MLOVE Smart City Salon – Mobility in a smart city

A holistic view about the way we move through the city.

There would probably be no better location to kick off a Panel about the Future of Mobility than the mind-blowing view from the Towers „Tanzende Türme“ on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. Surrounded by planes crossing over the city, boats shipping over the Elbe, countless cars driving by St Pauli and a budge of pedestrians walking to or out of the U-Bahn (Hamburg Underground Train). “Which ever mean of transport you chose“ says host Norbert Aust Founding Member from Osborne Clarke, „it is price, time saving and comfort which make you chose“. Later we are yet to learn that also Lifestyle is an important factor when planing our daily mobility.

Funny enough that day, Hamburg is hit by a little storm. Planes have trouble landing, trains do not get in in time, we see the river very wild and the lamps on the 20th floor of the tower that we are in are bouncing from left to right all the time while our session. It is a great set up for the future of mobility because it makes us all realize that there are boundaries to what we can plan and create. It makes us realize that we are humans which are effected by nature. We will consider these facts a lot when we speak about mobility of the future. We do not want to speak about the latest car sharing app, we want to discuss a widespread view on how we want to move in future. And in general pose the question:

How do we envision the longterm Future of Smart Cities if we are not able to envision the features of a iPhone 8 which comes out in something like 2 years?

We welcomed Dr. Carsten Brosda responsible for the digitalization of the city in the Senat of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg who spoke about the phases in which digitalization took place in the past. „We have experienced that first society has been digitalized on a private level, then it was the industries who accepted the trend and lately it is governments, the public sector who is adapting digitalization to raise its quality of service“. So how does the City cope with innovation? “Hamburg is getting prepared to embrace innovation in laws, structure of public governmental institutions and its infrastructure. We may not know what the future of mobility will look like but we are making sure we are prepared for it to come”. Also it might be necessary to include a experimentation clause to some new regulations and find an answer to the question how City States should manage national law – it is great for a City State like Hamburg to be a bit more flexible towards innovation than the German Fed Republic in total. Yet, there are a lot of national regulations that have to be considered or might need to be changed. We feel that a city like Hamburg is in a unique position to act as protagonist for certain digital strategies, regulations and laws.

Also we learn that Hamburg has been a smart digital city for a couple of decades already and that city representatives prefer to refer to Hamburg as digital City now, not necessarily the term „Smart City“.

Among our guests from banking, logistics, IT providers, lawyers representative from Starup Europe says that 80% of startups in their accelerator program are Smart City projects in Hamburg.

So technology is the answer. But what was the question?

Prof. Dr. Gesa Ziemer from Hafen City Universität is the Vice President for Research. She speaks about her current project at HCU which is a cooperation with Boston’s MIT. We are excited to hear about the futuristic strategies that researchers use in nowadays to envision the future of big cities. MIT for example is simulating cities from lego and use various projection mapping techniques to visualize various decisions and interventions.

„Do we need smart cities or is it enough if we are smart citizens who are equipped with the latest tech and sensors?”

Well currently the trends in city planning go in the direction of the walkable, narrow city. A concept which e.g. combines shopping and living to get over the consequences like co2 emissions which we created with the current system. Definitive innovation and ideas of citizens will help a lot in the process of finding the right solutions. Yet we hear that in terms of cooperation Hamburg can learn a lot from cities like Zurich e.g. by providing support, acceptance and above all by linking university and startup scene.

Innovation happens across various disciplines. So why do we not have more humanist entrepreneurs and startups?

Solving problems of urban life
A good example of a humanist entrepreneur is psychology student Tino Hoffrichter. Tino is the founder and CEO of Jaano and at the mobility panel he explained some issues around modern urban problems and how to solve them. His personal solution is the first roller scooter sharing platform worldwide.

Did you know that you waste an average of 10 minutes per parking slot driving around looking for a parking space in Hamburg? What a waste of time and other resources. It is more than clear that solutions like car or bike sharing are predicted to raise to up to 26 Mio users in the next years (by 2024). Tino and his team are working on a concept which focusses on efficiency, flexibility and last but not least lifestyle. They dream to launch a series of electric scooters who are produced in fair conditions. Find out more about Jaano in our quick interview:

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