Sharing smart approaches to city transformation
As city leaders work to build a more resilient and sustainable future, there’s no reason for them to embark on this journey alone. Instead, cities can avoid re-creating the wheel by developing best practices and sharing them with other cities around the world.
Building smart cities on a large scale requires both innovation and collaboration. And one organization that’s working to bring about a shared approach is City Protocol Society. A member-based nonprofit, City Protocol is bringing together cities, academia, and industry from around the globe to create an organizing framework for building more efficient, high-quality cities of the future. And to make that happen, it is developing protocols that will help modern cities implement cross-sectorial solutions that break down city silos and connect cities with each other.
In late June, I had the pleasure of participating in a virtual workshop hosted by City Protocol Society. The workshop, “City Transformation: From Practice to Protocol,” is part of a six-week Summer Global Workshop series that explores city foundations and transformation. Already, many cities are developing best practices or “protocols” that can be replicated by other cities. And several examples were discussed during our two-hour workshop, including one that I shared about Cape Town, South Africa.
South Africa’s second most populous city, Cape Town, is working to become a united, efficient, and inclusive city in which everyone has the opportunity to pursue their dreams. To help bring this about, the city is moving its infrastructure to a private cloud so that it can deliver the same services in an equitable manner to all citizens.
Among the challenges Cape Town faces is severe traffic congestion. The city’s poorer residents, many of whom live in the city’s outlying areas, often spend hours getting to work using various public transportation options. The city’s more affluent residents drive their cars on highly congested roads. Visitors have difficulty finding their way around the city, which negatively affects businesses that rely on tourism. And the city’s minibus taxis don’t adhere to fixed routes or schedules.
To address traffic congestion and encourage public transportation use, Cape Town has begun to offer FindMyWay, a Windows 8 app developed by a local startup that helps citizens optimize their movements around the city. To encourage use of the app by residents who cannot afford smartphones, a text-based option is available for use with simple “feature” phones. Data gathered from the public’s use of the app is stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud so that city planners and entrepreneurs can analyze it and use this information to design future transportation improvements.
By offering FindMyWay, Cape Town is helping residents move around the city faster, which, in turn, is improving the economic health of the city. As Andre Stelzner, Cape Town’s Director of Information Systems and Technology, puts it, “Helping poorer people find more affordable opportunities to get to work is good for the economy. Making it easier for tourists to enjoy our beautiful city will boost tourism. And as we learn from people’s movement patterns from the app, we gain valuable information to ensure our future investments in public transportation match how people prefer to move around the city.”
FindMyWay is a great example of the solutions that cities can develop when governments, citizens, and the private sector work together. It also illustrates the types of innovations that can be replicated across cities to solve common problems.
To hear all five city transformation projects that were shared during the workshop, you can listen to the entire presentation here. The Summer Global Workshop series continues through the end of July, so please be sure to sign up for an upcoming focus session.
