Smart & Livable Cities
MLOVE Salon Smart City Hamburg
Cities are highly diverse melting pots of culture, habits and personal interest. In cities we find cultures living tightly together, cultures which we normally only find spread out throughout the entire globe. We find all kind of employment and goods, a huge amount of movement and mobility and see cities as transfer sites for international products as well as attitudes.
The ecosystem of a city with all its logistics and management is a very smart system already. Yet, the phenomenon of the Smart City is on the forefront. Undoubtedly technology can help a lot in optimizing our cities and making them smarter. But what exactly is a smart city and who profits from it?
MLOVE invited a variety of international protagonists to discuss Smart Cities, focussing on Hamburg and its current projects to MLOVE Smart City Salon. We are happy to announce an upcoming series of Salons around the smart city initiative in Hamburg and want to share some fascinating findings from our first event in January 2015 with you below.
The audience was welcomed by Senator Frank Horch of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg Ministry of Economy, Transport & Innovation and Prof. Norbert Aust, Founding Partner Osborne Clarke & Chairman of the Tourism Association of Hamburg. Both were glad about the upcoming conversations around the theme of Hamburg’s smart city campaign and highlighted the importance of an open dialogue of all pioneers involved in the process.
Dr. Christoph Torwegge, Managing Partner of Osborne Clarke in Hamburg, updated the audience on a new study about smart cities that his firm published in London recently.
The upcoming panel discussion included guests like Dr. Carsten Brosda of the official Hamburg Media Office with new responsibility for the digital city initiatives of Hamburg (Senatskanzlei Amt Medien), Prof. Jürgen Bruns-Berentelg, CEO of HafenCity Hamburg, Amr Salem, Global Managing Director for Smart + Connected Communities at CISCO and Dr. Sebastian Saxe, CIO of the Hamburg Port Authority. The discussion was led and moderated by Harald Neidhardt, CEO & Creator of the MLOVE ConFestival.
The role of technology companies in a smart life.
We have learned from Amr Salem that technology and technology companies will only act as enablers to put smart ideas into reality. It was great to hear about the importance of the cooperation between governments and technology companies, and the fact that without the right leadership, the right policies, the right ecosystem of partners or without working together with the people to adapt all those concepts, technology alone means nothing.
Cities are smart already and in future they will get smarter. Smart is something like a way of life or like a new lifestyle. Citizens can be smart by controlling their energy consumption, by recycling, by organizing their daily life as efficient as possible and by taking advantage of the worldwide knowledge transfer and education. Technology in this sense will always be just a tool which helps integrate the physical world into a more manageable environment.
And in this lifestyle technology is enabling communication, inter-connectivity between various systems and consequently collaboration.
Interview: “Smart City Insights” with Amr Salem, Cisco
Privacy issues and ethics in collecting data.
The ever emerging question about data security was asked too and it was good to hear that there are ethics committees with huge technology providers. We have heard and experienced a lot of doubts and fear with privacy issues around the globe. As making a city smart through collecting and analyzing its citizens´ data also holds the risk of loosing courtesy of private data and making citizens trackable and transparent. The last thing Hamburg wants is to become a surveillance society under the pretense of becoming a smart city.
„The data that is been collected and analyzed for smart city purposes is macro data. It is very important for us to understand that there is no benefit in us knowing that Amr went to work at ten o’clock in the morning. Nobody cares.“ secures Amr Salam, Cisco. „But it is important for us to know that 60% of the population is moving to work between 8.30 and 9.00 o’clock in the morning. That data point is important. You want to be looking at what we call meta data or macro level data. And behavioral patterns in macro data. It is not about the individual. And when you look at this collected data in this macro view there is no privacy issue. You want to be safe and you want to be efficient and in fact this data is used to give you that.“
Unfortunately, there are companies that build business around people’s data, so to say around someone’s private habits. Which they aim to find out to better advertise to people. But we have to remember that this is nothing to do with smart city and something completely different.
Cisco is a security company and claims to have their own appropriate tools and teams to secure any intellectual properties. Definitely choosing the right partners will be one of the keys to successful projects – just like in every aspect of business.
Hamburg as a smart city is unique.
Every city has its individual priority in projects. This can be environmental issues, or economic reasons, traffic and security etc. It is the volume of data that is been currently used in Hamburg’s port that is amazing to international smart city protagonists. To see how quickly ships of incredible size are being unloaded and loaded in Hamburg’s port, that is smart. Saxe points out that HPA currently focusses on implementing concepts which are easy to implement and have a huge impact like optimizing traffic in the harbor. Another good examples are optimizing the switches in transport logistics and an app to track status of ship to enable just in time logistics so that e.g. truck drivers are best prepared when to come into the port as they can track the current loading status of a container ship.
Another fact highlighted about Hamburg in an international context was its social integration in the smart city context „I love the fact that there is so much respect for what people want and what people need“ highlights Amr Salem. The first project that Cisco worked on in Hamburg was to track pollution from the port, to secure that the city does not get polluted too heavily. In other cities the first thing realized is smart parking to be able for the city to make more money.
Interview: “What is a Smart City?” with Yukiko Kobayashi, Founder of the Impact Hub Hamburg
What is a smart structure when you build a city from scratch?
Social and environmental issues are high priorities of a truly Smart City. The current definition of a Smart City is at least to have „the ambition to become a smart city“. This should be redefined. Economical, social and environmental sustainability are key issues. Further aspects of a smart city are: People are happy to live there, it is affordable to operate the city infrastructure and the city is prosperous – this are some of the key ideas when defining a smart city.
HafenCity Hamburg is currently exploring how it can physically build a smart city. We step back a little bit from the technology issues which have been discussed previously and are now focussing on an aspect of modern urban architecture, city structure and the requirements of smart citizens to their homes and neighborhoods.
In terms of smart mobility for example HafenCity is focussing on the walkability of the city. A very interesting point of view in these times, where we mostly hear of projects to optimize traffic, reduce pollution and use energy from renewable sources. But have you ever thought of being so smart to not produce any traffic in the first place? The walkability of a city seems to solve some of our modern problems right at its root.
HafenCity will of course not neglect modern mobility. It offers a diverse range of services for the citizens (car pooling, electric charging stations etc) so that they can chose what ever mobility fits their situation. Also all buildings in HafenCity are green labeled buildings. which already is a good starting point for a smart neighborhood. There are and will be more smart concepts which we see as choices to act smart for people living there.
But how all these smart methods will look in future is hard to say. „In the end of the day we do not know how it will actually be working. But the starting point for us in the broader sense is making a Smart City“. The focus is highly on making a smart city structure which is constantly adaptable to the current needs of its citizens and able to use the latest technological development. So today, no one is able to say what HafenCity 2020 will look like as its constantly redefining itself. But the fundament for any smart city concept is the structure and that what HafenCity management is currently focussing on.
Making a smart city is a constant process like a journey and there is no end. We are happy to look forward to the next salon and would love to highlight that it is not only technology but the attitude of each person involved, that counts. Policy makers are not involved in building every smart project but in providing an infrastructure so that smart projects can evolve, so that smart citizens can connect. This is a call for action to get involved in our next discussion and to stand up for your city.
Please follow our discussion on Smart City Hamburg and get in touch with ewa@mlove.com for more information about our discussions and events.
Thanks to Osborne Clarke and Cisco for the support of the MLOVE Salon.
For more photos check out this flickr album.
