Transcript 0:00 We need to implement a more advanced digital workplace, one that is smarter. We need our cities to be resilient, as I talked about, sustainable, equitable, secure, and smart. But what does smart really mean? 0:15 And I think that's where everybody has to evaluate it on their own basis. 0:22 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:40 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. And welcome to the month of June. This month we're gonna be talking all about cities and our infrastructure. 0:53 In fact, today marks the beginning of a series I will be doing on rebuilding our cities and what I will be looking at. 1:02 I will be talking about how we can make our cities more resilient, stronger, safer, and even more sustainable. 1:11 In the future weeks, I will be looking at how we can protect our cities in a new digital world, the emerging facility professional and transparency of data in facilities management, and sustainability and green building in our cities. 1:30 Today, let's start by laying the groundwork. More on that in a minute. We'll kind of get into greater details. But first, let me tell you a little bit about our guests, as always. 1:41 I will be talking to Michael King, urbanist and city and neighborhood planner, and he's got a lot to talk about cities in the future, of what cities are gonna look like. 1:51 And then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Mika Kananen. He is the co-founder and CEO of Akkuret. So we've got some really awesome guests. I love when we talk to really super smart people. So let's get started. 2:04 The COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot about our cities. 2:09 Back in 2019, Kantar predicted urban transportation would reach a tipping point by 2030 when the car would no longer be the dominant means of transport. Now, uh, I would have to agree back in 2019. 2:28 Now, I'm not so sure I would concur with that prediction, and the company's recent research would actually concur with me as well. 2:38 Now it suggests the pandemic has led to a significant decline in the number of trips made in major cities. 2:47 In fact, the data shows a 30% drop in travel volume to work, places of education, and leisure activities during the pandemic, and I think we'd all agree with that. 3:00 Perhaps now, though, that things are opening back up, things will change again, and we all kinda can hope, and we all are saying we wanna get back to normal. 3:08 I personally wanna say where it's a better normal, and we've learned a lot. But how quickly is it all gonna change? At the same time, we're seeing a new paradigm emerge in cities. 3:18 You know, candidly, this was happening, if you really look at all the numbers, even before the pandemic, but it is now kind of being sped up, and I mean sped up exponentially. 3:33 Today's cities need to be resilient, inclusive, smart, secure, and sustainable. But what does that really mean? 3:41 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Center for Enter-Entrepreneurialship uncovered several key lessons learned from the pandemic, and these are really important because it kinda gives you this understanding that the impact here will help us build back these better cities, and we really need better, smart, efficient cities. 4:06 And I'm only gonna highlight a few of them, the ones that I think are really important for us to kinda look at, so here we go. 4:13 The first lesson is COVID-19 called for a stronger focus on resilience in all areas, and I think we can all agree, we recognize we need to be prepared for the future shocks that might occur in our cities, and certainly our infrastructure. 4:31 We are all talking about anything, you know, from a pandemic, a hurricane, and as we've all seen, a cyber breach. 4:39 Smart people are working, you know, pretty hard to put safeguards in place should a se- pandemic or another crisis happen again. And I know there's a lot smarter people than myself trying to figure this all out. 4:52 But a few weeks ago on my show, my guest, Lulu Tutor, called these folks immune stewards. Now, what a cool name that is, right? We need people in cities to prepare for such disasters. We need immune right buildings. 5:08 But at the same time, we can't forget about green buildings. We, we need these green buildings. Which brings me to the second lesson. 5:18 The Organization for An- Economic Cooperation and Development Center for Entrepreneurship suggests, and don't laugh, I mean, 'cause this is really kind of interesting, the Zoom effect or the Greta effect have accelerated entrepreneurial awareness. 5:36 Now, this will help us make the transition to clean mobility and a circular economy more politically and socially acceptable. 5:45 Personally, I don't care what effect you want to label it, as long as every generation is getting it and doing something about it. 5:55 In fact, we're seeing consumers across the globe changing their behavior, seeking out more s- sustainable goods, products across the globe. And to me, that means we're all getting it. 6:08 Every generation is starting to get it. So building on that, the third lesson learned from this crisis is-Inequality across people and places. 6:20 This is especially true in large cities where vulnerable groups such as migrants, the poor, women, the elderly, were really hit hard. 6:31 This is a real problem that we need to continue to address, and I think that's very important. The other issue that I hope is not happening, that we're starting to create this unfair housing issues along the w- the way. 6:45 You know, I'm sure that we've all heard the crazy stories, and I'm not going to address them here, but we should all be aware of what started, you know, this crazy housing issues and, you know, paying way more money for housing and all these other things. 7:01 There's a lot of issues that can be started here, but we need to be paying attention so we don't start creating even more issues that we don't wanna have to address later. We should be looking at it now. 7:12 So this is the fourth lesson now, which is that trust in government increased in some countries and decreased in others, and I bet you can guess which is happening here in the United States. This is an important lesson. 7:28 We need to really be focusing on this. It is something I was talking about before the pandemic, but this has certainly heightened it. Trust. We need trust. 7:40 We need to trust our cities, especially when it comes to digitization, which brings me to the fifth and final lesson: digitization. 7:50 You know, I love that word because this became a major game changer during the crisis, and it will remain a component of the better normal, as I like to call it, a better normal, because digitization is so important. 8:05 We need technology. We need to make our cities more resilient, and that's what technology's going to do, and digitization is going to do it. So let's dig into that. With all of this in mind, how do we go back to work? 8:21 What will our future workplace look like? What will our future cities look like? Now, here's what I think maybe should happen. 8:32 Our local governments need to create an infrastructure that will have vast amounts of remote monitoring with endless applications. Now, how exciting is that? 8:44 We have been using digital first sensor monitoring for things like air quality, asset tagging, lighting, HVAC, fire suppression, security, inventory management, and so much more. But is it enough? 9:01 We need people to feel comfortable going back into our buildings, going back into our cities. 9:09 Kantar's Mobility Futures 2021 looks at how COVID-19 is changing mobility in cities, and here is what it found. Its five themes it's recognized in 2019 have evolved, and these include economic, 9:28 ecological, technological, political, and sociocultural. Now, and since the pandemic, it has added actually two new forces that will kind of share the future of urban mobility. 9:43 The first is that remote work is a game changer. We all know this. 9:47 I think we all agree with this, 'cause roughly 65% of people are currently working from home with another 50% planning to continue remote work post the pandemic. 10:00 The second is cities must act fast to transform, which leads me to my opinion today, which I think we want to talk about. We need to implement a more advanced digital workplace, one that is smarter. 10:16 We need our cities to be resilient, as I talked about, sustainable, equitable, secure, and smart, but what does smart really mean- mean? 10:25 And I think that's where everybody has to evaluate it on their own basis, and we need to foster trust between the citizens, the government, and the companies creating those technologies, and that's what I'm really a- addressing here. 10:41 And I'm not going to espouse that this is going to be an easy task, but we need to start moving in, in that direction, and we need to move fast. To be frank, our cities right now are pretty dumb. 10:56 We need them to be smarter, and we're not living up to our potential here. We have so many things we can do. We need to consider the old expression, we need to work smarter, not harder. 11:10 This is true in our workplaces, and it is true in our cities. We need to make them work for us, for all of us. So here's my tip for today. 11:23 Sit down and make a list of everything you would like in your business or in your city. Let's strategize here for just a minute. What does it look like? Not today, but what do you want it to look like? 11:39 What would be remotely monitored? What would be automated? Who is going to do the automating, the automation that you want? Who is managing all of this data, all of that data science that we talk about? 11:56 What does this look like for you and all the people that are gonna be a part of it? We have to start now. Let's create a plan for our businesses and our cities to start that journey that I always talk about. 12:12 It starts with creating this roadmap, and remember, we need to keep resilience, sustainability, security, equity, and technology at the heart of all of it, at everything we do. 12:26 Because if we don't, we're missing the mark, and it's not... We're not gonna achieve the goals that we want. So I want you to join us in the coming weeks as we dig into this topic of rebuilding our cities. 12:40 We'll be talking all about how to protect our cities in this new digital world, the emerging facility professional and what that's gonna look like, and sustainability and green building in all of our cities, because that's what's gonna be so important for us as we get back to work and we feel more comfortable for all of our workers. 13:02 All right. That's all the time I have for this segment. As always, what I want you to do is I want you to send me your thoughts on social media. I want you to send them to me at connectedwmag. 13:13 What do you think about your cities? What do you think about getting all of our workers back there? We're gonna talk about this all month long, and I'm really curious about what you think about it. 13:22 In the meantime, check out our website. We've put up some new articles, a lot of things about making sure things are secure, so there's some great content up there. 13:29 Check out our website at connectedworld.com, our show website at thepeggySmedleyShow.com. 13:35 Now, uh, we're gonna take a quick commercial break, and we're gonna be right back and talk more about what's going on in our cities. 13:40 As always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back. [upbeat music]
