Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
On Wednesday, November 14, 2018 — Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York City formally launched the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, a joint initiative to promote and track progress in protecting residents’ and visitors’ digital rights. The Cities Coalition for Digital Rights builds upon five shared principles to create policies, tools and resources to promote and protect resident and visitor rights…
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Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff at CityLab Detroit Sidewalk Labs is building a prototype for the urban future on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront. This project asks us to re-think relationships between governments, the private sector, and residents. Dan Doctoroff, Founder and CEO, Sidewalk Labs joins Jennifer Bradley, The Aspen Institute at CityLab Detroit. Timed Transcript: Please see video option. Transcript: (Archived…
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The Promise and Peril of “Smart” Cities Technology can help us govern better, but at what price to urban life? Technology can help us govern better, but at what price to urban life actual article chapter content Last year, American newspapers published more than 800 stories about “smart” cities. Readers could learn how municipal governments are deploying sophisticated technology to…
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Take a walk down one of the trendy little laneways in the heart of Melbourne, flat white in hand, and imagine: What will the city look like in five years? “The thing that people love about Melbourne is Melbourne as a place and an experience”, says Ben Rimmer, Chief Executive of the City of Melbourne. We are sitting in his…
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The top-10 was rounded out by Montreal (6th), Boston (7th), Melbourne (8th), Barcelona (9th) and Shanghai (10th). A total of 140 cities of all sizes from around the world were evaluated based on existing smart city rankings, news articles and online resources to measure their commitment to building a smart city. Each city was then given a score of one…
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A renewal of public spaces is underway and underpinning this is new technology. Throughout history, public spaces have enjoyed many different roles in social, political and economic life, changing to suit the needs of the time. We know the ancient Greek agora and Roman Forum as the primary political centres of the city and the spatial cradle of democracy. In…
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Cities are at the forefront of innovative new solutions to long-time issues like access to housing, transportation, or education. Innovation is a group effort, though, and requires collaboration. To solve problems in cities, governments need to act not only as service providers for essential city functions, but also as conveners who facilitate new partnerships and relationships among their civic tech…
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London’s Chief Digital Officer talks the smart city transition © iStock / MarioGuti Government Europa spoke to London’s first Chief Digital Officer, Theo Blackwell, about how the city is pledging to lead the way and create a bundle of small smart cities within London. Cities throughout Europe are in transition; becoming smarter, using technology to make them more sustainable and…
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Highest Ranked Smart Cities of 2018-19 Eden Strategy Institute and OXD (ONG&ONG Experience Design) have come up with the top 50 smart cities of 2018-19. According to Eden Strategy Institute, this is one-of-its-kind independent ranking conducted for the first time that takes into consideration the roles that city governments play in leading a smart city strategy. The research studied…
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Erich Manser has run 18 marathons and set an Ironman world record for a physically-challenged athlete. He’s also legally blind. For him—and all athletes who are blind—carefully navigating the swirling stampede of runners, the chaotic cowbell-banging crowds, and the crush at water stations can be exceptionally tricky, even with the help of a guide. So when Manser ran the Boston…
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OASC Brazil publishes a Manifesto to raise awareness among city leaders and stimulate the implementation of social, economic and digital policies. The Manifesto has been shared with Brazilian authorities. A joint collaboration of OASC Brazil and OASC Portugal: Cláudio Nascimento (at speaker desk, left) and Margarida Campolargo (1st from the right) have presented the Brazilian Manifesto for human, creative, and…
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Seattle wants to make it easier for residents to learn about developers’ plans in their area. “Often in the design process,” Stephen Fesler writes, “developments move to local design review boards where the proposals are seen for the first time and are well set in their direction having had little or no community feedback.” A new set of guidelines, in effect starting…
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Madison McVeigh/CityLab/David Ryder/Reuters The Tech That’s Changing How Cities Help the Homeless From mapping apps to the blockchain, new tools are intended to give cities the information they need to address this growing challenge. Every day, a team of community health paramedics in Austin, Texas, fans out across the city to provide aid to the growing number of people on…
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.blog-post-single-thumb For Smart Cities, Blockchain Technology Opens New Possibilities .blog-post-meta Today, Americans have supercomputers in their pockets, on their wrists, in their cars and in their home appliances. Internet usage is at an all-time high, with 89 percent of the population having access in 2018 — compared to 52 percent in 2000. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 90…
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The 7th M-Enabling Summit opened its doors to around 600 participants from 30 countries. The opening panel on Artificial Intelligence (AI) heard representatives of Microsoft, Amazon and Oath (the company coming out of the merger of AOL and yahoo) talk about the immense and exciting potential of AI. These included how Amazon’s Alexa is helping in speech therapy for autistic…
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Spending on smart cities technology will be about $80 billion, perhaps $135 billion by 2021, according to a new report. These investments will make spread opportunity and make cities more convenient and sustainable. But they come with new complex challenges. In an interview with China Global Television, I discussed smart cities and the technology that’s driving them. What makes a city…
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As government spending on the internet of things is expected to reach $12 billion in 2020, creating smart infrastructure is a topic of concern for officials at all levels of government. At Bloomberg Government’s “Women in Smart Cities Forum,” sponsored by Verizon on June 15, 2018, women working at the city, state and federal levels of government shared their strategies…
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The Mayor has launched Smarter London Together – his roadmap to make London ‘the smartest city in the world’. This roadmap is intended to be a flexible digital masterplan for the city. It sets out how we want to collaborate with the capital’s boroughs and services, from TfL to the NHS. We also want to work more effectively with the tech community, our…
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I recently had the pleasure of accompanying the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) on its annual LINK trip in my capacity as the ARC’s citizen board member for the City of Atlanta. The purpose of the trip is for more than 100 government, business and non-profit sector leaders to visit other cities to learn from their successes and failures in addressing…
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Cities around the world are looking for smart solutions to urban problems and are embracing technology to help them do so. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor in urban centres is growing – driving low income residents farther away from city centres. An upcoming conference held at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus is exploring how…
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