As promised here
is the Future Cities side of the Geo Big 5 write up. The content was kindly
provided by our events group manager Rollo Home, I have done some reordering so
any comprehension issues are probably my fault.
 |
| Glasgow Future Cities Team |
The event was
opened with a short but well aimed introduction from Councillor Gordon Matheson
(leader, Glasgow City Council) who congratulated the AGI on reaching 25yrs
"and looking good on it". He stressed the council’s commitment to
opening up their data to public access through the portal where 85 data sets are currently published (including planning applications)
including data from Ordnance Survey and the MET office. The focus is very much
on putting the data into the hands of the citizen, as seen in the example of
the customised city dash-board. The Councillor was keen to stress that while
technology is great it is simply an enabler and it is the approach and
political will that is the key. Glasgow have a clear desire to be a global
reference point for future cities.
Andrew
Collinge (Assistant Director, Greater London Authority) gave the first key note
for the day, and started by outlining how “City Thinking” was now en vogue and
thus he’d stress that it wasn’t the case of London vs. UK as currently being
portrayed in the media, but “a Tale of, well, lots of cities” each emerging.
However London is large, with a population that will exceed New York’s by 2016.
Like Glasgow, London has embraced open data, and the portal drives 20% of traffic
to the Council site. He then went on to give an example of some of the
challenges London faces: 400K new jobs are needed, 40K new homes will required
and 4,000 extra classrooms. One practical solution that the Future Cities
approach has provided has been the School Atlas
that allows authorities across London to see classroom provision and demand and
plan accordingly, in the spirit of open data this is a public facing site.
 |
| Institute of Future Cities |
An
interesting point made was that these problems have not just be realised – the
concept of Future Cities was identified by 50 urban scientists meeting in
1960's US and outlining the issues of 'regeneration of cities needed to keep
pace of demand’.
The plenary led
into the Future Cities Steam which was chaired by Graham Colclough. A
surprising thing about these sessions was the strength of continuity of the
message between speakers. There was limited disagreement about the scope and
scale of the problems being addressed by the Future Cities concept nor, the
fact that location based data had an important role to play in tackling these
problems. What was perhaps more surprising was that the focus of the
discussions was entirely on the value of using geospatial thus we did not hear
about how an application was developed and deployed, but about the reasons that
they were developed, the success of the uptake, and the outcomes.
Steven Revill
(Future Cities Glasgow) started the Future Cities session with a fuller review
of the work already referenced by Councillor Matheson. The Open data market to
“empower Glasgow” was a prominent thread of the discussion. This was achieved
through the web portals and out outlets such as the My Glasgow Apps. In regard to adoption of
the services, Steven reflected on how useful the branding had been to engage to
younger audience, as was the premise
of presenting data stories. The platform itself is developed quickly with
releases often made in an attempt to maintain momentum to the project. The
search for new data is on-going with GCC energy consumption of all public
sector and education buildings being the latest. This has enable people to
scrutinise energy use putting buildings that use excessive energy in the public
eye and driving change
A question
from the floor raised the issue of data quality. Apparently operational data
from GCC is good, but there is discrepancy and an issue with completeness.
However publishing the data is helping address and potentially resolving this
problem. Making it public is driving a change in behaviours.
Dr Diarmad
Campbell (British Geological Survey) had a very different focus, and that is
the sub-surface. BGS have an Urban Strategy for the simple reason that 80% of
the population live in such areas, and therefore the activity that requires
geological analysis (structures) is concentrated in these areas. While
internationally other cities such as Oslo and Amsterdam have huge investment in
understanding the underground, in the UK there has not been such a history of
investment. BGS are now working with GCC to produce a complete and detailed
model of the sub-surface. Many urban areas, not least Glasgow have a complex
sub surface environment from legacy industry as well as industrial processes
and BGS are driving towards multi channel data availability to allow for better
provision and better decision making.
George Kirk from Scottish Power Energy
Networks discussed integrated energy planning, that is dealing with power from
station to the plug. He explained how low carbon is a key part of Glasgow City
development but has so far no being tackled fully. Previously there has been no
shortage of data, but a limited understanding of how we use that data to make
decision. Now there is an opportunity to inform the profession and public alike
through visualisation and data availability
The afternoon
session moved the focus of the discussion from Glasgow and the UK to the global
context, and this was kicked off by Richard Bellingham (Institute for Future
Cities, Strathclyde University) by presenting the issues of the changing world
and in particular a growing and aging urban population. These are challenges
that cities have no control over but cities are required to respond to them.
The scale of the problem is immense, billions of people moving to cities in the coming decades – which are creating patterns of mega-cities across the world. However we have to consider that this migration is a voluntary process. Cities are desirable places to live. They also act as engines for economic development and offer a solution to our energy crisis in that they are also more efficient per head on almost every measure.
 |
| Teresa and the Future Cities Catapult |
Finally
Teresa Rico Gonzales (Future Cities Catapult) rounded the session off with the
work that the TSB is funding through the Catapult in order to mitigate the vast
challenge of rural to urban migration. However she was keen to stress that the
FCC is not reinventing the wheel but looking to utilise the expertise that is
out there and enable collaborative creation of the solutions, a common them across
the afternoon’s speakers.
The
motivations of the FCC are focused on particular outcomes; the primary is a
duty of care (as a remit of the TSB funding), but other more tangible (and commercial)
targets are related to generating exportable urban innovations, growing UK
market share of the global Future Cities potential and to build a world-class
urban cluster.
The session
was rounded up with a panel discussion led by Graham Colclough with:
 |
| The Panel |
Richard,
Teresa, Diarmad, Steven and Rollo Home on the stand. Graham encapsulated the
discussion as revolving around two basic principles of information/data and
collaboration which was re-iterated by the panel speakers, but each presented
their own perspective on the problem with the Ordnance Survey and BGS looking
at this from the position of having data to offer but needing to work with
cities to understand the nature of the requirement, and with cities working
with academia to understand the actors driving change and their requirements
for data to monitor and support those agents.
