Innovative solutions for creating sustainable cities

Welcome to this HS talk on city innovation to improve sustainability. My name is Sylvia Albert.

I am a professor of strategy and leadership at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. I spent many years in community economic development administration and as a management consultant developing smart and intelligent cities. This led me to contribute as a researcher to the Intelligent Community Forum in New York; the Global Forum on Digitalization and Transformation in Europe; the Smart Cities Challenge in Canada; and the publication of several books guiding cities in their planning for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

This first talk will begin with an explanation of the imperative for cities to be engaged in sustainability, and is followed by examples of innovation undertaken by cities worldwide. More details and examples are available in the book entitled 'Innovative Solutions for Creating Sustainable Cities' published by Cambridge Scholars. Each chapter is written by international experts about their own city or their contribution to the development of an innovative idea. Let's get started on all of those topics that create innovative, sustainable cities.

I cannot say it better than this quote from the European cities and Towns Charter on sustainability: "In the course of history, our towns have existed within and outlasted empires, nation states, and regimes, and have survived as centres of social life, carriers of our economies, and guardians of culture, heritage and tradition. Towns have been the centres of industry, craft, trade, education, and government. Sustainable human life on this globe cannot be achieved without sustainable local communities. Local government is close to where environmental problems are perceived and closest to the citizens and shares responsibility with governments at all levels for the well-being of humankind and nature. Therefore, cities and towns are key players in the process of changing lifestyles, production, consumption, and spatial patterns. It basically states that cities need to play an increasingly larger role in sustainability. They are the best places to initiate change because they are the point of convergence for everything to happen. Citizens and businesses who will be the largest contributors to fixing problems have a vested interest in making sure that the places that they live and work in will be sustainable. It is easier for cities, communities, and even metropolitan areas to establish goals that become a common vision, engage people, and are worked on by a collaborative of stakeholders. National and international governments and agencies can develop policies and even provide subsidies to incentivize action, but these are meaningless if not implemented at the local level. Action needs to be undertaken by individuals, civil society, for-profit organizations, and who better to develop these networks of actors that will fix wicked problems than leaders, formal and informal, in communities working in partnership and in collaboration with one another. It was the way that our cities were built - yesterday a community effort to raise a barn, today a data and technology supported collaborative community effort to make our cities healthier and more livable, and citizens are still at the center of it all. Smart cities began this journey back to resilience by finding ways to use technology to become more efficient and improve services for its citizens. Intelligent cities added a layer that required us to think about the ways that we collectively promote and develop innovation, partnerships, and establish the infrastructure needed for everyone to succeed. The idea behind sustainability adds a third layer that is more systemic in nature: if we want a city or community to last, it must have the right balance of well-functioning political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, and legal systems. Among the many challenges that cities face these days, we can include digitalization or the process of placing much of our business and personal interaction online. It is a challenge for members of society who do not have equitable access to affordable, high-speed technologies and adds risk all around in the form of competition, innovation, talent acquisition, cybersecurity, ethics, equity and service, or in the level of reliance by all of our institutions and infrastructures on technology. Globalization is another significant challenge that has changed the landscape for cities worldwide, placing new constraints on economic development, supply chains, and an increasing emphasis on the combined impact that we have on the environment, on the social well-being of people, and on sustainable governance, or what we call ESG. These factors affect everyone and needs concerted action. If enough cities take a piece of the sustainability challenge, it can have a snowball effect worldwide. We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment that requires innovative, flexible thinking for these VUCA challenges. These need strong networks of talents to adapt to change. Technology and globalization have given us unprecedented opportunities to develop stronger organizations and locales. When cities build strong locales ready to meet ESG and VUCA challenges, they are building sustainable foundations.