Re-designing our cities for the Future - Saher Sidhom
Described as one of the world’s ‘best strategy minds’ in Heather Le Fevre’s Brain Surfing book, Saher Sidhom comes to Future Summit 2020 to share his views on how we re-design our cities for the new realities. Saher set up Hackmasters, as an emerging technology, design network focused on future industries, products and scenario planning. HACKMASTERS simulates and engineers future eco-systems with multiple stakeholders to understand and build future markets. Saher and his team work with government clients in the UK and abroad on Mobility, Retail, Aviation, Artificial Intelligence, and Smart Cities.
We live now and in the future in a world of rapid urbanisation, smart cities, and a new wave of re-designing cities. What do you see as the main effects of the Covid crisis on our cities?
In terms of re-designing cities Covid has pushed forward concepts and approaches that previously were almost an environmentalist’s fantasy before. It firmly put the quality of our environment onto the agenda as CO2 levels reduced, people were literally able to breath better and see the stars that were previously were hidden behind smog. It became clear just how much we have neglected the environment in our cities. Whilst some of these work on a superficial level e.g. widening foot paths, more cyclist lanes, clapping for health workers etc the real changes to some of the taken-for-granted fundamentals are now required.
Some of the essentials that need to be re-evaluated are: mobility, pollution, health, digital infrastructure, real-estate and security. Take the idea of 15minute cities. Pioneered in Paris, Milan and Melbourne. Where urban necessities are within 15 minutes by foot or bike. As we work remotely we don’t need to commute as much and the need for a hyper-local mode of living becomes a new norm. Whilst most cities are not designed this way the swathes of empty roads during lockdown has forced decision makers and the public to really think about how to re-build cities instead of building around cars we should build around communities and local ones. On the real estate front, the prevailing paradigm is to bring industry clusters together for sharing ideas and opportunities. In a remote world this might need to be re-imagined. In reality a digital first work culture can de-couple us from high rent offices and high rent housing that can only benefit the real estate developers.
A virtual work culture can open up and shift the spot light onto the rest of the world instead of the physical area of the city where people congregate. Real estate whether for business or leisure needs to be thoroughly revaluated in terms of the models and the use it is intended for. Multi-purpose, alternative use of real estate should be considered. For example an empty school during the weekend that could be used as a community centre for the locals. There are plenty of other examples but we would all be missing a massive opportunity to challenge the prevailing paradigms where cities are built around cars instead of communities, real estate built to single purpose use instead of multi/alternative uses, to re-wilding of the city. At a much higher level we need to re-imagine what the people really need from their cities in a post covid world.
What should mayors and local authorities look at when re-designing cities?
Sadly most city re-design agendas are driven either by big tech, big consulting or big politics. All seek to have an un-fair share of the public purse to create various, almost always, disparate and disjointed re-design of smart city initiatives. Often to serve the needs of business instead of the very people we are all meant to serve. The people of the city.
I would like to offer a different starting point for mayors. Our starting point should be the citizens of the city. What is a city but its people? At the most fundamental level of a city the nucleus of the design should be the citizen not the system. The sense not the structure. The master question any city official should start with is:
How do we enable our citizens to be the best version of themselves?
When we try and answer this question and in all our own research there are 3 major basic needs that have to be serviced. Firstly, citizens firmly want an environmentally friendly place that they can live in with their families. Secondly, they want a strong sense of belonging, family, friends and community. Last but not least, they want significant opportunities for personal, social mobility and wholistic growth. In short they want to upgrade their lives, their environment and their relationships. This has huge implications to what officials should consider. Starting from the citizen up instead of from the system down is a radical way of re-designing cities. Officials need to heavily involve their citizens in a participatory and interactive ways to consider how they are doing the following:
What are the essential environmental initiatives that significantly influence the quality of citizen’s lives? How can the city offer a high level of collective wellbeing? What are the initiatives and programs that build community, social cohesion and social capital? How can the city be socially inclusive, welcoming, trustworthy not just a ‘factory for living’?
What are the education, economic and opportunities for driving growth in the city? How can a city offer meaningful work and opportunities for creating new, exciting and platforms for productive creativity?
When looked at through these lenses having a direct dialogue and participatory design practices that effectively involve citizens will be essential to deliver a city that people want to live in where the quality of life is put first before the needs of tech monopolies or business interests.
How do you support solution creation and implementation for better futures in our cities?
Start 10 years ahead and work backwards. In our work of building future scenario plans and strategic bets to invest in, we map out some fundamental changes on a ten year horizon. For example; at the environmental level almost all cities in the northern hemisphere will need to de-carbonise to avoid catastrophic climate change. At a social level income-inequality, lack of social cohesion and decline in trust will force us to reevaluate neo-liberalism, capitalism and classical models of government. On the economic level the automation of jobs, ageing population, energy, water, and food revolutions will force cities to radically change their view of how they compete nationally and internationally. In a hyper digitalised, automated knowledge economies of the future the physical location may very well become irrelevant. What should we do?
Change the system not the silo.
Environment. Building city wide, private / public sector programs that de-carbonise the city will be essential. There are many ways this could be done. For example, electrification of vehicles, working with clusters of industries such as the fashion industry to systematically improve their emissions and re-wilding cities to become civilised jungles not concrete mazes. Society. As we are at the dawn of automation of jobs and codification of knowledge we need to ensure that what we are offering society are new means of distribution of wealth power, relevant education and wellbeing. For example, as education faces a crisis of purpose new models of what is being taught, where and when it is being taught will largely de-couple and de-centralise from classical institutions.
The knowledge economy will be modular not campus based. It will be need based and innovation focussed around new industries from cellular agriculture, to synthetic food to astroid mining. Economy. The current neo-liberal model of the economy is not only un-sustainable but hugely un-suitable to where we are heading. For example the concentration of knowledge in a handful of global companies will forever make it harder for governments to legislate, tax and for cities to realistically compete.
New forms of collaboration, automation and integration of trade and technology will mean that a whole earth perspective will need to be applied to how we deliver more than mere growth but stability by liberating knowledge and democratising the opportunity that comes with it. Ultimately for cities this means that they have to support radical change at systems level, systematically involving multiple stakeholders to change the system. Become exceptionally good at collaboration and multi-party deployment of programs. Change procurement practices that favour big tech at the expense of innovative smaller but scaleable solutions. Remove the bureaucracy and the corruption where they might hinder true progress.
Some of the business opportunities to be considered in the urban landscape.
Environment. Any businesses involved with de-carbonisation, re-wilding of cities and reinvention of food and agriculture are a good start. While we might be in the midst of an AI and automation revolution the opportunity is to capture the next wave of businesses that can enable cities to be resilient and sustainable from a food supply and energy associated with the creation and delivery of a meal. For example, synthetic meat consumes 95% less land 45% less energy 96% less water and 96% less emissions. Agreed it might not be tasty enough just yet but one thing for sure we simply don’t have enough animal based protein for everyone going forward.
Society. The notions of social mobility, social capital and social cohesions are fundamental for enabling a thriving, liveable and vibrant city. This goes across multiple ways of creating value both for citizens and business. A new wave of business that are stakeholder driven not shareholder owned are the ones that are likely to build new, meaningful and sustainable opportunities. For example, the hyper localisation of business es that leverage a local economy model where both the city, suppliers, makers and consumers are within reach of each other are likely to thrive.
Economy. As new economic models begin to emerge driven by automation and codification of process and knowledge new business opportunities will emerge. Anything in the space of digitising healthcare for example will be vital for resilient efficient cities. From fully automated healthcare solutions where patient data is leveraged to provide bespoke diagnosis treatment and bespoke medicine to avatar based counselling. We’ve developed a futuristic concept to minimise the cost of health care by utilising the entire genome of the family, their actual diet and life