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19/03/2017 Smart cities, smart citizens Pan European Networks : Pan European Networks http://www.paneuropeannetworks.com/interview/smartcitiessmartcitizens/ 1/2 Smart cities, smart citizens 07/10/16 Renato de Castro World eGovernments Organization of Cities and Local Governments One of the keynote speakers at this year’s Disruptive Technologies Conference in London, UK, which PEN attended as media partner, was Renato de Castro, an international advisor at the World eGovernments Organization of Cities and Local Governments. More commonly known as WeGO, the organisation is a global cooperative body for cities and local governments which pursues sustainable urban development based on egovernment (the use of ICT to improve public sector facilities and services). Sitting down with PEN after his address, de Castro elaborated on the challenges involved in communicating egovernment strategies across the globe, why simply having smart infrastructure in place isn’t enough to make a city smart, and why Europe needs to start thinking differently about how it spends. What are some of the main issues you have experienced when promoting egovernment toolkits and frameworks to cities around the world? UK OFFICE : +44 (0)1260 273 802 BRUSSELS OFFICE : +32 (0)2 895 5709 Historic Dutch towns to introduce ‘rules of conduct’ New law to boost Ukrainian language Study suggests investment in innovation is crucial © Mukul Soman 19/03/2017 Smart cities, smart citizens Pan European Networks : Pan European Networks http://www.paneuropeannetworks.com/interview/smartcitiessmartcitizens/ 2/2 Tweet Mindset is one issue. By that I mean, how society understands citizenship and the role of the government. When it comes to changing this mindset and encouraging people to become more participatory as citizens, the approaches that are effective are the ones that are top down, i.e. the ones that come from the government. I think those are working very well, but at the same time, some societies are not yet ready for this. In democratic countries, often you vote and that’s where your responsibility ends. That’s as far as you participate. It’s obligatory to vote in some places, Brazil for example, but less than 10% of people in Moscow vote. Nonetheless, though it has a very low rate of voters, Moscow’s citizens are very participative now in co creating the new models of government there. So I think that egovernment can inspire a deep sense of democracy. You don’t need to go anywhere to choose who you want to elect, but you can still have influence and can still feel as though you’re part of the government. How are you working to overcome the digital divide? What I’m trying to do is be a bridge between the technology providers, those companies which are trying to bring forward new, disruptive technologies, and the governments. At the moment they are still speaking two different languages – or, rather, they are speaking the same language but have two very different ways of thinking. They are talking about the same result, but why they are doing it and their proposals for getting there are completely different. Politicians must be successfully interpreted by the market, and vice versa, in order that they can work together to come up with solutions. How would you address some of the inequalities between European member states when it comes to smart infrastructure? We already have the infrastructure we need to go smarter – that’s done. But just having it isn’t necessarily an advantage because the the infrastructure itself isn’t necessarily good or bad. Take Hyperloop as an example: Hyperloop is a project of Elon Musk which essentially works like the mailing systems of the 1970s – people and goods are transported inside lowpressure capsules through tubes at some 1,200km per hour. In London, for instance, you have five airports – all of them a fair distance from one another. If you have this fastspeed underground system, you can go between Heathrow and Stanstead in three minutes – it’s like going from one terminal to another terminal. What is disruptive is not just the technology but also the cost: this would cost just 60% of the cost of a highspeed train, so the countries that are developing it would have to spend much less in order to get this very updated technology. Again, the money is there – from both the private and public ends – but it’s the mindset that’s the key. What are your thoughts on the European activities promoting smart cities? I’ve been living in Europe now for a long time, and I can see that we are still very much in the process of changing the way we manage projects. Barring the crisis of 2008, Europe comes from a very prosperous time in which we enjoyed a lot of common money that we could use however we wanted, and I think that cities and researchers and everybody else in Europe are still very used to that way of working – to doing projects only with public or common money. What we need to understand is that a smart city is a place that people live. And people are consumers, and companies want to sell to consumers. If you understand all that, then you can see that private companies are here to invest in the smart city. So what we need to do is put our efforts into creating very attractive tools to guarantee that investment. I think we are a little bit slow in this process. It’s not about taking money from people to invest in people; it’s about allowing a company to invest in something which will not only bring real benefits to society but also generate revenue for the city. It’s a new citybusinessoriented mindset, and it’s very difficult, but we must move faster at it. The full interview with Renato de Castro will be available in issue 21 of Pan European Networks: Science and Technology, available in December. Share © 2017 Published by Pan European Networks in Congleton, United Kingdom. Co. Reg. No: 7652562 Terms & ConditionsUseful Links Advertise with usSubscribeContact us 57Like
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