Integrated Thinking for Sustainable Cities and Communities

The theme for the 2017 Sustainable Integrated Cities International Conference – held in Perth on 4th and 5th December 2018 – was ‘Integrated Thinking for Sustainable Cities and Communities.’

I joined a strong speaker line up which included Michael Nolan, Chair UN Global Compact – Cities Programme, Brad Pettitt, Mayor at Fremantle City Council, Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, and Larry Quick, CEO of Resilient Futures. 

My presentation focussed on smart sustainable cities and explored what a smart city really means.

There  is a lot of commitment to the idea of smart cities, a lot of investment in the concept and a lot of effort being put in by people, governments, corporations and educational institutions around the world to develop approaches to smart cities.

While this is exciting, in order for all this attention and progress to be worthwhile and effective, a significant piece of work needs to be done for us to really understand what ‘smart cities’ means, what we want a smart city to be, what it should/could look like and what the objectives and impacts are on the communities who use the city.

Smart cities are a concept that in reality means different things to different people. What does a smart city mean to a technician? What does it mean to the policy makers? What does it mean in the minds of the community?

See how the ideas unfolded … view my presentation here.