer?

Citizeneer is a word of my own created out of the words citizen + engineer. Citizeneers would be the people living in the core of cities, using new technologies and information to interact ubiquitously between them and the city and, with their actions and traces, shaping the decisions on the future of the city.

I had the extreme luck of being born with a computer under the arms (IBM 286, wonderful times!) and that discovered the Internet when being a teenager. Now, I am standing flabbergasted watching how advances in technologies help creating alive urban spaces, putting citizens back at the centre of cities, empowering them to let them actively participate in the era of the intelligent cities. And this amazes me.

In this blog I would like to write about the interaction of cities and new technologies: the so-called models and projects of intelligent cities, smart cities, open data, the Internet of Things, citizen participation, services co-creation, living labs... The list of topics will be, as blogs are, completely dynamic. And on the top of it all, I would like to talk about the social implications of the introduction of new technologies in people’s life and how they can impact them. I hope you find it useful!

It has taken me a long time to decide to start this blog. Before, I have been following for years very interesting long-lasting blogs written by visionary people with strong solid opinions on the topics of my interest. My objective is not to write one of those blogs but simply create a space to share my views with others, to allow discussion and hear from others‘ own experiences.

I decided to write this blog in English precisely to reach a wider group of people (so please natives, if you find any error -there will be plenty of them-, correct me!). I am truly convinced of the power of globalizing (certain) discussions, such as those around cities evolution. As prestigious sociologist Saskia Sassen explained, global cities around the world are creating unique own spaces, linked one to the other, surpassing the limits of nation-states with the advance of technology.