The Next Urban Future - Write Up
Cities across the globe are trying to become smarter and greener by adapting to the Big Data revolution. How and where are successful cities using new technologies to upgrade infrastructure and enhance eco-resilience? Which cities are actively harnessing the power of urban innovations to advance their economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals?
To answer these questions a special event was organized to focus on tools, policies, and strategies for building urban resilience in the digital age. “The Next Urban Future” was convened on January 20, 2016.
The organizers were the non-profit Meeting of the Minds, together with the Urban Sustainability Laboratory at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution.
The program featured four leaders who have been busy, of late, creating smart cities in one or more locations:
- Mary Salas, Mayor of Chula Vista, California (slides here)
- Scott Mauvais, Director, Technology & Civic Innovation, Microsoft (slides here)
- Dr. Jerry Miller, Director, Science and Technology for Sustainability Program, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (slides here)
- Blair Ruble, Director, Urban Sustainability Laboratory, Wilson Center
- Jon Walton, Chief Information Officer, San Mateo County, @SanMateoCIO (slides here)
You can see the full presentations on video, and review all of the slide presentations, by visiting here.
Meeting of the Minds is a global knowledge-sharing platform based in San Francisco. Since it was founded, Meeting of the Minds has been dedicated to a singular proposition: bring together a carefully chosen set of key urban sustainability and technology stakeholders and gather them around a common platform in ways that help build lasting alliances. We believe that such a platform is a vital ingredient for smart, sustainable and equitable urban (re)development strategies.
Meeting of the Minds focuses on the innovators and initiatives at the bleeding edge of urban sustainability and connected technology. The impact of Meeting of the Minds is felt through numerous channels: their blog, glossy magazine, month webinars, monthly MeetUps, occasional workshops and roundtables, and an annual summit held each fall. They invite international leaders from the public, private, non-profit, academic and philanthropic sectors to identify innovations that can be scaled, replicated and transferred from city-to-city and across sectors.
Among the thousands of leaders who participate in Meeting of the Minds extended leadership network are innovators scaling-up practical urban solutions in infrastructure, policy, design, equity, technology, energy, mobility, water, finance, and more.
Now in its 10th year, the Meeting of the Minds annual summit brings together 400+ opinion-shapers, policy-makers, leading thinkers and innovators from all over the world for 2+ intensive days. The 2015 Final Report is a good summary of their work.
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-Gordon Feller ([email protected]) cofounded Meeting of the Minds and served as CEO of Urban Age Inst. From his base in San Francisco he consults with Cisco and numerous companies, foundations, government agencies.
His slides from the January 20, 2016 program can be found here.
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You can see live tweets from the event below:
