pablo vaggione _ urban challenges and “smartness”

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Urban planning challenges and “smartness”

14 September 2011

Pablo Vaggione


Urban planning challenges

• 70% of urban population by 2050

• 3 billion new urban dwellers in the next 40 years

• Building a city like Barcelona every 2 weeks

• 70-90% will take place in developing countries

• North: doing more with existing infrastructure

• South: delivering basic infrastructure

• Huge financing gaps

• Informality and urban poverty

• Environmental drawbacks of growth

• Planning under-resourced and peripheral


Challenge: revising the “modern” approach to planning

• Our cities today are based on industrial revolution assumptions – Affordability of individual transport through industrialization

– Cheap fossil energy

• High resource consumption – 4x population increase 1900-2000

– 16x resource consumption increase in the same period

• Unsustainable outcome – Single-use zoning has induced high infrastructure and services

costs, mobility inefficiencies

– Questionable land use model – 50% to road infrastructure

– Social collateral effects with inequality and segregation


• 884 million people have no

access to potable water

• 4,7 trillion liters lost to home

leakages in the US per year

Source: TAT, Water.org, Asian Development Bank, EPA

• Congestion costs 6% of GDP in

Bangkok

• Tourism is 7% of Thailand’s GDP

Challenge: access to infrastructure and services


Challenge: behaviour change

• 800 million people do not have enough to eat

• 1 billion “heavier than advised”

• Increase of solid waste in Spain:

39% between 1994 and 2004

• Waste generated per capita

higher than France, Italy,

Germany, UK

Source: The Guardian, University of North Carolina (2007), Eurostat


Challenge: responding to immediate needs

• Security

• Symbolism

• Economic opportunity

Palmanova 1590 Brasilia 1960 Songdo 2010

Source: Gale International


Challenge: being visionary

Manhattan 1811

• A visionary plan that was able to accommodate key technological solutions well in advance – electricity, tram, car

• Addressed urgent needs: reducing diseases and increasing construction affordability


Questions to the current smart city discourse

• “Technology will save us”

– Are tech-based panaceas realistic?

• Focus on products rather than integrated vision

– (Pilot) projects successful by themselves but lack transformative effect

• Lots of “sensoring” and raw data collection

– Do decision makers have the right information and a holistic mindset?

• Adaptiveness to austerity

– Financial constraints and resource allocation to “mission critical”


Questions to the current smart city discourse

• How smart is a smart city?

– Currently most metrics are IT-based

• Sectoral indicators respond to sectoral approach

– Holistic city IQ metrics still to be developed

• Would indicate a direction for the evolution of the approach

• Addressing possible conflicts of interest

– Product-focused approach and neutral advise

• “Smart” does not sound right to many cultures

– Can imply lack of intelligence in what they are currently doing

• Avoiding trivialisation


What a smart city could do

• Identify pressing needs and choose effective strategies

that address priorities

• Know how to efficiently manage assets and resources

• Be open to engage people in thinking and doing

• Learn from implemented projects and implementers


Key aspects of “smartness” (1/4): efficient use of assets and resources

• In new and existing cities, developed countries:

– Retrofit and “built-in” intelligence in buildings

– Land value, location strategies and housing occupancy

– Modelling demands in transport, utilities, services

– Services on demand including energy

• In fast-growing and new cities, developing countries:

– Smart affordability addressing upfront investment

– Identify and prioritise pressing needs & match with right solution

– Accelerate delivery of infrastructure and services

– Facilitate transition to clean urbanisation & industrialisation


Key aspects of “smartness” (2/4): learning

• “You can’t manage what you don't know”

– A limited number of performance indicators aligned to vision and organisational capacity

– Survey community for perception and qualitative measuring

– Integrate information in readable dashboards

• Monitoring information supports decision making

– Feedback findings to strategic planning stages

– Link metrics to the budgeting process

• The community needs to know that progress is being made

– Monitoring is an opportunity to strengthen civic commitment

– De-politize metrics

Quote: M Bloomberg / C40


Key aspects of “smartness” (3/4): open to civic engagement

• Participation is brain power

– One million ideas better than a single perspective

– Needs good facilitators to extract actionable points

• Public sector beyond regulator

– Manager of a continuous process of change

– Capable of articulating a durable collective vision

– Leadership that mobilises actors into “urban authors”

• Transforming citizens into agents of sustainability

– Sustainability is a task for each one of us

– Conflictive vs constructive resolution of divergences

– Decentralised infrastructure


Key aspects of “smartness” (4/4): soft infrastructure

• Governance and leadership – Lead by example by making smart decisions

– Synchronising watches of stakeholders with different horizons

• Public-public partnerships – Aligning supra-municipal agendas

– Creating critical mass at the local level

• Reform planning and delivery cycle – Upstream implementation knowledge

– Procurement methods

• Align private sector competencies to city agenda – Finance, drive, skills

– Life cycle business models addressing higher upfront costs


Linking urban planning to bankability

• Most city development will not be in AAA/AA cities – Cities with limited spending capacity

• Cities need to be investible – Credible roadmap: vision, plan and civic support

– Set metrics and demonstrate city performance

– De-politise infrastructure

– Transparency and enabling business climate

• A good urban plan can help reduce investment risk – Predictability

– Bankable projects aligned with long-term structural vision

• Cities need to deliver quality of life at the right price point – Jobs, services, civic amenities

– Cost of living, taxes


Key messages

• We cannot meet urbanisation challenges with our current

methods

• A “smart city” is not a “gadget city”

• An intelligent city makes intelligent decisions that have a

positive impact on living conditions


Gracias

[email protected]

pablo vaggione _ urban challenges and “smartness”

Technology

urban planning challenges

high infrastructure

urban population

thailands gdp challenge

modern approach

existing infrastructure

new urban dwellers

services costs