Bidiversity

With more than half the world’s population now living in urban centers, we need to confront the economic, technological and societal challenges of city life, writes IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano. To pave the way for future growth, Palmisano argues, we need better public-private collaboration, universal standards for infrastructure systems and greater regulatory openness. “Every city will need to do some soul-searching,” he adds. “Today’s global economy is shaping up as a competition among the world’s cities.”

A few years ago, the world crossed a threshold. For the first time, more than half the human race is living in cities. By 2050 the figure will rise to 70 percent. We are adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.

This means the most important locus for 21st-century innovation—technological, economic, and societal—will be our cities. They present the most promising opportunity to make our planet smarter.

Cities bring together the systems by which our world works: education, transportation, public safety, and health care, among others.

We have the capacity to inject new intelligence into those systems. Enormous computational power can be delivered in forms so small and inexpensive that it is being put into phones, cars, and appliances, as well as things we wouldn’t recognize as computers, such as roadways (to monitor traffic) or rivers (to monitor pollution and better allocate water use). The data captured by these digital devices—soon to number in the trillions—will be turned to intelligence, because we now have the processing power and advanced analytics to make sense of it all.

Our challenge is to apply this technology to improving the places we live. Consider the applications:

Transportation

Car ownership in emerging markets is growing from less than one in 10 people to one in three. Integrated technology can allow cities to alleviate traffic. IBM helped Stockholm implement a congestion-management system that reduced traffic by 18 percent.

Energy and Water

Cities generate the bulk of CO2 emissions and account for 60 percent of all human water use. As urbanization levels increase, city leaders must satisfy demands for water and energy while promoting the sustainable use of resources. Malta, for example, is building a fully integrated national electricity and water system that will monitor usage, set variable rates, and reward those who use less energy and water.

Health Care

As populations grow, cities’ health-care systems will be pushed to the limit. In a smart health-care system, patients, doctors, and insurers can all share information seamlessly. Sainte-Justine, a research hospital in Montreal, is automating the gathering of critical research data and applying analytics to speed childhood cancer research.

Education

There are more than 15,000 local school districts in the United States delivering K-12 programs, with separate operating systems, measurements, and management processes. In an integrated system, parents and teachers can have a real-time view of the status and performance of every student, enabling schools to tailor learning programs to individual students.

There is a broad consensus in cities around the world on the need for fundamental change. But if we are really going to drive meaningful change, we need to get smarter about how we work together. Every city will need to do some soul-searching. Today’s global economy is shaping up as a competition among the world’s cities, regardless of their location, for talent, investment, and influence. Therefore, every city will need to make some decisions about what can truly differentiate it in that marketplace. What are its distinctive assets, capabilities, and limits? Once a city has clarified the end state it’s shooting for, its managers can optimize systems around that vision.

Cities of the future will have to be far more collaborative. I’m not talking just about public-sector/private-sector cooperation. None of the systems I’ve described is controlled by any one agency, sector, or industry. Therefore, we will need ongoing, structured collaboration among city agencies; across business, the nongovernmental sector, academia, and communities; and among cities and regional authorities. And that’s going to require that we develop new skills for both managing people and leading organizations.

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Source: Newsweek