The future’s so bright, you better wear shades

JACQUI: For too long, "Smart Cities" just meant "put tech in it". Rather than enabling change, tech was the change. And on a number of occasions, that led to tech doing things that nobody actually wanted – giving the wrong outcome for citizens. Deep technology will change our society and, if we don't negotiate that carefully, not in a good way, or for the benefit of humanity. We should change the framing of the innovation and focus on outcomes for citizens, showing how technology is the enabler.

Gavin: How do you retain the human at the heart of change? 

Jacqui: You first have to define what that change is. There are two sides to the market: supply and demand. Previously, people talked only about the supply side: what services cities provide using technology. 

But what about the demand side – what citizens want from cities? Generation Z, for instance, are not passive. They’re participatory. What do they want from their cities? And what do we need to do to ensure that their priorities – and those of other citizens – are taken into account?

G: So, not something being done to the citizen, but for the citizen…

J: With the citizen.

G: Is that a whole new social contract?

J: Totally. And it's built on a new trust model. It’s a fundamental change which uses a societal approach. So, it’s great to do things at a hyper-local level, but how do you build that across the EU or the four nations of the UK? You can't do that just by telling people, you have to position what you are doing to inspire citizens. The underpinning of this approach is new governance models and a strategic not tactical plan.  

It has to be an evolutionary agenda. Do you have a core framework you can work to, from a data point of view, that gives you what you need? And does that open up new business models, new commercial models? And does this specifically address the requirements from citizens? Working with 150 UK smart cities, we call them connected places, we came up with a core value proposition, that became a standard. It is built around a multi-agency model and is adaptable to a specific smart city setting. 

Ultimately what you create is a stakeholder ecosystem, where everybody's vested in it, understands it and can participate in it. Then there's an acceleration piece because as you start to negotiate that new social contract, it really does open up opportunities: smart cities are really our future hubs of business. And when people ask me have we got a bright future, I say to them: “you will need sunglasses…”

G: And again: different cities, different challenges, different opportunities?

J: Yes. Every smart city in the world has one thing in common: they are all different. Technology is an enabler to surface opportunities, data can open up new opportunities. Then a skills base starts to form to meet those opportunities. So, effectively, you create your own ecosystem, then fulfill it with the skills agenda you create. 

No single company has all the answers – it’s a partnership, orchestrated by the city. For example, in the UK, we move around a lot, across the four nations. It’s just as important for a city to understand the outcomes for visitors, not just citizens. Particularly if you're a tourist city, you cater for tourists alongside residents. The approach needs to be that humans are best to determine what needs to improve and the priority order of the changes which need to be made. Business hubs in the City are then key as the instigators of that change. 

Any business leader who sees a problem looks to put something in place to solve it. That’s why smart cities are the next generation business hubs. For example, I have data for all the cities in the UK to see where the synergies were, to create a statistical concept called “Nearest Neighbor.” It's fascinating to find that demographics plus setting highlighted the business opportunity. So, I could do something in Liverpool in the northwest of the UK and know for sure that there would be a London borough that could also benefit from it. Not applied in exactly the same way of course, but using the data-driven insights to learn, adapt and interact. It's a very symbiotic process. Finding those synergies means unlocking the business opportunities. Businesses can start something in their local communities, then redeploy that product for a nearest neighbor. 

G: What difference do you think advances in AI will make for smart city development?

J: I believe the Gen AI advances take us, from a smart cities point of view, exactly where we were back in 2014, which is: we've done some efficiencies using the technology and we haven't worked out how to make a difference with it. That's fine, because if cities can make efficiency savings, they will operate more effectively, they will have perhaps more understanding of their demand side and what citizens want. But I don't think it's the differentiator. It's part of the puzzle. It's the deployment of LoRaWANs, actuators and sensors plus theory of mind AI that give us more in terms of opportunity and where we might iprove outcomes. GenAI which is being used now to make the process more efficient. 

G: So what's the responsibility on the solutions-providing big technology companies such as Huawei?

J: To be really brutal, civic leaders don't care about the technology. They want it to work. They want to be sure of the outcomes it creates . They want to be sure of the social contract they have with their citizens. But largely, that's not what they're deploying: they’re deploying change. So what we should be doing is working out how our technology can be deployed and what difference it can make, but doing so as a joint venture approach within the multi-stakeholder set-up. It’s about being part of the data framework and the ecosystem and making a contribution. It’s an investment by the city and an investment by the technology company. But the focus should be societal, not technological. Unless you're approaching it with this societal focus you won't ever create a technology that will be able to be deployed across cities.  We also have to create a multi-configurable service. 

G: So as a business, listening and collaborating isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s critical.

J: Yes. And we really do need technology companies to do what I just described because this change has to happen. We are running out of time now. From a sustainability point of view, it’s clear the planet is running out of patience with us. You need a reflection of that multi-agency model within whatever intervention you’re doing. A focus on both the supply and the demand side, citizens at the heart of all innovation, in order to unlock the business opportunity.

But when you do make it work? The transformation that younger generations demand is this. They have no tolerance with anybody that doesn’t have this focus. Those citizens are the future city leaders, sometimes the current, leaders who are the buyers for your technology solutions. So have a ready answer on how you meet this brief. They have no patience with “I don't know.” And no city is going to be exempt from the impact of climate change, we continue to see the hottest temperatures on record. A resilient city is what technology enables to unlock the business opportunity it can actually create that future scape. It will create a different business environment than any that exists today.

G: We're here in London, a major historic center with doubtless specific challenges for becoming a smart city. How is it faring?

J: London is not a city. London is 33 cities, because it has 32 different boroughs and the City of London, and each manages change in its own way. I'd love to think that London can learn from its different models, its boroughs. But it's not happening. Again, it's not homogeneous. Each borough has its own specifics that it’s got to deal with. But between all the boroughs, we should be in a situation where we would have lots of the answers that the rest of the nation could learn from. The heart of that will be the data. 

G: Is there a misunderstanding that a smart city is about smart bikes and smart bus stops, about data and sensors? Are you saying that’s just a tiny, superficial element of what it means to be a smart city?

J: Well it's not superficial. It's where everybody starts. But it's just the beginning. The question is, by implementing those sorts of technologies in London, how have we changed the outcomes for citizens? We certainly haven’t unlocked the business opportunity.

We've been supply-led and “put technology in.” But if the population is healthier and we have enabled social mobility, then we are actually changing outcomes. And if we're not doing that, then citizens don't care, they are not impressed at all. They are focused on how much did that cost? How much is it going to cost to maintain? And what's it going to do for me? Some of those questions can be quite brutal from the demand side of the market. Citizens are intolerant of a supply side social contract.

So, I'm encouraging people to think beyond the technology and say, “Put that in by all means, but what's it enabling? What have you negotiated with citizens?” If you get the priorities of citizens right, you get their 100% support. It's not a decision that's made in a meeting room. Citizens have to be actively involved. I'm not talking about paying lip service to a new social contract. I'm saying literally to cities you need to collaborate with citizens because they know more about what needs to be done than you do.