Authored by: Paul Doherty, the digit group, inc.

Smart CitiesAn RICS Whitepaper outlining the Challenges, Solutions, Results and Next Steps for any city to become a sustainable Smart City by leveraging the Digital DNA of the Built Environment

The migration of the human race to urban environments is occurring at an unprecedented rate around the world. New and existing cities are urgently developing Smart City planning and implementing projects and programs to accommodate their citizens with a safe, healthy and sustainable environment to live, work and play. This Whitepaper provides the Challenges facing our world’s cities, identifies the Solutions, describes the Results and delivers realistic Next Steps for your city to become a sustainable Smart City through leveraging the Digital DNA of the Built Environment. Welcome to the world of Smart Cities.

RICS Smart Cities Whitepaper:

This Whitepaper is part of the knowledge base that is being developed by RICS as part of Vision for Cities, a global

policy and research programme launched by RICS to examine key thinking on the delivery of the sustainable cities

of 2030 and beyond. Vision for Cities is based on an understanding of the changing urban context in the twenty first

century. This Whitepaper is being released during the Vision for Cities conference, “Cities 2030 – Are We On Track?”

being held on 8 October 2012 in New Delhi, India.

The Challenge

01

It may not be obvious, but the cities of Earth today owe a large thank you to the NASA Apollo Space program. We listened as one people to the firsthand accounts from the astronauts who saw the Earth from the surface of the moon. We were filled with wonder with their description of seeing our Earth as an oasis in the vast void of space, like a space vehicle traveling through nothingness. We were filled with pride as they described how beautiful, shiny and fragile we are as a planet. And we were filled with awe when we saw the famous pictures our planet Earth from the surface of the moon. Among all the wonderment, these same astronauts warned us that we better start taking better care of our space vehicle as there is nothing else out there close by that we can inhabit just yet. These astronauts also said that one of their surprises was how the urban areas of Earth had their own atmospheres… and that each one of them looked dirty. There are many legacies of the NASA Apollo Space program, but none more important to our Earth’s cities than we need to think smarter about our cities and their effect on our planet.

So the Smart City movement, which began with a view from the moon in 1969, has finally reached the tipping point of momentum to become an actionable topic for government officials, politicians, service providers and urban dwellers. A critical next step in the maturity of Smart Cities will be in its definition and value to all stakeholders in each City.

A Smart City is not a marketing campaign, a slick sales technique nor an amusing political catch phrase. It is a series of solutions to a serious and urgent situation the world faces today. Smart Cities are emerging as a civic action due to a “perfect storm” of the convergence of market conditions, technology innovation, social wants and government needs and the migration to urban environments that

has accelerated on a global scale that dwarfs any previous mass movement of people in history.

One striking example is found in a report by McKinsey & Co. in 2009 that stated 350 million people in China would move to cities throughout China by 2025. In the three years since that report was published, the numbers of migrating Chinese to cities within China is proving this prediction correct. Existing Chinese cities, already overpopulated and struggling to maintain public services, are bracing for this onslaught of humanity by preparing, planning and implementing large scale urban projects, designed to transform from industrial urban environments to Smart Cities. Not because they want to, because they have to.

Some staggering statistics regarding China’s urban challenges:

• By 2025, there will be 40 billion square feet of new building space constructed in 5 million new buildings, of which, 50,000 of these new buildings will be skyscrapers, the equivalent of 10 Manhattan’s.

• 1 billion Chinese will call a city home by 2030.

• China will have 221 cities by 2025 with populations over 1 million people, Europe today has 35.

• 170 new mass transit systems will be built in Chinese cities by 2025, there are 160 mass transit systems in use today in the world.

India is another striking example of explosive urban growth that created the reality that Indian cities must change their consumption and development patterns in favor of smarter and more sustainable habits. A 2010 McKinsey Global Institute report predicts India’s urban population ballooning to 590 million by 2030, which is almost twice the size of the entire United States

population. By 2030, India will have 68 cities with populations of more than 1 million people, 13 cities with more than 4 million people and 6 megacities with populations of 10 million or more. The report also says that the Indian economy is expected to be five times greater by 2030, with urban centers being the key driver of this growth. This means that India’s labor force will increase by 270 million from today, with 70 percent of that coming from urban jobs. This new Indian urban labor force will also be relatively young compared to other BRIC countries. The median age for the Indian population is 25.3 years, which is lower than Brazil (28.6 years) and well below China (34.1 years) and Russia (38.4). India, like China, must move to a Smart City strategy, not because they want to, because they have to.

In order to meet the needs of this urban class, the report estimates India will need:

• US$1.2 trillion in capital investment• 2.5 billion square meters of roads

to be paved• 700-900 million square meters of

commercial and residential space• 7,400 kilometers of subways and

transportation to be constructed

To put India’s figures into perspective, the investment of US$1.2 trillion is about one-third of India’s total GDP in 2009… and the 700-900 million square meters of needed commercial and residential real estate development means that India must build a new city the size of Chicago each year for the next 20 years just to meet the demand.

At a global perspective, cities account for 75% of greenhouse emissions, while only occupying 2% of world’s surface. It is expected that the amount of people living in urban areas will double through 2050. And of immediate concern, by 2015, 1.2

India is another striking example of explosive urban growth that created the reality that Indian cities must change their consumption and development patterns in favor of smarter and more sustainable habits.

billion cars will be on the road making 1 car for every 6 people on the planet Earth. These trends are mentioned not to initiate how can we stop them, but how we can change and manage them.

There are emerging suggestions on how to change and manage the many issues facing the world’s cities today. Collectively, cities need more space in order to accommodate the influx of people. The new and emerging cities are planning for this with urban planning strategies like high-density solutions, while existing cities are exploring dense mico-grids that reposition existing buildings, transportation systems and neighborhoods to accommodate more people, create a self-sustaining economic centre and provide sustainable energy. Cities are also addressing Climate Change, which is forcing the issue of sustainable development into the spotlight while enabling thoughtful foresight of the future needs of a city. When a city makes the commitment to follow the path of becoming a Smart City, they are positioning themselves at a competitive advantage. The true measure of what will attract and retain people and business to a Smart City will be in a city’s response to the increasing demands of its inhabitants, making a Smart City one that listens, communicates and attends to its citizen’s needs.

Definition

A Smart City has many emerging definitions. The flexibility of this definition provides cities the opportunity to define its programs, policies and procedures according to its own local set of priorities and needs. The art of becoming a Smart City means that a storytelling process must be employed by a city

in order to tie back and validate the programs, policies and procedures that are being implemented. To assist in this storytelling process, Smart City frameworks are being designed and marketed by academics, companies, urban associations and the media. Through this cacophony of frameworks, a foundation has emerged that help define areas of Smart City interest, action and measures. Most frameworks use the word SMART as an acronym to mean Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based goals. These same frameworks provide the definition of 10 Smart City elements:

• Energy• Water• Waste• Infrastructure• Public Safety• Education• Healthcare• Green Buildings• Transportation• Citizen Services

The media and many leading consulting firms have further defined these frameworks into catchy marketing phrases like Smart Grids, Smart Buildings, CleanTech and Smart Governance. No matter what you call the 10 Smart City elements that make up your city’s framework, both emerging and existing cities have the need to better tell their story with SMART goals and objectives.

The interesting thing about Smart City initiatives is the closely integrated way that seemingly disparate elements work together. As cities begin their transformative process into Smart Cities, it helps to consider the manner in which cities will need to address the social, economic, engineering and environmental challenges. And this manner will center on Knowledge.

Cities were originally developed in an agrarian society that had their collective knowledge reside in either royal or religious centers. Through the development of the printing press, this knowledge was dispersed to the masses. With printed matter expanding knowledge, cities evolved as centers of commerce during the Industrial Revolution. In today’s Information Age, knowledge is networked, providing access to the intelligence behind the knowledge, leading to the threshold of Smart Cities.

As we identify the challenges of living in highly connected, Information Age world, it is comforting to relate to our cities as organisms. If the city is a body, then we have seen its evolution from the agrarian society to the Information Age through the development of systems. Each city has its own cardiovascular system (traffic, mass transit), skeletal system (infrastructure), respiratory and digestive systems (energy, waste) and even a primitive nervous system (telecommunications). In order for a city to provide access to its intelligence behind the knowledge and become a Smart City, the development of the Intelligence System that connects the central nervous system to a brain is required. Smart City initiatives like Gigabit Network programs and citywide, free wireless broadband initiatives are the beginning salvos in meeting these challenges and moving cities forward as a healthy organism.

Solutions

02

If evolving into a Smart City means connecting seemingly disparate elements into working as a healthy organism, then we should be focusing our collective efforts, our path forward, on two areas of immediate action. Data and digital DNA.

Data

Due to the implementation of vast information technology (IT) solutions over the past few decades by cities, the world has created a cornucopia of data. This data comes in all shapes and sizes and enables an enormous amount of tasks to be conducted more effectively and efficiently. The issue is not if the city has the proper data to become a Smart City, the issue is how.

Traditional IT solutions treat data as a captive element inside its own software, creating silos of data within every city. Attempts to extract this data and share it with other systems, connecting the City’s nervous system to a brain, have been complex and expensive to accomplish. With the emergence of Cloud Technology, meaning Internet-based software and services, city’s today have a highly potent solution that mixes performance and technology.

No longer is a city held hostage to unaffordable IT integration issues, with the emergence of the Cloud and products like Microsoft Windows 8, the integration of your city’s department of sanitation data can communicate with the transportation department, or the police, or city hall in an inexpensive and powerful way. The media and marketing people are calling this emancipation of data being freed from their silos, Big Data. This means that an enormous body of data has the ability to enter your city’s body and freely circulate. The job of today’s cities IT department is not to

just secure people from getting into a city’s system, but how to control and manage the glut of data that will be trying to get out. Think Wiki Leaks.

A major issue for a city’s IT department is how to manage Big Data, now that it can be set free so easily. The City’s that solve this issue will be on the correct path to being a Smart City. Those that don’t may experience what other organisms experience when there is too much blockage in its nervous system, a breakdown.

No matter which of the 10 Smart City elements your city decides to focus on, the data will be the key driver to all policies, programs, projects and measures. Thus the focus on Big Data and your City’s behavior towards its data’s management is a critical element towards being a truly Smart City. A smarter, efficient city that would encompass aspects of intelligent transportation, security, energy management, CO2 emissions, and sustainability is contingent on the implementation of a Big Data strategic plan to enable decision makers and authorities to perform their jobs. In response, some cities have taken an Open Data approach to assist in making its data available to the general public, which has spawned an emerging market for the development and sale of “Apps” to enable this Open Data to come alive and provide value to a user.

Digital DNA

If Big Data is a key for cities evolving into Smart Cities, then a question arises as to the hierarchy of data prioritization. In other words, where does a city start?

Two points of entry can assist a city in answering this question. One point of entry is how some cities see the

market driving the need for access to certain types of data. Incident reporting, energy usage and analysis, transportation information are all areas that citizens see immediate value. Other cities position the new data-centric tools like social media to assist with better communicating with their citizens. This reactive approach is highly effective when implemented correctly, with many examples from all over the world as best practices and in certain cases, lessons learned.

The second point of entry is in the proactive approach of identifying and managing your city’s digital DNA. The building blocks to effectively and efficiently use city data will ultimately reside in a city’s ability to repurpose its existing data and documents associated with the Built Environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities.

Built Environment data is already captured by city’s in various formats and processes; Building Departments, Engineering Departments, Land Departments, Planning Departments, Tax Departments, Postal Services, they all collect and manage vast amounts of data that when viewed as a whole, create the virtual representation of your physical city. The accuracy, authentication and integration of this city data is the key to a proactive approach to entering a path to becoming a Smart City. The uniqueness defined by your city’s digital DNA can be used for competitive advantage, change management and controlled, healthy growth. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from your city’s nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of your city to a Smart City.

No matter which of the 10 Smart City elements your city decides to focus on, the data will be the key driver to all policies, programs, projects and measures.

Enabling your digital DNA to become active is being seen in technology advancements like XML databases, HTML5 and sensors. Sensors are a simple technology that when connected to road, water and power networks can provide powerful streaming information, evaluating real-time conditions and optimizing the networks performance. This Machine-To-Machine (M2M) communication is poised to grow from 15 billion “intelligent devices”, like sensors, in 2015 to over 50 billion in 2020. Managing traditional digital DNA of city data like blueprints, specifications and Geographic Information System (GIS) will be even more challenging with this emergence and overlay of M2M real-time data. Your cities ability to manage this complex stream of data in an intuitive and simple manner is another key driver in the overall evolution to becoming a Smart City.

A path to enabling your city’s digital DNA comes from the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the data captured by Smart Buildings. BIM and Smart Buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a neighborhood, district and City, provides a city relevant, authenticated data. Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC)

firms that look beyond the individual building project and begin to position for capturing value (and alternative revenues) at the data transaction level in a Smart City environment will capture greater market share and open up new opportunities for growth than their competition. This revaluation of digital DNA dwarfs any previous notion of the value given to Built Environment data.

Think of your city as a network, with each building acting as a server. Each building has data, like BIM for design & construction and Smart Building data in the form of Facility Management & Building Automation). When this individual building data is connected to the City Network, potentially through an Open Data policy, interesting things begin to happen. The captured AEC data that a city already possesses becomes the digital DNA of Smart Cities.

Built Environment professionals, specifically in the AEC market, are the authors of this digital DNA and should consider their data creation work not just for the project at hand, but in the context of an operating city. New business models are emerging for insightful AEC firms who are emulating other business and revenue models

from other industries. A model that is gaining traction is from the music industry. Like writing a hit song and retaining the publishing rights to that song, AEC firms adopting a strategy of moving away from just being compensated for the “one off” use of their data to deliver an individual building, but also retaining the rights to their implemented data, so when used for Smart City solutions, compensation continues in the form of access rights. This recurring revenue model allows an AEC firm to retain their publishing rights to their data that is being used by others and enjoy a continuous revenue stream.

Savvy AEC professionals are strategically positioning themselves to not only contribute to Smart City programs through the creation of digital DNA, but are also benefiting from this DNA. These AEC professionals view data creation tools and processes as Building Information Management (BIM). Issues that an AEC professional and your city should consider when developing a digital DNA plan include:

• Legal & Insurance, including Intellectual Propety Rights and who owns the data and the model

• Planning & Design

• Construction, Commissioning & Handover

• Facility Operations in the form of Space Planning, Asset Management, Maintenance, Document Management, Environment Health & Safety and Security

Smart City Solutions

With a cities data and digital DNA identified, the actionable solutions of evolving into a Smart City emerge. Using the same plan, processes and policies in the IT Industry, a city can implement Smart City pilot programs and projects adopting techniques like Rapid Application Development (RAD), creating and implementation policies like Internet Protocol (IP) and develop trust relationships between people to get things accomplished like in Social Media solutions.

The creation of Interdependence, of having your interests shared by others in the community, is a powerful force that drives ideas into action and provides a mechanism for Collective Intelligence for your Smart City. The best Smart City solutions enable this type of environment and position your Smart City to share this knowledge

to raise the consciousness of a topic on a global scale. In other words, being a truly Smart City is achieved through sharing of knowledge that can benefit not only your own citizens, but all citizens of the world. Cities that adopt this as part of their Smart City plan will need to select Smart City solutions that feed into a knowledge and data sharing platform. One of the leading public accessible platforms is the World Bank’s Urban Knowledge Platform, which is empowering cities and citizens, alike, to plan their Smart City as a modern central nervous system that connects people, places and things. Some of the better Smart City solutions are acting as “front ends” to leverage internal data, like digital DNA, and external data, like the Urban Knowledge Platform, while viewing this data in 3D for an easy, intuitive view of complex information. Using a 3D immersive interface that blurs the lines between virtual and reality, complex, expert systems like energy management systems and bureaucratic processes are simplified for the average citizen to make intelligent decisions on sustainability (Do I take mass transit today or my car to work?), cost and quality of life.

Cities are a mirror to the values of our civilization. At the core, Smart City solutions, both large and small, have an opportunity to assist in creating an environment for people to prosper in a welcoming, inclusive and open manner. Basic service improvements, reliability and trust building are the cornerstones to a successful Smart City strategy. Many Smart City solutions are technology based, so a focus on processes and workflows are critical to the success of these initiatives. A selection should not be based on technology for technology’s sake. Choosing the proper Smart City solution that solves a specific task in an overall workflow can be as beneficial as a more comprehensive implementation. You Smart City solutions should also leverage the power of Open Data and strive to benefit as many stakeholders as possible.

Results

03

The results of implementing a Smart City initiative are vast, varied, yet achievable from the smallest village to the megacities of our time. The key will be to follow the principles of Smart City planning:

1. Collaboration2. Transparency3. Sharing4. Empowerment

When city embarks on the path of Smart City evolution using the 10 Smart City elements, a matrix forms, sometimes in the form of a Balanced Scorecard, so that all stakeholders are kept informed. As the evolution through time increases, so may the velocity of change. Having a strong hold on best practices intersecting with ownership, stewardship, existing assets and new assets will require a discipline at the civic level to ensure that the proper results continue to meet expectations. Some cities have developed their own Smart City Index in the form of a maturity model, which has proved highly successful in communicating the intent of Smart City initiatives.

Nicos Komninos recently wrote about the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership (SCC) who have defined a results oriented series of programs and projects that include:

• Smart Buildings and Neighbourhoods: integration and management of local and renewable energy sources; ICT solutions, for design as well as operation of urban districts or corridors with different building, nearly zero-energy buildings and positive energy buildings and neighbourhoods; deep retrofitting of existing buildings and sustainable building materials.

• Smart Supply and Demand Systems and Services For Better-Informed Citizens: provision of data and information to citizens and end-users on energy consumption/production and multimodal transport and mobility services; waste generation, smart metering and related services for energy, water, waste; monitoring and balancing the grid.

• Sustainable Urban Mobility: energy and fuelling infrastructure and the operation of vehicle fleets powered by alternative energy carriers for public transport, freight distribution, alternative transport options and private transport using ICT-based solutions for urban traffic and transport management supporting the reduction of energy consumption and emissions.

• Smart and Sustainable Digital Infrastructures: reducing the carbon footprint of the Internet, in particular data centres and telecommunications equipment, including broadband; intelligent heating, cooling and lighting solutions; exploitation of synergies between requirements for smart grids and broadband infrastructure including sharing engineering works and reusing infrastructures and services.

• Strategic Planning For Identification, Integration and Optimisation of Flows: optimisation of different energy, transport and data flows; traffic management using information systems; logistics; development of green infrastructure and use of smart ICT to manage it; optimised waste collection and energy generation; business models; open data platforms including semantics and data sharing.

Each of these results must contribute to the economy and the environment of every city, leading to Smarter infrastructure, Smarter Buildings and Shared Public Services. An interesting list of results of Smart City initiatives was recently published by the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) Sensable City Labs:

• Sometimes the best solutions are not the biggest or most expensive: Cities routinely overinvest or underinvest in infrastructure (usually the latter) because it is difficult to calculate the extent of its future use, or to project the negative impacts on services and real estate from insufficient long-term investment. The hidden dangers of overinvesting are evident in those cities that stress investment in a single infrastructure approach. For example, cities will often stress passenger vehicle based transport systems – highways and roads for cars. Many of those cities are suffering under clouds of pollution, congestion problems, and the attendant problems with urban sprawl. Solutions built around minimal infrastructure can avoid the danger of overinvesting.

• Soft Infrastructure, such as information technology and the active participation of stakeholder groups, can better connect people to services: Creating smarter communities requires using collective intelligence. This doesn’t just mean accounting for the “wisdom of the crowd”; it also means taking maximum advantage of the infrastructure already in place, including wireless networks and their capabilities to weave together people, services, community assets, and information into strong, pervasive solutions reaching up and down the economic strata that make up

Some cities have developed their own Smart City Index in the form of a maturity model, which has proved highly successful

diverse cities. As a consequence, the modern “E-City” includes new forms of digital governance, but also new ways of delivering education, healthcare, commercial, security, and entertainment services to urban residents. There is also no substitute for well-organized stakeholder groups to influence infrastructure project outcomes and ensure citizen support afterward.

• Think creatively about how to use existing infrastructure assets for multiple purposes: The feasibility, sustainability, and utility of infrastructure projects are enhanced when they meet multiple objectives. Transportation corridors that are also recreation, storm drainage and utility corridors; storm water retention basins doubling as recreational facilities; open spaces and nature preserves that are also used to treat water and air pollution—are all examples of multiple-use projects.

• Underutilized infrastructure can be adaptively repurposed to inspire modern uses: Developed countries across the world have underutilized public buildings, rail lines, bridges, and abandoned utilities. When these assets can be adaptively reused, the result is sometimes a creative outcome.

• Understanding where coercion, official incentives, and special enabling legislation by the government are required to meet infrastructure objectives is also important: Some infrastructure projects and innovations require government support, even coercion, to be successful. Lavasa, in India, could not have been launched without state-enabled legislation crafted and customized to the project.

• Innovation in the planning and development process: Cities are complex organisms. City leaders that set out to retrofit or remake infrastructure without thinking through its impact on critical systems, and potential unintended consequences do so at their own

peril. Deliberative planning can lead to innovations incorporated in the final development. Meticulous and extensive advance planning is the key for development success.

• Innovative Finance: Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, the United States budget deficit, the skyrocketing social costs of aging populations, and relatively immature local governmental funding mechanisms in much of Asia and Africa all mean that raising the necessary capital for much needed urban infrastructure will be a problem for many years to come. Innovative financing will be imperative if many urban infrastructure projects are to be realized. Whether local governments are empowered to issue their own bonds and create different types of development corporations that own the infrastructure, or public-private partnerships are taken to a different level, the control exercised by central governments will likely have to decrease to allow innovative financing to flourish.

Next Steps

04

Action steps to begin a path to evolving to a Smart City:

1. Position and strategically plan for your data and digital DNA to provide immediate value as the foundation for connecting your city’s central nervous system to the brain, enabling your city’s knowledge to be communicated, coordinated and collaborated in an efficient and effective manner.

2. Implement immediate measures and benchmarking with organizations that have working matrices for the path to a Smart City. Some of the best known groups include:

I. The City Protocol (www.cityprotocol.org)

The City Protocol is a new open, global, and progressive working framework for cities worldwide to assess and improve performance in environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, quality of life, and city services, by innovating and demonstrating new leadership models, new ways of engaging society, and by leveraging new information and communication technologies (ICT). The City Protocol has five fundamental goals:

• To facilitate and foster a new science of cities.

• To establish a cooperation framework among the city council, academia, companies, organizations and people/society.

• To lead and pave cities’ futures.• To understand the common

driving forces of urban evolution and find common game-changing solutions.

• To find innovative economical opportunities and synergies: and deliver value adding products and services.

The City Protocol will move worldwide city thinking forward effectively and remain appealing and available to a wide range of cities and smart city communities. City Protocol will create a reflection community, a sharing space and opportunities to build complete or partly solutions to allow the emergent new generation solutions for a sustainable city

II. C40 Cities (www.c40cities.org) C40 is a network of the world’s

megacities taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With a unique set of assets, the C40 works with participating cities to address climate risks and impacts locally and globally. C40 was created in 2005 by former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, and forged a partnership in 2006 with the Cities Program of President Clinton’s Climate Initiative (CCI) to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency in large cities across the world. Under the leadership of then Mayor of Toronto David Miller, who served after Mayor Livingstone as C40 Chair, the organisation advanced programs and partnerships that drew international recognition for the role of cities as leaders in climate action. The current chair of C40 is New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who leads the C40 together with the steering committee and executive leadership team.

III. SETIS (http://setis.ec.europa.eu/about-

setis/technology-roadmap/european-initiative-on-smart-cities)

A European focused approach o Smart Cities, which was established to demonstrate the feasibility of rapidly progressing towards our energy and climate objectives at a local level while

proving to citizens that their quality of life and local economies can be improved through investments in energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions. This Initiative will foster the dissemination throughout Europe of the most efficient models and strategies to progress towards a low carbon future. This Initiative will support cities and regions in taking ambitious and pioneering measures to progress by 2020 towards a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through sustainable use and production of energy. This will require systemic approaches and organisational innovation, encompassing energy efficiency, low carbon technologies and the smart management of supply and demand. In particular, measures on buildings, local energy networks and transport would be the main components of the Initiative.

3. Engage and contribute to RICS Vision For Cities:

I. Strategic Planning Making cities inclusive: the

shift from spatial to strategic planning

The growing complexity and requirements of cities highlight the need for a multidimensional approach to city development and regeneration. But how do we make the paradigm shift from ‘accommodating growth’ to ‘planning for growth’? Through sharing of knowledge, experience and lessons learned from across borders, the conference will aide deliberations on the adoption of ‘smart growth’ principles that focus on compact, mixed-use development and transit oriented planning in an environment friendly manner. Also, how can we use a 3-tier integrated spatial development approach, along with forward-looking urban planning

A Smart City’s success will only be measured by how well its inhabitant’s quality of life improves.

techniques and tools such as City Development Plans, to create inclusive cities?

II. Finance & Investment Looking beyond the

conventional; making infrastructure investment lucrative

There is unanimity among stakeholders that the government alone cannot finance the investment in infrastructure. Therefore, we need to augment non-budgetary resources and unlock unconventional sources of capital. The conference will deliberate on what types of specialised financial instruments can be developed for comprehensive local adaptation? How can we leverage asset based financing? What are the policy and regulatory framework changes required for monetisation of land to finance urbanisation? How do we attract private capital and strengthen the role of the market in delivery of urban services? As cities compete for foreign investments and capital, the conference will also share best practices and case studies of actual financing strategies.

III. Technology Information Technology at

the core of infrastructure development

Smarter cities around the world

are leveraging technology to automate infrastructure process mechanisms, have end-to-end visibility, standardise processes and make them more efficient. So, what are the opportunities for cities to embrace smart technologies to improve urban performance? What can pilot projects tell us about how smart cities of 2030 will function? The conference will discuss the role of ICT in driving the approach to future cities and the importance of digital master planning and landscaping. It will also focus on how we can create cities as technology and innovation hubs, where information can be captured, managed and extracted from the magnitude of data embedded in the various objects around us.

IV. Skill Development Harnessing human and physical

capital to build tomorrow’s cities

In view of the enormous task of driving infrastructure development in the country, there is an

urgent need to address capacity building across levels. Urban planners, engineers, architects and specialised property and construction professionals have a crucial role to play, as they focus on the requirements and development needs of emerging cities. Therefore, developing a large skilled construction workforce is essential. Specifically for urban infrastructure, the priority areas for skill development include: urban city and transport planning, socio-economic planning, environmental management, municipal e-Governance, municipal service delivery including water, supply, solid waste management, sewerage and sanitation.

Smart Cities and its proper implementation for each village, town and city is not a fashionable, flavor of the day topic, but rather an imperative series of tasks in a framework to be initiated in a relatively short timeframe. A Smart City’s success will only be measured by how well its inhabitant’s quality of life improves. It is our generation’s greatest challenge and the best legacy we can leave to our children.

Bibliography & References

1. Connected Sustainable Cities, William J. Mitchell and Federico Casalegno, MIT Mobile Experience Lab Publishing, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-9821144-0-7; ISBN-10: 0-9821144-0-0

2. Preparing for China’s Urban Billion, McKinsey Global Institute, 2009. 3. http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Urbanization/Urban_awakening_in_India4. http://www.urenio.org/2012/08/06/smart-cities-and-communities-eip/5. http://senseable.mit.edu/wef/pdfs/Entire_Series.pdf

About the Author

Paul Doherty, AIA - Paul is the President and CEO of the digit group, inc., the market leading Smart City solutions incubator with products Screampoint, Digital Asset Assurance (DAA), GS Connect and IWMS Select. He is one of the global Industry’s most sought after thought leaders, strategists and integrators of process, technology and business. He is an author, educator, analyst and advisor to Fortune 500 organizations, global government agencies, prominent institutions and the most prestigious architectural, engineering and contracting firms in the world. A former Corporate Officer of K. Hovnanian Homes, (NYSE:KHOV) a publically traded Fortune 500 company, Paul is a licensed architect and is a prominent and highly rated speaker at numerous industry events around the world each year and has been appointed as a guest lecturer at leading universities throughout the world. A frequent guest writer for leading publishers like McGraw-Hill, Paul has authored or edited over 9 books. A former Board of Director of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Paul is the co-founder of the IFMA Building Information Modeling Lifecycle Operations group and the co-founder of the IFMA Shanghai Chapter, the first Western professional industry association in the People’s Republic of China.

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