Smart Cities

Smart about Cities Forging Links for the Future Francis Pisani 1 Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France, and NETEXPLO, 264 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France. © UNESCO and NETEXPLO, 2020 UNESCO’s ISBN 978-92-3-100386-8 This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://www.unesco. org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en). Original title: Smart about Cities: Forging links for the future Published in 2020 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France, and NETEXPLO, 264 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. Editing: Francis Pisani Cover photo: Getty Images Cover design, : Véronique Deshayes Typeset: Smart about Cities TISSER DES LIENS POUR LES VILLES DE DEMAIN Francis Pisani Acknowledgements As you know, this book was only able to see the light of day thanks to the infinite patience of those whose life and/or friendship I am lucky enough to share. I thank all those interviewed for their time as well as their tolerance in the face of my all-encompassing questions. Some sensitive passages and chapters were the subject of discussions, sometimes brief but always fascinating (for me), with Catherine, Fabien, whom I thank for his attentive readings, Isabelle, Albane Godard, Gérard Wolff, Jérôme Cohen, Joël Barba, Léa Massaré di Duca and Marc Botte. Without Thomas Bajas and his rigorous collaboration, the work on complexity and the systemic approach would never have seen the light of day, at least not before 2050. Anna Serena Xixons transcribed and translated the interviews, which I then shor- tened and extensively edited. The entire Netexplo team contributed. François Pistre, in particular, had the courage and the kindness to tackle my endless ability to produce typos. Mon Zen Tzen made it possible to have access to Chinese contacts. Marie-Joëlle Cousin made sure the text circulated smoothly within the team, despite my countless delays. Brigitte Lasry made it possible to synchronise everything with UNESCO. Bernard Cathelat gave me the benefit of his experience. After having done me the honour of inviting me to write this book, Thierry Happe patiently suggested changes to each of the chapters, as I wrote them. They gained from this, and so did I. Thank you, each and every one. Preface Cities across the world form a global network of capital, knowledge, services, information, and talent. They represent unique, collaborative spaces that can serve as laboratories for developing and experimenting with new ways to tackle urban challenges. Cities are also observatories, providing valuable information about what works and what does not when it comes to development. In line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and across all areas of its work, UNESCO advocates for a people-centered and place- based approach to urban development, emphasizing the need to “re-humanize” cities by reconnecting them with the people who inhabit them. Following last year’s publication on Smart Cities - shaping the society of 2030, this book, which was developed in collaboration with Netexplo, aims at continuing to explore different models and approaches to the development of cities, revealing the limits of “Smart Cities” as the concept of the city of the future. By observing how cities evolve and adapt, the author highlights the dynamic nature of cities and the importance for them to strengthen connections with their territories and other cities, creating social bonds between citizens and functioning as an ecosystem at human scale. «Smart» is often seen as a reference to the technological universe, leaving aside the human and sustainable development dimensions. When everything becomes “Smart”, the concept no longer suffices to capture the holistic challenges to which the cities of the future are confronted. 5 The Organization’s extensive experience with city networks and programmes provides a wealth of knowledge, data, and best practices related to the ongoing transformation of our urban spaces and lifestyles. Bringing this knowledge together in one place is the goal of UNESCO’s recently established UNESCO Cities Platform. This multidisciplinary platform brings together the Organization’s eight city networks and programmes, namely: UNESCO Creative Cities Network, World Heritage Cities Programme, UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities, Megacities Alliance for Water and Climate, Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience, International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities, Media and Information Literacy Cities, and UNESCO-Netexplo Observatory. The Platform fully illustrates UNESCO’s comprehensive and crosscutting approach to cities and sustainable urban development. It proposes sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges related to issues such as innovation and crea- tivity, talent and mobility, the environment and urbanization. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an agenda for people, the planet, prosperity, peace, and partnerships. Cities are the places where all these elements come together. If we are to succeed in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, this is where our greatest efforts must be concentrated. Ernesto Ottone Ramirez Assistant Director-General for Culture Moez Chakchouk Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 Chapter 1 14 THE URBANOCENE: WHEN “THE FATE OF OUR CITIES IS THE FATE OF THE PLANET” Chapter 2 50 FIVE CHALLENGES FOR THE CITY-PLANET Chapter 3 95 URBAN ARCHIPELAGOS Chapter 4 126 SMART ABOUT CITIES Chapter 5 163 OUR PLANET,OUR CITIES AND US...IN THE FUTURE CONCLUSION… 213 INTRODUCTION “The city was born with the road,” historian Georges Duby tells us. It is a set of interlinking crossroads. All roads lead to, or should lead to, cities, as the tens of millions of migrants heading there in search of a better future will tell you. They attract because we hope to find money, health, education, protection and the pos- sibility of meeting more of our fellow men. The disappointments come later. It is within cities that our modern political systems and philosophy were born. It is their considerable role in changing our planet - concentration of population, creation of wealth, environmental change - that invites us to understand the current era as an era of cities: the Urbanocene. This also reflects the structuring role they play today in organising our societies, after the Empires in the 19th century and the Nation States in the 20th. Everything flows through cities, both the problems we have identified and the solutions we seek. But the issue is not cities alone, cities that we could consider as a separate reality, detached from the rest, starting with the rural areas around them, with nature that finds its way into them. Cities are not concrete, traffic, pollution or extreme density, or, they are not only that. Never only that. Cities are organisms that breathe and evolve, that exchange with what surrounds them, near or far, that are constantly moving in space and time. They are strange, almost disobedient crea- tures, difficult to grasp, that won’t settle down. This challenge concerns us all because we are all stakeholders in cities. The fact that more than half of humanity today lives within urban regions – demarcated to better measure them – is impressive. But the important thing is that nothing that lives on the surface of our planet escapes their influence, their effects or their vibra- tions, both good and bad. It is urgent to examine them closely. I came late to this discovery. Convinced from a very young age that the world had to change (I was born in the middle of the war) and, noticing that nothing much was happening at home, I started to look elsewhere. A stay in Japan showed me that one could think otherwise, which opened my curiosity. I still had to find out “where is it all happening?”. I first followed the path of political action - as a journalist - in many theatres in Asia, Europe, Latin and, later, North America, Africa and even 8 Australia, when I understood that the answer to the “where” of my question could not only be geographical. It could also - perhaps even more - be happening in terms of information and communication technologies, computers, software, data flows and the networks that connect them. And it was after three tours of the planet in search of innovations that I opened up to the importance of cities, to their unique role. Fifteen years spent in the San Francisco Bay area had led me to meet geeks, brilliant and totally oblivious to what was happening elsewhere, how people would use the products they were flinging on the market with a vengeance, or the benefits that these could have for the people of Dakar, Cairo, Hyderabad, Ho Chi Minh City, Manila, Sydney, Shanghai or even Tokyo. Going to see “elsewhere”, I discovered “everywhere” people who innovated, geeks subjected to the pressures of their immediate environments, all different but rarely interested in people’s lives and practices. It was during a Netexplo Observatory conference that I suddenly realised that it was in cities that geeks were most likely to meet citizens and their problems, the society and its needs for improvement, for change.

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