Smart Cities lecture had me question how we can predict the future and what is most needed to make this change. The cities all over the world had set greenhouse emission targets for complete carbon neutrality by 2040 or 2050. The local governments adopt smart city tactics and designate test areas to evaluate. The objectives are to increase energy and resource efficiency, control excessive demand for mobility and support sharing of spaces, tools, vehicles and other resources.
The stakeholders, including construction, energy, infrastructure, real estate and retail industry need to coorporate for a long term, as well as the citizens. However, due to excessive uncertainty of the future and stakeholders possibly having different interests, change can be positive for some and negative for others.
Other than forecasting from now to the future, backcasting from future goal to now can be a more useful tool as it can try to eliminate undesirable outcomes. This involves identifying steps needed to reach the goal, potential obstacles and stakeholders' contribution needed. Because the it is impossible to predict exactly, different pathways are explored. Identification of critical variables that would affect the world in upcoming decades and extrapolating them will show a 2 or more versatile scenarios. The stakeholders can then broaden their horizons on how to reach the goal.
The aim is to decrease 40% of emissions by 2040 with a higher quality of life than present. 3 societal drivers are present in the 3 scenarios:
1. Nations reach a global consensus, which basically change global economy and individual societies.
2. Rapid increase in disruptive technologies (inexpensive automated vehicles, energy storage, solar panels etc.), which overthrows the old solutions in the market.
3. Sudden global energy crisis disrupts the market, being forced to find alternatives for basic needs.
This helped the cities find direction for the pilot test. New partners to provide smart urban services can be identified. Partner cities try new shared logistics services, pop up shops and experiment new smart home solutions with real estate owners. New solutions whether successful or not would be wide spread due to digitalisation. It is important for when partnership between big corporations, city and real estate owners cannot dictate the area any more.
It is increasingly important to share economic solutions for sustainability. The scenarios, followed by cities, corporations and startups partnerships enabled sharing economy startups and smart solution developers to digest the wider importance of their actions leading towards sustainable cities.
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