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Page 1: It is a difficult task to capture the essence of …...It is a difficult task to capture the essence of everything that has been said at this invigorating congress of INTA. With

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It is a difficult task to capture the essence of everything that has been said at this invigorating congress of INTA. With hindsight it seems very smart to have kept the programme short but intense. And it was extremely smart to have located the conference in Tallinn which is a place full of interest, innovation and friendly people. You have been generous, welcoming and well organised. We should also recognise the contributions of committed, erudite practitioners and their project involvements all over the world. There has been a strong sense of passion and commitment and that has added greatly to our collective knowledge and understanding of the issues and challenges. We have all learned something new.

This “wrap-up” session by Henry Chabert and myself is not intended to summarise what people have presented, or the site visits we have undertaken, or the projects we have seen. These reports and experiences stand on their own and we hope you have found them as useful and instructive as we have.

Our synopsis is by way of suggesting a conceptual framework within which we might critically review our collective and individual contributions over these past few days, as informed by, and taking account of, the reports from Astana, Bordeaux, Chengdu, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Malmö, Moscow, Puebla, Riga, Rosario, Rotterdam, Samara-Tolliati, Taipei, Tel-Aviv and Yachay together with our site and project visits to some exemplary « smart-city » initiatives here in Tallinn.

The aim is to take a leap forward  : to have a common understanding of what we mean by «  smart city  » and to structure thinking and practice as to how we might add to the body of knowledge about achieving this desired state of cities transformed by smart technology, smart thinking and smart citizens.

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Our starting point is the triumvirate of headings which have guided collective action since cities were first formed, because they are based on common sense. That is, via : - Aims (also defined as Goals or Desired Outcomes- in other words, what we want to achieve.) - Policies ( the guidelines and rules which will enable us to achieve the aims or outcomes) -  Actions (the specific things we have to do, which accords with these policies, to achieve the

aims).

And of course these actions would be « SMART » using the acronym in « business-plan speak » - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Resourced & Time-bound

For the moment, let us regard these three headings as core principles for the definition and achievement of a city strategy. Let us put them in a circle so that we also recognise that this is the territory of politics, governance and community interaction. That will enable my colleague and friend Henry Chabert, as someone richly experienced in both the technical and the political domains, to contribute some reflections of his own about the Governance principles of defining and achieving a SMART programme for city development.

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Then lets say that there are four planets revolving around this circle which can be regarded as : People; Technology; Earth; and Values.

Let’s start with People.

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People What do the numbers tell us? 

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All of us involved in urban planning and development know these facts, but just to remind us:

It is estimated that over 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, compared with 30% just 65 years ago. In 2050 that figure will be nearly 70%, through the rapid growth of existing cities and the creation of some 9,000 totally new cities.

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Again, here is a visual summary of these trends. Why do people prefer to live in cities? It is because people see that cities create wealth and opportunity and, once established in a city and accustomed to city life, few people wish to leave. There is, on the other hand, a marked tendency for people with young families seeking to move to smaller or medium-sized cities to take advantage of cheaper property prices, less congestion and a consistently good level of education.

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But the city phenomenon continues, especially in what we call « the developing world » - south and central America, Asia and Africa. The diagram shows that in the year 1900 there were 12 cities in the world with over 1 million people, whilst in 2011 there were over 500 cities of 1 million people or more. By 2025 China alone will have 221 cities of this size or over.

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Just to reinforce the message, we can identify already 21 «  megacities  » (of over 10 million people). The forecast is that we will have 29 by 2025, five of which will be in China.

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But as we know, behind the statistics are great differences across the globe as to how this growth in numbers is accommodated, with millions living in shanty towns, favelas and bidonvilles. Whatever name we give them, these settlements are a visible symbol of the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity across the world. This is a major Quality of Life issue, and we were given glimpses of these different conditions in central and south America, in Africa and in Asia.

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How can we use smart technologies and smart thinking to improve these conditions? We must devise strategies which are appropriate to the conditions.#

This decade, cities around the world will invest $108 billion in smart city infrastructure, such as smart meters and grids, energy-efficient buildings, and data analytics (according to Pike Research). Obviously, the bulk of this spending will be in the more advanced cities and nations. A key question is, how can poorer countries respond?

A new report from the international Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrates the importance of considering public health factors--such as physical activity, respiratory and mental health, water quality, social equity, healthy aging, and social capital --when creating the built environment. The report is the latest product of CDC’s Healthy Community Design Initiative, aimed at combating soaring rates of asthma, diabetes, and obesity by improving the way communities are designed.

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The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index IHDI). It is useful in assessing the actual level of human development, suggesting where the greatest investment is needed. The lighter is the shade of blue the greater is the potential. Despite significant progress overall, several regions and sub-regions continue to lag behind. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in four people remain chronically undernourished, while Asia, the world's most populous region, is also home to the majority of the hungry - 526 million people.

Latin America and the Caribbean have made the greatest overall strides in increasing food security. Meanwhile Oceania has accomplished only a modest improvement (1.7 percent decline) in the prevalence of undernourishment, which stood at 14.0 percent in 2012-14, and has actually seen the number of its hungry increase since 1990-92.

 The huge challenge is how to apply « smart city » thinking to the most deprived of areas and communities across the globe. The question is how to meet the challenges of potential overcrowding, congestion, poverty, environmental degradation and low quality of life which are threatened by this phenomenal rate of city growth.

Note: The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite of life expectancy, education and income indices used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. It was developed by the Indian economist Amartya Sen and Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990 and was published by the United Nations Development Programme.

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Now let’s move to Technology. There appears to be a general consensus at this congress that technology should be seen as an enabler. We must acknowledge that technological advances have had the most profound impact on the human population and our ways of life, and that technologies are increasingly « smart ». But there is a growing acceptance that « smart » as an adjective preceding the word « cities » means much more than Technologies. The technology is an enabler.

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Estimates It is estimated that in the year 1 Anno Domini the global population was 250 million. And in terms of technology we moved from the wheel to the wagon in 10,000 years.

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By 1750 global population was approximately 850 million people. We can see that the rate of population growth was increasing. The stagecoach was still the principal means of land transport, but machines made of metal were being created in what we now call the “Industrial Revolution”. This embraced the steam revolution and improvements in many other forms of industrial production – from plant cultivation to manufacturing of fabrics and weaponry, as well as advances in medicine and hygiene.

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Because"of"these"advances"in"technology,"food"produc7on"and"medicine,"popula7on"growth"increased"substan7ally.*""In"200"years,"from"the"steam"engine"to"the"cadillac,"the"global"popula7on"increased"by"1.7"billion."

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The"past"200"years"has"seen"a"massive"explosion"in"innova7on:"D"from"the"telephone"to"the"mobile"phone;"from"the"internal"combus7on"engine"to"the"space"shuFle;"objects"created"by"3D"laser"printer;"and"a"host"of"telecommunica7on"devices."Popula7on"growth"has"followed"the"line"of"this"innova7on"trend."

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Thus, in the space of a generation, we arrive at a level of connectivity not envisaged even by Mike Berners-Lee, creator of the internet.. Estonia is well along this road towards real time urban informatics. In less than 20 years following independence, Estonia has caught up with and overtaken many cities in its application of these technologies to become a model of good governance and the initiator of an astonishing amount of innovation.

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Here you can see the phenomenal rate of growth in devices and applications which are joined across the internet. The digitalisation (or numérisation) of the world is already well advanced. Each year, 230 million people join the internet. Digital technologies are revolutionising how things are made, how we travel, how we work, how we spend our leisure time, how we share knowledge and communicate, how we generate, store and process information, and, I am glad to say, digital technologies help us to provide detailed information on how humans impact on the world in which we live.

As we will see, these human impacts are increasingly adverse, and this is a trend which has to be reversed if humans are to survive on the planet Earth! This is a shocking statement to make, but I believe it is true and incontrovertable.

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So let’s look at the third satellite – the Earth.

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We need to ask ourselves the question: How does humanity fit on the planet Earth? You see in purple a line denoting the level of consumption of the Earth’s resources from 1960 to 2008: It shows that we have consumed the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

Note also that the largest cities are also responsible for the consumption of the majority of the earth’s resources and the creation of waste. You can also see the alternative predictions for the future rate of consumption. We must begin to make ecological limits central to our decision-making and use human ingenuity, especially in the use of smart technologies, to find new ways to live, within the Earth’s bounds.

Scenarios produced by the United Nations suggest that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. And of course, we only have one. If all of the world’s 7 billion people consumed as much as an average American, it would take the resources of over five Earths to sustainably support all of them.

Turning resources into waste faster than waste can be turned back into resources puts us in global ecological overshoot, depleting the very resources on which human life and biodiversity depend.The result is collapsing fisheries, diminishing forest cover, depletion of fresh water systems, and the build up of carbon dioxide emissions, all of which contribute to global climate change. These are just a few of the most noticeable impacts.

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This is another view of the beautiful city of Paris. This climatic event just several weeks ago underlines the problem. The fine particles held in suspension in the atmosphere are principally the result of emissions from vehicles – it is estimated that in the Paris Region, 70% of these particles come from the exhaust fumes of vehicles. But other sources are also involved – burning wood and coal, energy use and chemical emissions by industry, and also in agriculture through the application of chemically-based fertilisers.

Perhaps Henry, when talking about Governance, will address some of the very difficult political and practical issues invoved in addressing this problem. Defining the problem may take us half-way up the climb to the solution at the top of the hill; but the slope gets steeper!

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«"The"air"is"unbreathable."France"lives"literally"beneath"a"

lid"of"pollu7on"»"

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Greenhouse Gases: Too Much of a Good Thing We know beyond doubt now that human activity increases the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The extra greenhouse gas is trapping too much heat, abnormally raising Earth’s temperatures.

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It is well known, but perhaps not sufficiently considered, that technological changes, especially digital technologies, website growth and also population growth, are exponential. We tend to expect things to move in the same direction or rate as they have in the past. Linear (or straight-line) progress is what most people expect. But most things tend to follow either a logarithmic or an exponential growth pattern.

We are not dealing with a logarithmic pattern. As you know, improvement works on a logarithmic scale. As you get better, it gets harder and harder to improve. Elite athletes expend enormous efforts to shave seconds off their best times. Whereas novice athletes can shave minutes with just a little practice.

Instead, we are dealing with exponential growth, and the danger signs are all around us. The misty view of Paris which you have just seen may be considered a metaphor for the fact that our view of life and living conditions in our cities may be obscured by the rate of growth and the usefulness of technologies (especially digital technologies). As we have seen during the conference, new technologies can help us to improve radically all aspects of life - communication, mobility, processes, services, economic development, health and welfare. We can now measure all sorts of phenomena, communicate the statistics and perhaps slow down a bit the exponential force of change. But the other side of technological growth is that every technology can also have negative consequences if not handled properly. Ensuring that we « accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative » relates to the broader area of « Values ». How do we value making more money, creating more gadgets, producing more waste, and depleting the Earth’s resources at a rapidly growing rate, against the unequal spread of wealth and opportunity and the value of our children’s future?

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Lets look then at the fourth circle, that of Values.

Values are defined as «  Important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable ». Values have a major influence on a person’s behaviour and attitude, as well as on group behaviour, and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.

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These headings are to remind us of the values that are usually shared across Nations and cultures.

How can smart thinking and smart policies move us from the trajectory on which we still are, to a more sustainable and value-based society?

The nature of Governance across nations and cities is critical to answering this question. And Henry Chabert will say more on this issue.

But how can smart thinking be applied to aid governance?

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Being smart is about thinking first and acting afterwards. Left brain and right brain are complementary. Coming from a long experience of running a large multi-professional design and engineering practice I know that it helps to group people in ways that allow these complementary thoughts and creative talents to be applied to solving difficult problems. This is what «  smart thinking  » means to me. In relation to cities, it must also embrace communities and interest groups. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas.

For me, the first stage in « smart thinking » is to focus on the priorities. I would suggest that, right now, there are two over-riding priorities facing our cities and our societies: 1.  Dealing with CO2 emissions and climate change; and 2.  Creating work and thus stimulating local as well as national economies.

Why these two priorities? The first is simple: if we do not deal immediately with climate change we will be faced with issues of increasing importance which affect human survival across the planet. The second is born from a belief that work is fundamental to human welfare and to the creation of the wealth that we need to survive, prosper and put in place our projects.

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So, firstly, climate change. As we all know, Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is the main pollutant that is warming the Earth. Though living things emit carbon dioxide when they breathe, carbon dioxide is widely considered to be a pollutant when associated with cars, planes, power plants, and other human activities that involve the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. In the past 150 years, such activities have pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to raise CO2 levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.

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There is a growing number of examples of best-practice in sustainable development, especially in the Nordic countries (Hammerby in Stockholm or BO02 in Malmö, Sweden), but as yet we are scratchingthe surface of the problem. Global nations agreed in 1992 to do something. But 22 years later, still failed to commit to what each should do to arrest climate change. Will Paris 2015 finally contain some resolutions realted to Article 4 of the COP «  treaties »? I certainly hope so because we do not have time to waste.

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Secondly, the issue of Work. There are over 20 million people out of work in Europe. The level of youth unemployment is particularly high and this is a warning sign for the future stability of Local and also National economies.

I have not done the analysis at a global level but all delegates will know that world financial recession since 2007 has had a massive, detrimental effect on the numbers of people in active employment.

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In the words of the French philosopher Jean Bodin, » the only wealth is mankind » Work is important to the human condition. It was central to the thinking of the Scottish urbanist Patrick Geddes who advocated Place, Work, Folk (or people) as the framework for thought and action. It must also remain a priority for us. Local Economic Development plans are fundamental. Related to them (as Marc said earlier) is the process of training and mentoring. And we were reminded of the energising catch phrase «  start small, learn fast and scale up  ». This is the « battle cry » of countries and cities from Toronto to Tel-Aviv.

Digital technologies are creating new opportunities, especially in changing the nature of employment away from larger-scale companies and organisations to smaller, independent often ad-hoc groupings. «  Entrepreneurship  » is now understood by everyone (even though ex-President Bush continues to wonder why the French have no word for entrepreneur).

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The lines between disciplines are blurring in a digital age across networks, known as «  The internet of things  ». This is enabling the convergence between physical and virtual, between manufacturer and consumer, and between tiny hardware components and large-scale, cloud-based software to create possibilities we have never seen before. The statistics speak for themselves: •  Some 31 billion internet-connected devices will exist by 2020, according to Intel. •  A family of four will move from having 10 connected devices in 2012 to 25 in 2017 to 50 in 2022. •  Mobile subscriptions will exceed the number of people in the world by early 2015.

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With all the connectivity facilitated by electronic devices and the internet, I thought I’d give you a brief glimpse of tomorrow’s world for the international traveller. At Heathrow Airport, smart devices are helping to signal when toilets need to be cleaned and re-serviced. At Tokyo airport, the toilets can be expected to do more, especially in regard to analysis and diagnostics of what you leave behind you when you flush; you can even have a print-out! At Bombay airport you can become part of the IRIS recognition system being rolled out for all of the population. So that when you arrive back at your domestic airport you can be met by your optician (with a new pair of glasses) your medical advisor (with a diagnostic report from Japan which is more serious than you imagined) and your physiotherapist who has already consulted your doctor and come to the view that it is more exercise, not medicine, which is the remedy you need!

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Before pasing over to Henry, I’d just like to say «  Thank-you  » to our hosts, and to leave a profound evocation for Estonians and other nationalities represented here.

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This seems a good point at which to develop thoughts on Governance, so I will hand over to Henri and then come back at the end to see if I can make you smile before we close.

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