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Year: 2017

The Future of Equity in Cities @leagueofcities

The Future of Equity in Cities @leagueofcities

As cities embrace a future permeated by technology, local leaders must continually reassert and revisit community values, while ensuring these values are the foundation of new plans, policies, and programs.

This is particularly true in the areas of infrastructure, public safety and economic development, which are consistently identified as top issues of concern for city officials.

NLC’s latest report, “The Future of Equity in Cities” takes these core issues and forecasts the opportunities and challenges to come in the near-term, and further out in 2030. Our findings include….

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Smart Cities must focus on equity and inclusion | Smart Cities Dive

Smart Cities must focus on equity and inclusion | Smart Cities Dive

Dive Brief:

A new research report from the National League of Cities urges cities to carefully examine equity among all residents as they modernize and add technological advances. The Future of Equity in Cities cautions that widening gaps between the rich and the poor, and among races, is creating a growing social and economic divide that could de-stabilize cities.
The report addresses the topics of economic development, infrastructure and public safety to identify upcoming equity challenges and opportunities for cities.
Although the report points out that cities’ diversity is increasing, it also indicates that the different groups are becoming more segregated….

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A smart city means an inclusive city

A smart city means an inclusive city

Like every year, December 3 will be a United Nations sanctioned International Day of People with Disability (IDPwD). The aim is to increase public awareness of the conditions of disabled people and, at the same time, to celebrate their achievements and contributions. IDPwD has been supported by the Australian Government since 1996 and today it’s celebrated all around the world.

This year’s theme is “Achieving 17 Goals for the Future We Want”, which draws attention to how people with disability are excluded from society due to several types of barriers, including physical, information and communications technology (ICT) or attitudinal barriers.

In Europe there are almost 80 million people with mild or severe disabilities, either temporary or permanent. A real “intelligent” city must always strive for equitable and affordable access to social infrastructure for all, including disabled people.

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Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions – Smart City Sweden

Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions – Smart City Sweden

As a peaceful society, Sweden can be assessed to fulfil a number of the targets, for example, as regards effective and transparent institutions with accountability at all levels, the provision of legal identity, including birth registration, for all and ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental liberties, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements. In October 2016, the Government submitted a communication to the Riksdag containing its strategy for the national work on human rights. In this communication, the Government makes the assessment that a national institution for human rights in accordance with the Paris Principles should be established and that this institution should be under the Riksdag.

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Accessibility Matters Blog | Deque Systems Web Accessibility

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Marcy Sutton – November 20, 2017 Earlier this year, Microsoft debuted their Sonar project, dubbed a “linting tool for the web”. Sonar encourages developers to test for accessibility early in the development process using Deque’s axe-core library under the hood, in addition to rules for interoperability, security, and performance. We’re thrilled to see our work leveraged in open source projects…

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Smart City Collaboration in Preparation for the World Urban Forum  

Collaboration in Preparation for the World Urban Forum  

On November 1, 2017, the DIAUD Network held another successful meeting in preparation for the 9th World Urban Forum (WUF9), which will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia next February. Members provided information about their planned representation and contributions at the Forum and were also able to collaborate in planning logistics for various events and meetings that will be taking place. The discussion was led by Federico Batista Poitier, Executive Assistant to the President and Communications Coordinator for Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments (GAATES) outlining the side events under consideration by GAATES and World Enabled for WUF9….

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Smart City New Urban Agenda and Connecting with Innovative Solutions #SCEW17

Connecting with innovative solution-finders from the smart urbanization sector – UN-Habitat

20th September, Barcelona – Under the theme, Empower Cities, Empower people, the 2017 edition of Smart City Expo World Congress (#SCEWC17) took place this month in Barcelona. UN-Habitat signed an agreement with the event organizers through which the programme will become a strategic partner in this and future editions of the global event.

For UN-Habitat, this partnership is an opportunity to promote urbanization as a tool for development in the framework of the New Urban Agenda and the Agenda 2030. The 2017 edition of the Congress, held from 14th – 16th November, attracted over 18,000 participants with 700 cities representatives and 420 international experts….

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Moscow Is On Its Way To Becoming A Smart City by Embracing Citizen Engagement

Moscow Urban Ceter

Citizen Engagement

Central to transforming Moscow into a smart city are its citizen engagement platforms. The Moscow online portal features three key services that residents can use to engage and communicate with their government.

The first is Our City, an online complaints system that’s accessible either through the web or the mobile app. Citizens can send complaints if they notice anything awry in their community. For instance, if garbage collectors have been amiss picking up trash regularly, citizens can report the issue using the portal. The concerned citizen will then get a reply within seven days. If the issue is readily actionable, the system will also inform the sender with the resolution. The system has over a million users and has solved nearly two million complaints….

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Creating a Company Culture that Promotes Accessibility

Creating a Company Culture that Promotes Accessibility

At eBay, we take digital accessibility very seriously. We strive to create a company culture that promotes it and focuses on action.

In my last guest post, I discussed what digital accessibility actually means to your brand. Digital accessibility is a way to improve your bottom line and avoid litigation, but more importantly it is a way for a brand to become an even better version of itse

Now I want to provide some actionable steps that can be taken within your company to promote accessible designs and help establish digital accessibility as a priority….

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People-Centered Urban Design Focus-Smart City Week 2017 Bangladesh

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Dhaka, 13 November 2017- To build the home-grown vision of people-centric smart cities for all with a theme of ‘Smart City Smart People’ – a ‘Smart City Week 2017′, from 29 november to 05 December has been organized by UNDP Bangladesh, Access to Information (a2i) Programme at the Prime Minister’s Office and urban sector stakeholders. The week will be inaugurated through a three day (29-05 Dec) ‘Smart City Innovation Hub’ at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre.

Having focus on building people-centered cities by not only investing in technology and infrastructures alone but also engaging smart people who care, respect and pay values to the society – the Smart City Week will be a part of ‘Smart City Campaign’. Apart from the three-day “Smart City Innovation Hub” and a range of events like hackathon, roundtable discussion, photo exhibition, kite festival, citizen’s forum, “City Day”, children’s art competition and many more are put under the week’s slogan ‘co-creating cities’….

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Inclusivity and Accessibility: A Smart Business Decision

Quinte West Chamber of Commerce » Inclusivity and Accessibility: A Smart Business Decision

If there were an untapped multi-billion-dollar market, would you want to know about it? Would you want to know if you were inadvertently blocking those consumers from doing business with you? And would you try to get ahead of your competitors by courting them?

That market is Canadians living with disabilities. It’s no niche market: one in five Canadians has a disability. And they represent purchasing power worth a whopping $55 billion annually.

Now, factor in the following:

– More than one in three seniors has a disability; and….

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Policy #6: Road design leads to real Complete Streets | Smart Growth America

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This post is part of Complete Streets month at Smart Growth America; we will be sharing a series of blog posts that cover and explain each of the 10 revised policy elements in some detail.

Complete Streets implementation relies on using the best and latest state-of-the-practice design standards and guidelines to maximize design flexibility. Creating meaningful change on the ground both at the project level and in the creation of complete, multimodal transportation networks requires jurisdictions to create or update their existing design guidelines and standards to advance the objectives of the Complete Streets policy. Road design is key to truly make streets safer and accessible for all people regardless of age, race, ethnicity, ability, income, or how they choose to travel….

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Microsoft using AI to empower people living with disabilities

Microsoft using AI to empower people living with disabilities

“Accessibility by design” is an important concept for Microsoft, and one that underpins many of its artificial intelligence-powered products, including Seeing AI.

Announced on Wednesday among a series of other AI tools, Seeing AI is a free mobile application designed to support people with visual impairments by narrating the world around them. The app — which is an ongoing research project bringing together deep learning and Microsoft Cognitive Services — can read documents, making sense of structural elements such as headings, paragraphs, and lists, as well as identify a product using its barcode….

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Take A Deep Dive Into #SmartCity Innovation and Inclusion

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The Smart Cities Library™ is a premier online resource that helps private/public organizations build/refine #accessible & #inclusive #smartcities that ensure no citizen is left behind or excluded

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URBAN-X | Top 10 key takeaways from Smart City World Congress in Barcelona #SCEW17

URBAN-X | Top 10 key takeaways from Smart City World Congress in Barcelona

e may have reached peak ‘smart city’. This trend depends on the continued densification of global urban areas and the exponential penetration of the internet into industries that were previously isolated from digitization. To see the peak in person, it’s best to get a glimpse at the Smart Cities World Congress in Barcelona; an event that brings together 17,000 people from around the world including 600 municipal leaders and over 500 international exhibitors.

At Urban-X, we see a new model for engineering the city as a service emerging; one in which top-down planning meets with bottoms-up participation and design that integrates people, businesses, buildings and other infrastructure. Open data and platforms that encourage creativity and economic vitality are a defining characteristic of the cities we want to live in.

The key to facing the climate crisis, security vulnerabilities and rapid urbanization is real citizen engagement and collaboration between the public and private sector. Startups have an important role to play, but the true economic potential of this space won’t be fully unlocked until we get good policy change and business model innovation from large companies.

Here are ten key takeaways from the Smart City World Congress in Barcelona that inform our path forward:

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10 Lessons in More Engaging Citizen Engagement | Smart Cities Dive

Crowdsourcing with a diverse set of citizens in a urban center

s more people choose to live in cities, local governments find themselves facing increasingly complex issues in city-making. Demands for affordable housing and public transit, tensions around gentrification and density, even connecting the dots between city planning and climate change, are just some of the more high-profile critical conversations our cities need. Solutions can come from many places, but smart cities realize that engaging the broad public in the city-making process leads to better answers and a deeper public ownership of our future.

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Smart City Citizen Engagement Programs – iProximity

Smart City Citizen Engagement Programs – iProximity

Often a City will begin their Smart City Initiatives with large infrastructure projects such as smart lighting, smart water meters, security, etc. but many of these programs have no direct influence on local citizens, visitors or help local businesses. Directly engaging citizens with information programs and helping local businesses to grow through smart programs have shown to have positive impacts on adoption and acceptance of Smart City projects.

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European Union: SMARTCities 2018

SMART Cities 2018 – LCR4.0

When: Thursday 1st February 2018 Where: Stamford Bridge, London  Across the UK we are seeing more and more examples of smart city transformation. Key ‘smart’ sectors utilised by such Cities include transport, energy, health care, water and waste. Against the current background of economic, social, security and technological changes caused by the globalization and the integration process, cities in the…

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London wants to become the World’s smartest City – METACITIES

London wants to become the World’s smartest City – METACITIES

London’s ambitious Plan

The capital of Great Britain is the biggest city in Europe and with more than 200,000 people working in London’s technology sector the city has many resources they can use to make London more sustainable, effective and liveable. To meet current and future challenges the Smart London Plan was created. First published by the government on their official website in December 2013, it was updated in March 2016. Its intention is to show how the creative power of data and technology can be used to make the city of London function better and solve real-world problems. The idea behind the plan is to generate data that supports the city and its transport, social, economic and environmental systems. The Smart London Plan encourages Londoners to actively participate in shaping the cityscape of their capital and hence the future of London. Although the Smart London Plan focuses on London, the ideas presented in this plan can serve as inspiration for cities worldwide and help those cities become smarter as well.

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