Contact info: (852) 3480 4230, info@smartcity.org.hk
World Bank Smart Cities Conference
Dr. Winnie Tang, Founder and Chairman of the Steering Committee of Smart City Consortium (SCC), was invited to speak on behalf of Hong Kong at an international conference on Smart Cities organized by the World Bank Group. Experts from around 10 World Bank client countries gathered in Yokohama, Japan to share their insights and the latest progress in developing their own smart city.
The discussed topic was "Fostering Innovative Eco-systems and Citizen Engagement in Urban Service Delivery" which Dr. Tang believes are the two most important elements in the context of smart cities.
The panel discussion explored a number of critical issues, like challenges for building and sustaining an innovation eco-system in a city for job creation; ICT platforms and models for community engagement & collaborative design of policies and services; technical and logistical challenges in rolling out citizen engagement systems; and how and under what conditions these contribute to improved trust, inclusion of minorities or vulnerable population, improved service delivery among city dwellers; as well as how to bring changes in behavior around issues such as energy management, solid waste management, and road traffic management and parking, etc.
The audience were amazed by the successful transformation of Yokohama which means "harbor of the future" from an old town to a modern city. Its citizen who defined the city direction through massive surveys is the driving force behind. Minato Mirai 21 District is the focal point which was once a large shipyard until the 1980s, when development began to turn it into a new city centre. Its major accomplishments include integration of history, culture and art, as well as the utilization of renewable energy towards low carbon emission (eg. utility tunnels, moving walkway at Sakuragicho station, reusing rain and wastewater at the Landmark Tower, etc.), and the greener city centre.
India, currently, is heading for urbanization in an urgent manner to accommodate 750 million people within the next few decades. The government has therefore pledged to create 100 new smart cities. The issues are which cities to develop, and how to conserve the natural heritage for the future generations, at the same time to provide better living environment and more job opportunities.
Like India, many countries have a common concern on data transparency which is crucial for citizen engagement. Countries in Africa are moving ahead on the issue while African Development Bank just took a step forward to increase openness that visualizes global development aid. That's why the audience appreciated the importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) when Dr Tang raised it at the Conference. APIs allow users to download data in various formats that fit their needs. This is actually the critical success factor of the Los Angeles city portal GeoHub launched last year that value-added applications have been flourishing since then.
One of the speakers pointed out that "acquisition of technologies and smart city solution is not an issue". What really matters are a lack of internal capacity to plan, finance and implement smart city initiatives and projects, as well as governance and leadership to promotes openness and cohesive collaboration with various players in the cities (public-private-people-partnership).
The World Bank Smart Cities Conference was held by World Bank Group's Tokyo Development Learning Centre, in collaboration with the Government of Japan, City of Yokohama, the World Bank's Smart Cities Knowledge-silo-breakers (KSB) and Competitive Cities KSB. According to World Bank, Smart City is one of the topics with strong demands among its clients. The Conference is part of the World Bank's Smart Cities Technical Deep Dive (TDD). TDDs are an innovative approach to knowledge exchange including workshops, site visits, peer to peer knowledge sharing and action planning to foster operational projects.
The discussed topic was "Fostering Innovative Eco-systems and Citizen Engagement in Urban Service Delivery" which Dr. Tang believes are the two most important elements in the context of smart cities.
The panel discussion explored a number of critical issues, like challenges for building and sustaining an innovation eco-system in a city for job creation; ICT platforms and models for community engagement & collaborative design of policies and services; technical and logistical challenges in rolling out citizen engagement systems; and how and under what conditions these contribute to improved trust, inclusion of minorities or vulnerable population, improved service delivery among city dwellers; as well as how to bring changes in behavior around issues such as energy management, solid waste management, and road traffic management and parking, etc.
The audience were amazed by the successful transformation of Yokohama which means "harbor of the future" from an old town to a modern city. Its citizen who defined the city direction through massive surveys is the driving force behind. Minato Mirai 21 District is the focal point which was once a large shipyard until the 1980s, when development began to turn it into a new city centre. Its major accomplishments include integration of history, culture and art, as well as the utilization of renewable energy towards low carbon emission (eg. utility tunnels, moving walkway at Sakuragicho station, reusing rain and wastewater at the Landmark Tower, etc.), and the greener city centre.
India, currently, is heading for urbanization in an urgent manner to accommodate 750 million people within the next few decades. The government has therefore pledged to create 100 new smart cities. The issues are which cities to develop, and how to conserve the natural heritage for the future generations, at the same time to provide better living environment and more job opportunities.
Like India, many countries have a common concern on data transparency which is crucial for citizen engagement. Countries in Africa are moving ahead on the issue while African Development Bank just took a step forward to increase openness that visualizes global development aid. That's why the audience appreciated the importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) when Dr Tang raised it at the Conference. APIs allow users to download data in various formats that fit their needs. This is actually the critical success factor of the Los Angeles city portal GeoHub launched last year that value-added applications have been flourishing since then.
One of the speakers pointed out that "acquisition of technologies and smart city solution is not an issue". What really matters are a lack of internal capacity to plan, finance and implement smart city initiatives and projects, as well as governance and leadership to promotes openness and cohesive collaboration with various players in the cities (public-private-people-partnership).
The World Bank Smart Cities Conference was held by World Bank Group's Tokyo Development Learning Centre, in collaboration with the Government of Japan, City of Yokohama, the World Bank's Smart Cities Knowledge-silo-breakers (KSB) and Competitive Cities KSB. According to World Bank, Smart City is one of the topics with strong demands among its clients. The Conference is part of the World Bank's Smart Cities Technical Deep Dive (TDD). TDDs are an innovative approach to knowledge exchange including workshops, site visits, peer to peer knowledge sharing and action planning to foster operational projects.