$40 billion and 20,000 new green jobs. That’s what South Florida businesses stand to gain from the smart cities revolution – making our cities more sustainable and liveable through technology and new ideas.
Last week, Smart City Expo Miami showcased smart city innovations and ideas from around the world. The event, which was transmitted through a virtual events platform, provided local changemakers with a smorgasbord of ideas from Brazil, Israel, the Philippines, England, Belgium, Switzerland and beyond.
Bernardo Scheinkman, CEO of Smart Cities Americas and the event’s curator, told Refresh Miami that this year’s Smart City Expo Miami reached more than 5,000 participants from 289 cities in 85 countries on 6 continents. “Over 50 award-winning and globally-recognized experts – some of the best thinkers in urbanism and technology – spoke and raised awareness about the importance of urban planning, climate action, and the green economy,” he said.
“Smart City Expo Miami positioned Miami as a launchpad for innovation,” Scheinkman continued. This fits with Smart Cities Americas overall goal of building South Florida’s smart city ecosystem.
Miami takes center stage
Throughout the three-day event, Miami was at the center of conversations about the smart city revolution.
The City of Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, kicked off the expo by giving a keynote address in which he outlined his vision for increasing Miami’s environmental resilience by leveraging smart city technologies.
“The time is over to simply be reactive to climate change,” asserted Suarez. “We must be proactive and pave the way for other cities in the US and around the world to achieve lower carbon emissions, while ensuring our communities are made safe and prosperous.”
“I want to make Miami the most flood-resistant city in the world,” he added. Suarez reminded viewers of his pledge to make the city carbon neutral by 2050.
Resilience was also a key theme for Alissa Farina, Resilience Programs Manager at the City of Miami, who shared her thoughts on how to consider equity in climate planning decision making processes. “Climate is a threat multiplier,” she said, arguing that leaders need to consider how climate change will affect communities that are already socially vulnerable.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava opened the second day of the expo with her thoughts on how the county is embracing the smart city movement to improve the lives of Miamians. “Bold ideas are often best launched at the local level and then scaled up to the state, national and international levels,” Levine Cava asserted. “Miami-Dade County is the ideal place for all this innovation to happen.”
Levine Cava highlighted two unique roles in her cabinet, Chief Bay Officer and Chief Heat Officer, both designed to bolster the county’s resilience to our changing climate.
Raimundo Rodulfo, the Chief Innovation Officer of Coral Gables, was on hand to explain some of the ways his city uses technology to improve quality of life while fostering innovation and economic growth. The city uses some of the latest technologies, from computer vision to artificial intelligence to drones, in unexpected ways. For instance, Rodulfo told attendees about how the city’s drones helped reunite a lost child with their family in a matter of minutes.
Global perspectives on building resilience at the city level
One of the common themes that emerged during Smart City Expo Miami was bringing communities together to build resilience.
“We drive our social digital agenda forward by ensuring that digital [services] are tools for citizen participation that help promote social cohesion rather than erode social cohesion,” asserted Bas Boorsma, the Chief Digital Officer of the City of Rotterdam. Boorsma explained how the city runs educational programs to upskill citizens to “prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.” Rotterdam has also developed its own, open-source citizen engagement platform to let citizens directly participate in how their city is run.
It’s a similar story in Tel Aviv, according to its CIO, Guy Elad. There, residents can set up digital profiles so that the city can share information about relevant events happening in their area. However, success does not come easily, he noted: “Creating a smart city is more like a marathon than a sprint.”
Anja Wyden Guelpa, who spent two decades in the public sector, including a stint as the State Chancellor of Geneva, spoke on the “innovation guerilla against bureaucracy.” She argued that the public sector itself can be a force for innovation and resilience-building. “Innovation means taking risks,” she said. Guelpa works with government leaders, who she argues can play a major role in unlocking public sector innovation.
“Connectivity is key,” asserted Luis Guillot, a smart cities veteran who is currently CTO of Government Solutions Huawei Technologies’s Latin American division. Having a powerful cellular network unlocks the power of the Internet of Things (IoT), since wireless connectivity enables these devices to deliver their insights. IoT devices can also help public sector officials better gauge the effectiveness of sustainability initiatives. For instance, Guillot explained that IoT sensors in bike lanes can give decision makers data to back decisions about future city planning decisions.
Smart city advisor and former City of Palo Alto CIO Jonathan Reichental echoed these sentiments while underscoring the potential economic benefits of the smart cities movement, which he called a $2.4 trillion opportunity.
Practical, optimistic approaches to curtailing climate change
Many speakers at Smart City Expo Miami also took a positive tone, suggesting practical ways we can build back better from the pandemic.
Daniel Bumann, an artist and entrepreneur based in Finland, presented ‘pocket parks,’ or easily deployable structures that fill urban spaces. They act as benches, giving citizens a public area to relax and meet each other (a so-called ‘third place’), while also bringing greenery into urban spaces.
There was a lot of talk about building ‘circular economies,’ which are a new model of consumption in which resources are used without generating waste. For speaker Jordi Pascual, cities are “hot spots of impact, consumption, and opportunities” for enabling the shift towards circular economies.
Anne Therese Gennari, also known as the “Climate Optimist,” argued that we must take bold approaches to combat climate change and save the world. “We have nothing to lose, only to win” by doing our part to help the environment, she asserted.
While these talks formed the core of Smart City Expo Miami, the event also had virtual rooms, lounges, and exhibitions in which participants could meet and network with more than 200 smart city startups. There was also a virtual bookstore that provided a bibliographic selection of smart city and sustainability-focused reads, including books written by the event’s speakers.
Learn more about Smart City Expo Miami 2021 and keep on top of updates for next year’s expo by visiting their website.
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