Smart city conferences usually showcase technology solutions city governments can use to collect data and, ideally, solve problems in their cities such as traffic congestion or poor water quality. However, if you ask officials from Connected Communities Collaborative (CCC), these conferences have a big problem: They’re not engaging citizens to define and solve real problems in their cities.
CCC hosted City Launch 2019 in San Diego on March 10-12, a conference advertised as “not your typical smart cities conference.” Conference speakers highlighted examples such as citizens destroying trash cans with sensors—fearing those trash cans were being used for surveillance. The event also featured nonprofits like Next Century Cities, which focuses on making sure everyone has affordable internet access. In general, the conference brought together old and new leaders in the smart city space to design smart technology roadmaps centered around citizen engagement and inclusive of the underserved and underrepresented.
I sat down with one of the conference’s organizers and founder of the new digital equity nonprofit, mohuman, Dr. Nishal Mohan to get an understanding of what was different about City Launch 2019.
How was your conference different from your “typical” smart cities conference?
Mohan: People worked together to bring together open collective wisdom to create steps to actual principles, plans and solutions that they could implement in their cities for their people.
How are the ideas that came out of this conference different?
Mohan: The ideas are different because we focused not on shiny technology objects, but on the people and their problems first and then the technology as a tool to solve these problems.
Is this not what smart city conferences are doing?
Mohan: No, they’re not doing this. A lot of cities have deployed technologies without enough thought of what the problems are that they’re going to solve. They start with, “we’re going to deploy $x million' worth of sensors, we’re going to collect data, and then we’re going to see what problem we can solve.” That’s not the way to do it. You need to figure out what the peoples’ problems are and then develop solutions and deploy technologies that can solve those problems with full engagement throughout the process, including after.
What does it take to get something like this done?
Mohan: It takes someone like a Chief Innovation Officer to be convinced that this is worth it, and then he or she can communicate it with the rest of their teams. Right now, governments send out surveys that are limited and usually not statistically representative of their population. To take a survey, you need a computer. In low-income neighborhoods, a lot of people don’t have a computer if they’re being reached. We need better mechanisms and partnerships to reach all demographics involved to see what their concerns, thoughts and feedback are. mohuman has developed an inclusive strategy anchored by a platform to engage citizens and city governments that goes beyond the survey and into neighborhoods whether through SMS or flyers with grassroots organizations. Think of surveys, but surveys on steroids.
Why host a conference at this stage?
Mohan: Right now people are burnt out from smart city conferences. It’s a lot of the same people saying the same things. The smart city space is changing. The return on investment of all these new technologies has not been flattering across the board. It’s come back to what we believe, which is that you have to solve real people problems. We put together a conference with diverse participants and got out the message that strategic planning with strong citizen engagement for digital inclusion is important. I’m not just talking about laying fiber and giving affordable access, but are there accelerators that cater to the bottom half of the digital equity curve?
Why are smart technologies only being deployed in affluent neighborhoods?
Mohan: That has been a strong trend. The digital divide is difficult to tackle and increasing at an alarming rate every day. A smart and connected community begins with broadband access and everything connected through it , whether it’s being smart streetlights or smart traffic lights or optimized ambulance routes. If you’re not supported by those services, but others are, that’s a divide. If your kids don’t have the technology resources at their schools or the connectivity compared to their affluent counterparts, you’re creating a digital divide.
How do you see AI and digital equity intersecting in the future?
Mohan: It’s still early for AI. There’s still a lot we have to figure out. The future is in Artificial Intelligence, there’s no doubt about it, but we have to be careful and make sure AI and machine learning algorithms are based on inclusive datasets. If it’s only based on partial datasets, then there is an inherent bias. Data are an integral part of creating and solving a problem, but AI serves a purpose. In some cases, AI has to make decisions and choices with real consequences. We have got to make sure these choices are equitable.
What technologies are governments using now?
Mohan: There are so many. There are generally two levels of technologies: one is to serve the people and the other is to optimize government services to be more efficient. There’s technology to reduce paperwork and processing time, there are digital dashboards for monitoring services, sensors and cameras to optimize things like ambulance routes, or technology to make autonomous vehicles shuttles possible, as is the case in Las Vegas.
What is a problem that you would like to see cities solve with technology that they’re not already solving?
Mohan: Climate change. All of this digital equity stuff isn’t going to matter if local and global biological ecosystems fail because of climate change.
Why not start an organization that works to address climate change?
Mohan: There are many excellent organizations in this area, such as Clean Tech San Diego who are mohuman partners working together. We’re all nonprofits. We’re not hardware vendors, we’re not data analytic platforms. We bridge the right people and the right issues to accelerate progress in our cities.
As city governments begin the transition from digital to smart, now is also the time for conferences, policy, and nonprofits committed to digital equity. While the problems cities are using smart city technology to solve might be up for debate, fair access to that technology and its benefits must be a priority. For more information on building smarter communities, check out CompTIA’s research report on the current smart city awareness trends, barriers and opportunities here.
