1. Amy Glasmeier Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT
Can “Smart City” Urban Planning Avoid Contributing to Growing Urban Inequality?
Amy Glasmeier
Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT

2. Built Environment Leaders Have Much to Say About the Future Lives of the World’s Citizens
Planning and design translate dreams into explicit statements about a future world
Science and engineering make that future world possible
Leaders of key economic sectors decide targets of investment and determine what will and will not be built

3. Most Discussion of Smart Cities Is Caricature of What Could Be
Planners and designers ultimately do what they are told
Engineers and scientists offer options based on ideas of what could work, they too do what they are told
Only leaders in key sectors have the influence and impact to draw lines in the sand that serve as boundaries around what gets done; even politicians must bow to their wishes

4. Smart Cities Are… A range of ideas that rest on principles that
Bring together technologies that generate, capture, process and reveal the meaning of data
In their most elaborate form, whole cities are envisioned as elaborate control systems, webs of influence capable of making our urban world safe, secure, clean, efficient, effective, durable and mostly self regulating

5. Start With the Following Question: What is the Problem We are Trying to Solve

6. Is This The Once And Future City? Every Place Wants To Be One

7. Is This The One?
Hong Kong: 33,000 people living there, within the space of one city block. That was Kowloon Walled City, once considered the densest settlement on earth

8. Or Is This One?

9. Basic Systems Too Often An After Thought
Some are Simply More Critical Than Others

10. Despite its Criticality, Energy is Often Down the List of Systems Required for Smart Cities
Energy “HAVES AND HAVE NOTS”
1.4 billion people lack access to electricity; More lack access to cooking fuel.
More prevalent in rural areas, still urban big numbers, too.
As urbanization continues, the form it takes presages energy footprint going forward
Questions we should be asking: Projected rates of urbanization, what rate of energy is access required?
Classic assumptions of migration in question
Cannot assume migrants are moving to opportunity; nor can we assume anything about the conditions from which they are leaving.

11. HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

13. Consider the Scale of the Challenge

14. CONDUCTED AN EXPERIMENT
Coal Power Plants

15. ADDED TOGETHER LAYERS OF DATA

16. Models Cannot Tell Us More Than the Quality of Data and Our Understanding of the Underlying Interrelationships Among the Parts

17. Urbanization is Not Going to Occur Everywhere All at Once
Most Urbanization Will Occur in Relatively Few Places, the Most Populous Centers

21. Urbanization Unaccompanied With Economic Development Will Be Unlikely
Too Costly, Won’t Present the Required Tax Base or Institutional Infrastructure

22. THE COSTS OF URBANIZATION IN A WORLD WITHOUT A JOBS MACHINE
600,000,000 needed jobs
Urban economies and migratory flows predicated on goods production and shifts out of agriculture. But this model of a starter economy is no longer assured
Migration especially hard on the psychological well-being of women and children
Inequality high in many of the newly urbanizing regions

24. Where Do We Go From Here? Smart Cities Not a Panacea
We Will Get Out What We Put Into This Form of Development
We Could Get Many Things Right, But Also Could Contribute to Deterioration

25. Benefits of This Movement
Making dreams come true
Finally getting urban planning and design right
Getting ahead of the game by planning and building in anticipation of need
Soaking up production capacity for the manufacture of key technologies that are otherwise without alternative markets

26. Big Threats to the Smart City Movement
Political cycles are short, precarious and ever changing
Land markets will drive investment to the edge of cities
Major systems, foundational building blocks will lack buyers and hence form incrementally when systemic applications are required
People movement will overwhelm attempts at rational planning
Inequality will be ignored and result in a) social upheaval; or b) temples in the desert with limited impact, surrounded by a sea of ill-fed, and poor clothed and housed populations

27. How to Avoid This Fate
Break the with past models of project planning, design, management, operations and execution and establish consortiums of specialized firms all focused on their unique talents
Smart city building should be conceived of as nation building exercises like the rail roads, great water supply projects, the ports, the great cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries