Urban metropolises must adapt and evolve to address disruption and sustainability challenges
Just two months ago, Japanese carmaker Toyota broke ground for the construction of Woven City, its prototype city project that “will be a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells”. Initially populated with about 360 residents and planned to accommodate 2,000, Toyota intends to link people, buildings and vehicles through sensors and data, and explore future technology such as a “digital operating system for the city’s infrastructure”.
Other cities, both old and new, are doing something similar. The Saudi Arabian greenfield city of Neom is emphasising its sustainability focus, while older cities such as New York is attempting to send zero waste to its landfills by 2030 and achieve 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2050.
“These are different directions that cities are coming from but they are managing change,” observes Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies. “They are solving problems that could be existential problems, or [that which] could be disruptive. They are creating an economic model that could be exponentially beneficial as well.”
The future digital city
Midha made those remarks at the recent SMU Presidential Distinguished Lecturer Series (PDLS) event, “The Digital Cities of the Future: How can we embrace, engage and thrive?”. In his keynote speech, Midha pointed out Detroit’s exemplification of a successful city riding the wave of wider technological and societal changes in the Second Industrial Revolution from the late 19th to early 20th century. While other cities have evolved to address sometimes existential challenges, Detroit also serves as a cautionary tale of what awaits cities that fail to do so.
As we approach the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Midha believes cities need to have at least four of the following seven factors or capabilities to be successful (and the city that exemplifies them):
- Transportation (Tokyo)
- Talent Feeders & Universities (Boston)
- City Centre (New York City)
- Proximity & Connectivity (Dubai)
- Specialisation & Clustering (San Francisco)
- Ecosystem & Diversity (Berlin)
- Industry & Production (Shenzhen)
“A Digital City is one that is thriving and taking advantage of new opportunities,” Midha explains. ”And technology is an extension of the seven factors that have made cities successful so far. Technology becomes the eighth factor. We need technology to solve the new problems we have. We need technology to create the outcomes our citizens expect.”
He adds: “That’s the idea of a Digital City. It’s not tied to a technology or anything else. We call it the Digital City because we’re in the middle of the digital era. Just like the steam engine drove the success of certain countries, similarly technology is going to create the success for certain cities and countries now.”
For Archan Misra, Professor of Computer Science and Vice Provost (Research) at Singapore Management University, the Digital City is similar to the Smart City which uses Information Communication Technology (ICT) in its day-to-day operations. As it stands, we are currently in the third generation of the Smart City and looking at the fourth.
“The first generation was really about reducing the friction between an individual and government,” he elaborates, citing e-governance and the ability to transact online. “The second generation was about applying analytics for safety and problem solving, such as detecting and taking care of rat infestation or applying spatial analytics to better plan bus routes.
“The third generation, which is the one we are currently in, is about making the city more efficient in real-time. It’s about using technology to optimise traffic lights, making them adaptive—as traffic volumes change the traffic light timings also change.”
He concludes: “I believe that the fourth generation that we are coming to now is the focus on sustainability. As more and more people move to the city, we’re consuming at an unsustainable rate. That’s going to be the centrepiece of the next five to 10 years of technological evolution and change in the city.”
BuildING for sustainabILITY, BUILDERS FOR disruption
With the United Nations forecasting 68 percent of the world’s population living in urban areas by 2050, renewable energy and reducing cities’ carbon footprints have become key areas of focus for governments and administrators. BloombergNEF predicts that 56 percent of world electricity demand will be met by wind and solar energy in 2050, a development Professor Misra notes in the adoption of electric vehicles.
“Fundamentally, what is happening is the opportunity to build renewable energy even though Singapore is too small to build solar panels to replace the traditional electrical grid,” says Misra, who is also the Director of the Centre for Applied Smart-Nation Analytics at SMU. He adds:
“With the new electric vehicles, they’ll need to charge. If they are all going to charge overnight, or if the cab drivers all charge before their shifts change at 4pm, it’s going to be unsustainable. The peak demand is going to be very high. Just like the Grabs and Gojeks match customers to drivers, we need to match drivers to charging points in a way that matches their behaviour and overall supply-demand, and flatten the peaks.”
Relatedly, the seemingly imminent arrival of autonomous cars to manage traffic in the name of sustainability and efficiency raises the question of disruption.
“If the autonomous nature of things in cities is commonplace, what kind of jobs does that create? What kind of expectations does that create?” muses Midha. “Let’s say by the end of this decade, 50 percent of jobs will be brand new jobs. If you’re in academia, how do you prepare students for something that doesn’t even exist?”
Midha relates a conversation he had with the Chancellor of a university where he remarked, “Your intake of kids must be very tech-savvy!” “She said, ‘No, it’s quite the contrary. Everybody knows how to use LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube and all the tools that have been provided, but they’re not coming in with the mindset of a builder; they’re coming in with the mindset of a user.’
“Fundamentally, there are very few people who are deep enough in a topic who can dream up and build something that is a lot more disruptive and powerful and value-creating compared to the past. We had a significant amount of white-collared jobs and we had to think about managers and operators; those jobs are getting automated. Value has shifted from manager-operator to dreamer-builders. That’s a very important things for curriculum designers.”
Amit Midha and Archan Misra were panel speakers at the SMU Presidential Distinguished Lecturer Series (PDLS) event, “The Digital Cities of the Future: How can we embrace, engage and thrive?” held on 31 March 2021.
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Last updated on 29 Apr 2021 .
