4 Comments

1. 

   Team San Francisco on February 1, 2015 at 10:49 am

   Equal contribution by Anchal Ahuja, Sam Choi, Ryan Khalessi, Saundarya Mehra, and Jordan Zola

   Question 1: Provide a short history of the city that is relevant to our topic

   Amsterdam’s transition into a “smart” city largely took place after World War II. Most parts of the city center had fallen into despair due to war and other incidents of the earlier twentieth century. As a result, many Dutch began moving to the outskirts of the city. In the post-war era, Amsterdam experienced a revitalization, as city governance noted the importance of public parks, better buildings, and more efficient roads with an emphasis on bike lanes. Bike Lane Infrastructure created due to deliberate political decisions to be independent from a car-centric society and have low carbon emissions after 1970’s energy crisis. Increased higher education initiatives to provide affordable education to students has contributed to innovation within the cities. Amsterdam hosts two of the major research universities in Holland and many smart city projects originate from these regions. These research hubs have also developed many new small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which contributes to a smart economy and growth within the city.

   Question 2: List the innovations in date-order that contributed to growth.

   1930’s: Bicycles very prominent: Pre World War II
   1970’s: Energy Crisis
   2000’s: Reduce reliance on cars. MobyPark: “airbnb” app for parking spots, Vehicle to grid technology
   2014, Smart Citizens initiative, Smart Home initiative with retrofitted control systems integrated into personal devices such as iphones

   Question 3: Share specific data about how these innovations helped the growth (based on the data availability provide one of the following: population, # of immigrants/year, number of jobs created or per capita income, etc.)

   Throughout Amsterdam’s history, smart innovations have led to growth in overall population and prosperity. Beginning in 1940 with the construction of bike lanes in the city, the population grew to 760,000 as transportation became more efficient and available to the majority of the population. Although smart mobility in terms of cars and other modes of transportation innovations (such as public transit and clean fuels) came about in Amsterdam in the late 1990’s, the population of the city actually declined by 8% to 695,000 as a result of war in the country and increased education levels of the population, which leads to slowing of overall population growth. However, the use of smart mobility during this time period did encourage more people to move to Amsterdam in the following years, as the population by 2014 had risen to by 16.5% to 810,0000.

   Question 4: What are the lessons learned from this exercise that may apply to creation of a smart city today?

   Smart strategy underlies a smart city: The incorporation of bicycles and bicycle infrastructure was not just a social movement- it was carefully thought out by political leaders and then integrated into society via campaigns and business support. This was a strategic move that aligned the city’s resources with the vision of the city. It may not have been possible without the support of the government and the people.

   Personification of information engages the community: The smart technology must have innovative ways of engaging the community. Personification of information is one such way. With Amsterdam’s initiatives such as Digital Road Authority, an incident management tool, or Vehicle2Grid, an energy management tool, citizens are drawn in by the interactive features so that they are fully engaged digitally with their community.

   Human centric design is the best way to move towards a smart society: Smart work@IJBurg is a work center in IJBurg, an area that experiences high traffic during peak office times. Thus, with this in mind, officials initiated this program to build work spaces near employees’ homes to minimize time spent stuck in traffic. Statistically, people spend 30% of their time traveling, and by minimizing this, Amsterdam can increase work productivity as well.

   Sharing is smart: As many of Amsterdam’s smart city initiatives have highlighted, sharing is the best way to economize the transformation to a more efficient society. For instance, the Smart Citizen Kit relies on citizens’ participation to collect and share data about important living metrics, such as temperature, humidity, noise, etc. This requires little additional input from city officials aside from monitoring the data because the citizens distribute the work amongst themselves by placing sensors outside their homes. City officials do not have to physically go out and collect this data, but they can still get the information they need through this data-sharing model.

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2. 

   Oakland's Finest on February 2, 2015 at 11:51 am

   Oakland’s Finest presents:
   Ancient Rome

   Question 1: Provide a short history of the city that is relevant to our topic (one paragraph)

   “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered) -Julius Ceasar

   Ancient Rome is an excellent example of an innovative city that implemented innovative technologies successfully. Ruled by a senate and constantly changing kings (Julius Ceasar, Romulus Augustus, and others), Rome grew quickly from a population of less than 10,000 in 400 BC to a staggering 1.2 Million in 1AD. The huge population expansion which occurred in Ancient Rome happened at such an accelerated rate because of innovations such as the legal code, aqueducts, concrete, and newspapers. Additionally, Ancient Rome essentially became a smart city by growing its own food, by sustaining a large population, and by offering value to the citizens and businesses in the form of highways and other key innovations. However, Rome eventually fell to its demise in 476 AD because of the emperor’s weak military, internal problems through government and political corruption, and Rome’s over reliance on slave labor.

   Question 2: List the innovations in date-order that contributed to growth
   753 BC: Calendar
   451 BC: Legal Code
   312 BC: Aqueducts
   200 BC: Concrete
   131 BC: Newspapers
   80 AD: Coliseum
   125 AD: Highway Network
   Question 3: Share specific data about how these innovations helped the growth (based on the data availability provide one of the following: population, # of immigrants/year, number of jobs created or per capita income, etc.)
   In 753 BC, the emperor Numa Pompilius added changed the calendar by adding two months to the calendar. These months were otherwise unaccounted winter days. By increasing the number of months in the calendar year, there was an increase in production because people worked more days. This was exhibited mostly in the agricultural industry resulting in larger food production. With the ability to supply food to more individuals, the population increased up to 1.65 Million in 100AD. In 451 BC, the legal code was created. By making the laws public, there was an increase in access to knowledge which subsequently led to an increase in educated citizens. Although literacy rates were close to 10% in Ancient Rome, the insurgence of laws created new jobs for citizens in the field of law. When aqueducts were built in ancient rome 312 BC, citizens of Rome could rely on a stable stream of water which led to an increase in agricultural production and the general health of the Roman population. The aqueducts contribution to the population growth from 30,000 in 300 BC to 150,000 in 200 BC. The next innovation, concrete (or opus caementicium) , was one that Rome created and used throughout its city. This technology was unique because it combined rocks with water to cement. Although there is not known data for how many jobs concrete created, Ancient Rome is infamous for having used slave labor to build its grandiose city. Based on this fact, it is safe to assume that the invention of concrete increased the amount of slaves that were needed to build the extensive underground while simultaneously developing the brick and concrete industries. Even though the slave business is ethically not right, the slaves provided value to the cities in the form of labor and increased revenue. In 131 BC, Rome created the newspapers which included legal, military, and civil issues. Unlike the paper newspapers we have in modern times, newspapers in Rome were scribed into stone and placed in areas with high traffic. By increasing the amount of knowledge that the public received, Romans became more educated on relevant issues, most likely resulting in an increase in education throughout Rome. Exact figures of the amount of educated citizens is not available from ancient documentation. Next, one of Rome’s greatest and most famous feats of innovation, was the coliseum. The coliseum included an extensive underground network of cages and rooms, a unique architectural shape, and held up to 80,000 people (a huge structure for its time). The events that took place in the coliseum brought valuable entertainment to the public. Gladiators that fought in the coliseum were sold for up to 25,000 denarii ($500,000) for 120 gladiators. These large sums of money being exchanged between slave suppliers and gladiator buyers increased the global trade revenue for Rome. In 125 AD the highway network was created in Rome which included highways and roads that were the most sophisticated transportation roads for their time. The roads allowed for Rome’s military to travel across the 1.7 Million square mile Roman empire which increased the overall protection and safety of Rome’s people and territories. This extensive highway network increased the trade that occurred within the empire because goods were more easily transportable. Additionally, many jobs were created for the building of the highways. h the workers that maintained the roads and those that acted as highway patrolman. Unfortunately there is no concrete data with how many jobs were created because historians have not been able to find evidence documenting job supply and demand.
   Question 4: What are the lessons learned from this exercise that may apply to creation of a smart city today? provide at least four bullets.

   The creation of the aqueducts provides us one of the most valuable lessons of asset utilization. The 11 aqueducts supplied 1,127,220 cubic meters (nearly 300 million gallons) of water to the city each day from the Apennine mountains. This exemplifies how the innovators thought about creating the smartest technology for their cities. They not only considered their limited natural resources (mountains in range of cities, water that was acceptable to drink), but they also calculated the result they required which was fresh water to over 1 million people. By utilizing their natural assets while innovating and creating new technologies, we can apply this lesson to our own smart cities in the sense that we have to consider how nearby natural resources can be combined with man-made innovations. In the example of our city, Oakland, we will be considering how Lake Merritt or Lake Temescal by Oakland can be utilized with a modern technology to benefit the city.
   Another important lesson to take away from this exercise is the need for an efficient and corruption-free work culture. One of Rome’s biggest demises was the corruption in its government which led to Rome’s complete political dysfunctionality. If Rome had stuck to its legal code which it created, the government might have been able to survive through the other turmoils. This can be applied to the political model of the smart cities that we work on. The businesses and governments that operate within smart cities must be free of corruption and must be adaptable to difficult times.
   The third lesson that we learned was how the building of the coliseum created a central entertainment center where the community could gather together. It is important for there to be an area that citizens feel like they may gather and be a part of the masses because it creates a sense of camaraderie and togetherness throughout out a city while solidifying a city’s culture. Smart cities may manifest this in modern times through large entertainment centers, like Petco Park in San Diego or the Madison Square Gardens in New York. These buildings tend to hold professional sports events and artistic performances.
   The last lesson we learned from Ancient Rome comes from the city’s extensive and sophisticated highway network. The erection of Rome’s highways increased trade while creating jobs, which overall positively affected Rome’s economy. Applying this lesson to smart cities, we can takeaway that it is important for a city to build and maintain a safe, sustainable, and well-planned transportation system. This ensures that goods can be transferred from the opposite end of cities. As well, many jobs will be created in the cities when the roads are being built which will help a city be smart.

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3. 

   Team Berkeley on February 2, 2015 at 3:41 pm

   Question #1: More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas today, and that number is expected to climb to 66 percent by 2050. In order to build sustainable communities that can be home to the expanding populations, smart city initiatives like the ones in Amsterdam aim to make cities livable for more people, as well as cut back on emissions and energy consumption.With collaboration from IBM, Cisco, government officials, and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences- the city’s infrastructure is becoming ultra energy-efficient. Among Amsterdam’s 17th century town houses and meandering canals, big changes occurred in 2009. On Utrechtsestraat, a major shopping avenue in the center of the Dutch capital, street trash is now collected by non-polluting electric trucks, while the electronic displays in local bus stops are powered by small solar panels. Also in 2009, 728 homes were given access to financing from Dutch banks ING (ING) and Rabobank to buy everything from energy-saving light bulbs to ultra-efficient roof insulation. The municipality, energy outfits, and private companies are expected to invest more than $1 billion by 2012. That figure includes a $383 million investment by local electricity network operator Alliander in so-called “smart grid” technology that uses network sensors and improved domestic energy monitoring to trim electricity use. Despite the heavy price tag, local planners say that by converting Amsterdam into a smart city, they expect the economy to be bolstered through public and private investment, as well as emissions to be cut by 40% by 2025

   Question #2 & #3:

   **17th Century: Canals

   For as long as they have been pumping water out of the lands in Holland, they have been building canals for travel, irrigation, and water removal. The famous canals of Amsterdam were a result of good city planning and easily serve as additional streets for transportation. Amsterdam was created with canals of concentric circles facing the IJ Bay in the seventeenth century. Three canals were designed with residential development in mind. The fourth outermost one was created for defense as well as excess water management. Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, has more than one hundred kilometres of canals, about 90 islands and 1,500 bridges. The three main canals, Herengracht, Prinsengracht, and Keizersgracht, dug in the 17th century during the Dutch Golden Age, form concentric belts around the city, known as the Grachtengordel.

   Source: http://www.holland.com/us/tourism/article/history-of-the-canals-in-holland.htm

   Growth: Tonnage of shipping before opening the North Sea Canal: 802,000 tons in 1876 and 1,734,000tons in 1882. This statistic represents the rapid growth and positive consequence of the canals in increasing trade and transportation.

   **16th/19th Century: Windmills

   After sea defenses were put up and dams were built to disconnect the water from the sea, windmills were used to drain the many lakes, swamps and wetlands. This drastically increased living conditions. Over the years, numerous windmills were built as they became larger and their water-lifting capacity increased. In the 16th century, due to adjustments to the structure of the windmill, it became possible to use them for several other purposes, such as for the production of oil, paper and to saw timber. Saw mills played an important role in the shipbuilding industry, enabling the construction of massive fleets. With these ships, Holland was able to reach a very dominant position in world trade during the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age. The amount of windmills in Holland reached a peak in the 19th century, with an estimated 9000 working windmills, performing all sorts of industrial functions. Towards the end of the century a lot of mills were fitted with newly invented diesel engines and electric engines.

   Growth: Overall, the new streamlined design doubled the energy output of a traditional mill. These wind turbines turned renewable energy into electricity.

   **1970’s: Bicycle Infrastructure

   Whilst the Dutch capital is now synonymous with urban bicycle use, this has not always been the case. The bicycle was introduced into the Netherlands in 1870, and apart from a dip during World War II as a result of rationing and massive bicycle theft by the occupying Germans, bicycle use remained high until the mid 1950s. Around this time, automobile traffic began to rise as cars become increasingly affordable and desirable. This brought congestion to central Amsterdam’s narrow streets and suburbanisation to its edges, reducing bicycle use in the process. At this stage, the rise of the car in Amsterdam was little different to that of many other European and North American cities. However, when road traffic accidents reached an all time high in 1972, Amsterdam’s embrace of the automobile took a different trajectory. Fueled by public dissatisfaction, safety became a high profile political issue, and as pressure from the Dutch people persisted, the bicycle became a government priority for the first time. The resulting legislation to discourage car use alongside extensive national investment in bicycle networks saw levels of cycling increase dramatically. The “founder” of the dutch communal bike share was Luud Schimmelpennink. Alongside radical youth movement, PROVO, Luud and colleagues gathered a handful of bicycles, which they painted white and distributed around the city of Amsterdam for free use by the public. This was called White Bicycle in 1965. A communal bike system still exists today, but has been retrofitted with Smart Card or cell phone technology, allowing for quick access and better tracking of fleet.

   Growth: Amsterdam now sees 85% of its residents riding their bike at least once a week, and has 450km of bike lanes. As a result, Amsterdam sees much higher air quality levels (67.39) than cities like Berkeley (37.50). Amsterdam also has a lower time index (in minutes) compared to San Francisco. 27 minutes vs 37.29 minutes. This is due to less traffic/congestion because of fewer number of vehicles on the road.Besides great air quality and low traffic, the bicycle lanes have also created a city that is walkable with easy access to nightlife, parks, and shopping. This attracted people from all over the world to move to Amsterdam. During the 1970’s, the number of foreign immigrants, primarily from Suriname, Turkey, Morocco, and Southern Europe grew strongly.

   **Numbers based off 2014 data from http://www.numbeo.com

   **2009-Present: Smart City Amsterdam

   Amsterdam has developed an open innovation platform to host all the components of transforming a historically smart city to one which represents the current and future technological trends. The initiative brings together a synergistic junction of policy proposals, urban planning, distributed energy and IoT technologies. It plans to connect people via a digital infrastructure to improve lives and sustainability.

   Source: http://amsterdamsmartcity.com

   Growth: Since 2009 ASC has grown to >100 partners and > 72 projects

   Question 4:

   1) One lesson learned throughout this activity is that Amsterdam not only has a longstanding tradition of innovation, but that its progress as a city has taken place in stages. In our meeting with HCL in New Delhi, we were given the analogy of the iPhone when considering the development of smart cities. Just as the iPhone 6 could not exist before the iPhone 5, so must smart cities develop slowly in phases just as Amsterdam has done. First, canals provided a means of transportation. Now, the bicycle has become an iconic image of transportation in Amsterdam.

   2)The ASC platform provides an open and transparent source which hosts various items that are involved in helping stakeholders understand the initiatives towards building a smart city. It is not only eye-catching, but also informative. This accessibility to information is crucial in the education aspect of new energy mechanisms, business models, and sustainable thinking. It also invites stakeholders to be civically engaged, which ensures another layer of sustainability. In this way, the story of growth can be discussed from multiple perspectives.

   3) During our travel study in India, we learned that innovations should be green, revenue generating, and provide additional social benefits if possible. After researching Dutch innovations, we noticed that canals, windmills, bicycle infrastructure, and smart grid all contributed to social mobility as well. With the case of bicycle infrastructure– it allowed workers who could afford an automobile a mode to get to work and build their wealth. Bicycle lanes also linked communities together bridging cultures and age groups. This was crucial because in the 1970’s, a huge surge of immigrants moved to Amsterdam. Bicycle infrastructure allowed for growth across all income brackets, age groups, and cultures. Moving forward, we should look into innovative solutions that aim to do the same.

   4) Amidst increased competition within a growing globalised economy, established nations and regions struggle to maintain their competitive positions as production moves offshore to lower-cost production centers. As such, the public sectors of those established nations and regions are seeking new approaches to foster innovation and to enhance competitiveness. One method that has taken root across various policy fields in many regions involves the linkage of firms, knowledge, and people—otherwise known as ‘clustering.’ Amsterdam, in addition to several other regions within the Netherlands, have taken advantage of clustering. In moving forward, Smart Cities could employ clustering to allow for the incubation and growth of innovation. When working together with other actors, the ability to implement innovative ideas grows rapidly. Also, clusters form new business arrangements in which new product or service innovations develop in order to exploit current consumer bases of each actor. Ultimately, these new developments will leverage and produce at lower costs and risks since the parties involved share common business goals.

   For more information, visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8uPinK19KUWRloazeIOQif9K1GUyFy-sxpeDPmkHNI/edit

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4. 

   Team San Jose on February 2, 2015 at 11:29 pm

   Contributed by: Christina Yu, Camron Savarani, Wesley Truong, Sue Ann Goh, Kaitlyn Tsai

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   Question 1: Provide a short history of the city that is relevant to our topic (one paragraph)

   More and more cities have taken on ‘smart city’ initiatives to increase overall sustainability, allocate resources more efficiently, and to address the needs of residents. Vienna, the capital of Austria with a population of over 1.7 million people, is a prime example of a city that has chosen to partake in “smart city” developments through the use of innovation in order to better the overall quality of life. Although Vienna has historically been been known for its architecture, music scene, rich history, over the past few decades, it has also become an international model city renowned for its environmental quality, infrastructure planning, and the overall high quality of life. Since 2009, Vienna has been consecutively ranked as the number one city with highest quality of life by Mercer due to its stability, rising living standards, and use of innovative technology to address city pain points. Yet, Vienna’s use of innovation to address common problems did not begin in 2009 but rather as early as the late 19th century. For example, in the 1870s, Vienna created a water system that would deliver clean water to all residents. In early 1900s, it became a center for the development of music, art, psychology, and natural sciences allowing it to experience a sort of “cultural innovation” that would shape Vienna for years to come. In the 1920s, the government initiated housing programs for its citizens through subsidization in order to increase overall affordability in the city. In more recent years, Vienna has attempted to address prominent issues such as environmental sustainability by enacting programs like Climate Protection Program (KLiP) in 1999. Since then, Vienna has continued to innovate in order to contribute the growth of the region. In the future, Vienna has plans to continue innovating in order to achieve its goal of being a “smart city” in Europe.

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   Question 2: List the innovations in date-order that contributed to growth (must be green to be smart)

   1873: First Mountain Spring Pipeline supplied every household with pure and fresh drinking (tap) water from the mountains.

   1900: Vienna was deemed the “cultural center” of Europe, standing at forefront of developments in music, art, psychology, and natural sciences. The city experienced radical artistic and intellectual innovation when it embraced the surging interest in arts and culture–many famous psychologists (i.e. Freud) and musicians (i.e. Mozart, Beethoven) were fostered in Vienna’s forward-thinking environment. Operas, concerts, theatrical performances, art exhibitions were held in city centers, and artists supported financially by state. Education programs were also highly advanced, with institutions such as University of Vienna winning 15 nobel prizes and attracting international attention as the epitome of arts and intellect in the 20th century.

   1920: Nearly 100,000 of the city’s 220,000 city-owned apartment units (~25% of total housing units) were built in 1920s and 1930s, with the goal of providing aesthetically pleasing, affordable housing to working class.

   1992: Car-free project proposed by city councillor, Christopher Chorherr, and after 3 years they removed the requirement that all households have a parking space, led to “Bike-City” and “Car Free Housing” projects

   2006: Construction of the Simmering Powerstation.

   Future: Smart City Plan (through 2050). The goal of the Smart City Plan is to provide the best quality of life for all inhabitants of Vienna, while minimizing consumption of resources. Three of the major initiatives that will be completed by 2050 are the 1) Urban Lakeside project, 2) Open Government Data project, and 3) Citizens’ Solar Power Plants project.

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   Question 3: Share specific data about how these innovations helped the growth (based on the data availability provide one of the following: population, # of immigrants/year, number of jobs created or per capita income, etc.)

   Vienna has invested an abundance of resources in its efforts to achieve innovation, which has led to the positive growth of various aspects of this sustainable city. From the First Mountain Spring Pipeline as early as 1873, Vienna placed the needs of its residents as a priority in order to ensure adequate health and safety standards. With the construction of almost 50% of the city-owned apartment units in 1920, these subsidized housing costs has kept rents low and as a result, wages low as well (due to the low, stable cost of living). The industrial sector has become more competitive internationally and remains a municipal priority even up till today. Vienna has focused on a balance of aesthetically pleasing, creative designs with ecological impact, to reap the maximum economic, environmental, and social benefits of its infrastructure.

   Other than that, Vienna’s Simmering Powerstation has been one of the greatest contributions to its sustainable growth. Functioning as the world’s largest forest-biomass power plant in Vienna’s 11th district, Simmering, it supplies electricity for 48,000 households and heats 12,000 households every year. As it runs on renewable energy using loose forest biomass, this biomass power plant reduces the need for fossil fuels by approximately 72,000 tonnes of coal (47,000 tonnes of fuel oil). It has also reduced carbon dioxide emissions in Vienna by around 144,000 tonnes annually. Over 80% of the city is powered through this powerstation, and the environmental and economic benefits it delivers acts as proof that Vienna is committed to clean and safe energy supply for its current and future generations.

   There are several other dimensions to a city’s “smartness,” and as a result, we can measure Vienna’s smartness via different metrics:
   • Vienna is a smart city as a measure of economic productivity:
   o Austria, the home of the city of Vienna, is the 11th richest country in the world with a GDP per capita of approximately $400 billion and a high standard of living for all its citizens
   • Vienna is a smart city as a measure of industry diversity and human capital:
   o Agriculture comprises of 1.7% of its GDP, industry comprises of 32.3%, and services 65.8% → service-oriented economies tend to have a greater emphasis on higher education and skills development of service workers
   • Vienna is a smart city as a measure of standard of living:
   o Only 6.2% of the population lives below the poverty line, compared to the U.S. which has approximately 14% of the population below the poverty line nationwide and about 23.5% of the population below the poverty line in California alone
   o Only 4.4% of the population is unemployed, compared to approximately 6% in the United States
   o The majority (45%) of the population are between the ages of 25-54 years of age, which is prime working age and indicate the presence of a large pool of young innovators and knowledge
   • Vienna is a smart city as a measure of its intellectual innovation:
   o The University of Vienna is the oldest in German-speaking education institution, world-renowned in humanities, and has produced 15 nobel prizes
   o The literacy rate within Austria (as measured by the number of people over the age of 15 who can read and write) is 98%, and only 3-4% of Austrians are estimated to be functionally illiterate
   • Vienna is a smart city as a measure of environmental sustainability:
   o More than 50% of the city is open green space such as parks, gardens, etc.
   o Named the world city “closest to sustainable waste management”

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   Question 4: What are the lessons learned from this exercise that may apply to creation of a smart city today? provide at least four bullets.

   • Questioning the status quo is critical: As Vienna experienced rapid economic growth in the 20th century, the city government mandated that every household, whether it was a house or apartment unit, had access to a parking space. Thus, the mindset that a car is a must-have to get around developed in Vienna until 1992. The city councillor Christopher Chorherr realized that the prevalence of an automobile culture would not be sustainable because Vienna is an old city whose original planners did not design the streets to be wide enough to accommodate large traffic flows, so driving in Vienna became a miserable experience. To accommodate the city’s future traffic needs, Chorherr successfully removed the requirement that each household must have a parking space, which led to “Bike-City” and “Car Free Housing “ projects that are still growing to this day. A careful analysis of the city’s traffic needs and current problems with the dominant modes of transportation will need to be done by smart city planners create an efficient transportation infrastructure.
   • Smartness comes in different forms: Vienna’s unique brand perception and growing tourist activity would not have been possible without its cultural revolution in the 1900’s–particularly its artistic and intellectual innovation. Had the city’s municipal government only focused on science and technology in the 20th century, which dominates the focus of smart cities around the world today, Vienna would not have fostered the iconic thought leaders in psychology (Sigmund Freud) and in music (Mozart and Beethoven) that contribute to its forward-thinking cultural reputation.
   • Citizens come first and the smart developments will follow: The majority of the initiatives, from accessible fresh drinking water to affordable housing for all, stemmed from the insufficient fulfillment of citizen needs and a public outcry for more equitable and accessible public services. This applies to smart city creation today, because as the representatives from TERI mentioned in India, “You must be agitated by something to innovate.” Within our own project for the City of San Jose, there are underlying private sector and public safety issues that affect citizen well-being and require government attention. All smart cities should first consider what fundamental problems are currently faced by the city’s people and address them with tech-enabled and sustainable solutions.
   • Open innovation is not bound by physical borders: The simple innovations of Vienna have had a profound impact on cultural innovation and sustainable technology development in other countries as well. The “simmering powerstation” adopted by Vienna actually originated in the Berlin Manufacturing Plant of Siemens, and Vienna incurred significantly lower costs as a result of utilizing the existing technology developed by Siemens and consulting their expertise. Vienna also shared its own artistic innovation with the world through the talents of musicians such as Mozart and Beethoven, as well as thought pioneers in the social sciences such as Freud, helping the global arts and culture scene progress as a whole. This type of mutually beneficial relationship is shared by several countries who trade and collaborate, particularly within the European Union.

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