It is now an accepted fact that many cities are facing severe pressures and will continue to do so over the coming decennia as ever more people are leaving their rural homes behind and are moving to the city in search of a better life. Nevertheless, with such an influx of new citizens, cities will be under increasing pressure to balance out the finite resources that are available to them, even more so as it is forecast that by 2050 over two-thirds of humans will live in urban environments. To put this into perspective, taking into account current trends in population growth, this implies that by 2050 more people will live in cities than live on all of Planet Earth today.

The Importance of Cities

Such a high concentration of people in a relatively small area will pose many challenges. For example, cities already consume around 75% of the world’s energy, emit approximately 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions and for all the economic riches that they produce, they also have a dark side and in the not too distant future they will replace rural areas as the dominant zones for poverty. Furthermore, negative aspects associated with high density areas such as terrorism, crime, environmental degradation, stressors on the quality of life, the threat of pandemics, international gangs and gaps between the have’s and have-not’s will only be exacerbated.

In spite of all this, we should not forget that it is not all doom and gloom. The glass is not always half empty as cities are also the engines of economic growth and provide prosperity to masses that otherwise would have been doomed to a life around the poverty line in rural areas. Indeed, many cities already have a disproportionate impact on their national economies and cities like Tokyo, Paris and Prague all produce a third of their countries’ GDP. As cities grow in economic importance in the global economy, they often compete to attract commerce and employment opportunities and in order to attract the labour force and the talent that will push the municipality to the next level, city officials will need to create a next generation city.

Much research has already been done on this over recent years by a variety of organisations and this has resulted in a number of initiatives that led to the crescendo that we now call smart + connected cities (S+CC). In spite of this, and a growing number of real-life applications, it is clear that this is an emerging and fluid field that changes rapidly. The widely varying nomenclature used by different organisations (e.g. smart cities, smarter cities, green cities, sustainable cities, city 2.0, eCities, next generation cities, etcetera) not only highlights the fact that the often competing organisations are attempting to differentiate themselves, but also underlines the level of confusion that still exists.

Where to start?

However, where there is confusion there is always opportunity and, as always, Lady Luck favours the bold. Organisations vying for a leading position in this field understand the positive impact that this industry can have on their bottom line, share prices and standing within the wider industry, whilst city officials are starting to realise that the world is changing and that their cities need to change with it. The question, as always, is where to start?

Cities, as many complex systems, are in reality not one single system. A well-functioning city may very well feel like a single unified system, but look underneath the surface and you will find that they are an amalgamation of disparate systems that not only have to function alongside each other, but also work in unison towards one single goal. Not only that, each system has a major impact on other systems. Policy changes within the energy sector, for example, will have a major impact on transport, buildings and commerce, whilst creating a new commercial zone on the edge of a city will strain the transport systems in certain ways, place new demands on the utility network, etcetera.

It is an incredibly complex set of interwoven factors that needs to be managed, and it is not surprising that many city officials who see the need for change are baffled by the array of possibilities, confused by what their city should become and perhaps even intimated by the road that is ahead of them. What should the vision for my city be? What is my starting point? What can S+CC mean for my city and its inhabitants? Where should I place my focus on in order to get the best return on investment or tackle my most pressing issues? How can I leverage one system to the benefit of another one? What constitutes a leading city of the future that is able to attract foreign direct investment, skilled labour and innovative companies? How can I mitigate or minimise the negative pressures on my city and create a utopia? And, how do I go about doing it?

What is next?

In this blog I aim to start to answer these questions. I do not profess to have all the answers, nor should my thinking be taken as the solution or a framework for implementation. After all, each city is unique with its own particular set of issues and, therefore, particular care should be taken that the resultant solution is appreciative of these circumstances. However, I hope to place the seeds of change in people’s mind, provide them with the tools needed to open up discussions with like-minded people, to engender debate and perhaps – if I am really lucky – even create some “Eureka!” moments.

In doing so I intend to maintain a high-level and strategic focus, hence the name for this blog: strategic perspectives. This is not only because my mind works in such a manner, but also because I am able to distil complexity into simplicity and as my broad background in construction, property development, city planning, building services, ICT and technology caters to this. On this journey I will take you through a wide-ranging host of topics, from drivers for S+CC to potential outputs, from vision creation for your city to establishing a plan of action, from architectural philosophy for creating a sense of place to complexity theory that explains interwoven systems, from the history of work to the future of utility networks, and much more. I hope that you will enjoy the ride as much as I do and look forward to a lively discussion that will hopefully flow from this.