CNU Transportation Summit: IBM’s Smarter Cities program

Should cities grow and adapt using lessons from the high tech industry? Image: Merger HDR New York, from Flickr user diceliving.

Stan Curtis from IBM Smart Cities presented what was likely the most challenging presentation given today.

Curtis first laid out some key concepts. First, the Earth, as Thomas Friedman pointed out in his book, is now flat. Innovations in the economy are returning less and less. Manufacturing can be done at almost any location as production can be so highly automated that the human cost is almost zero, and that automation can be undertaken nearly anywhere.

Tied into this is the increasing awareness in the private sector that saturation of goods is now being achieved. From cars to cell phones, cutting edge technologies can now be had in nearly any city around the globe with little difficulty.

What then might the future of economic activity be? Curtis suggests that services — the provision of an ability to do something — may outpace goods. In other words, it is not that nobody will buy a car in the future, but that perhaps the buyers would be firms that offer them on a service basis. A similar notion already exists with Zipcar, and Curtis pointed out that in many ways we have already arrived at this point in the private sector.What lags behind is government.

What is needed is political innovation. Innovation is what will lead the development of cities, and the development of cities will be a key economic engine for the 21st century. Waiting for Federal innovation, however, is going to be a long long wait. “There is only one Federal government,” said Curtis. “We believe that innovation will come from cities.”

One of the most famous rules of technology is Moore’s Law:

“Moore’s Law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.”

Curtis pointed out that this rule — a rule of multiplicity — has proven true of almost all of technology, and is now being seen to apply to manufacturing. It may also apply to cities and how they develop. Population, for example, follows these rules, with bigger cities retaining populations and population growth at levels greater than smaller cities on a similar curve. This results in a long tail with a few big leading cities and many followers.

A technology model that might apply to civic construction would be the decentralized manufacturing process that is now common in industry. Said Curtis:

“The layout of the city and the supply chain is affected by efficiency. The last mile tends to be the key distance. Tech tends to be a last mile bet, the last mile will determine the cost structure. Its not necessarily the freeways. It’s the local [network that accesses] grocery stores, restaurants. and walkable neighborhoods.”

There was also a significant recognition of pointed noted throughout summit, especially the point that the dense street networks desired for retrofitting into more auto-dependent neighborhoods simply have no available funding source. “We’re not thinking of new buildings or new roads,” said Curtis. “We believe you when you say we can’t afford to build out of it. We’re going to have to do something with our existing things better.”

Some innovative notions mentioned by curtis included:

• Cyber commuting. “What university has the smallest carbon footprint? University of Phoenix. Nobody goes to class.

  “[At IBM Smart Cities] nearly half of our employees dont go to work [in an office]. This is just business. We changed our culuture to not require people to come to work 8-5 to respond to this. Why is Intel building everything in Hillsboro and putting all those footprints down [Highway] 26?

  “Give people choices to allow them to “vote” to be in a high density location without sacraficing their job.”

• Think service not mode. “People don’t buy a car or a cell phone, they buy a service. You’re thinking of designing roads and intersections but what you need to think about is services. What people want may not be intersections but service choices.

  “For example, if I want to buy groceries from New Seasons, I could walk, or drive, or ordering the stuff on the phone or online to be delivered.”

• Use Open Source decision making models.”A funnel program for decision making — its a simple technique — and creates a shared investment [with project stakeholders] in the model.

  “This is platform development.”

• Enhance, improve, and repurpose. “The greenest building is the building not built. Energy management is the greatest way to improve emissions.”
• Set standards.“Push to come up with standards for building the same way as [the] auto [industry] and aerospace. The car companies that reinvent parts every time don’t win.”

Lastly, Curtis emphasized that this is a “change management problem. Global networks will influence each other quickly” due to the rules of multiplicity. “Communities will learn quickly from each other.”

Right now, Andy Mortensen from Transpo Group is giving a very good presentation on a more sophisticated model of bike/ped assessment than Walkscore, aimed more and fine scale GIS assessment of planning concepts. Unfortunately, I have no time to add any more today, as the conference is about to wrap up for the evening. Be back tomorrow for day three.