1. 15th – 17th November 2016
SMART CITY EXPO
WORLD CONGRESS
2016: THE STATE OF
THE FUTURE
VIEWS AND RESPONSES
NOTES PREPARED BY
PETE GARDOM AND TIM GARDOM
WWW.TGACOM.COM

2. SMART CITY WORLD EXPO 2016
Smart City World Expo 2016 (SCWE16) was held
at the new Fira de Barcelona Centre in Barcelona,
from the 15th to the 17th of November. SCWE16
is one of the largest events of its kind in the world,
bringing Smart City and Future City innovators,
technologists, data specialists, service providers,
academics, inventors and more into one space
to showcase the best and the brightest looking at
advancing urban development.
SCWE16 was a dynamic event, full to bursting
with information exchanges flashing left, right and
centre between visitors and exhibitors, speakers
and futurists…
TGAC, one of the leading UK creative
consultancies, was there to research innovations
and initiatives that will be shaping the world we
live in and how we will move through the world of
tomorrow. TGAC, alongside Fosters + Partners
and Land Design Studio, are developing the
Mobility Pavilion for the Dubai World Expo in
2020 and wanted to get to the core of how people
are thinking, what people are talking about and
crucially, what people are doing at the moment,
with regards to the development of Smart Cities
and the cities of the future.

3. Over the three days, TGAC attended talks from
a wide range of global thought leaders, local/
national government and NGO representatives,
as well as, public and private innovators. We also
had the opportunity to interact with a huge variety
of technologies and speak with the individuals,
organisations and companies working at the
forefront of these advancing technologies and
social developments.
At the Smart City World Expo was the Smart City
Congress; a who’s who of the movers and shakers
in the smart city and future city development
world. From Ellen MacArthur to MIT professors,
EU Commissioners, City representatives, Artist/
Engineers and Special Envoys; we heard about
the trends and initiatives shaping the places we live
in now and some tantalising glimpses of potential
landscapes of the world of tomorrow.
We listened and asked questions and wonderfully
got the opportunity to talk with many of the
speaker to probe them a bit more – all of whom
we hope to continue exchanging with throughout
the development of World Expo 2020, Dubai, and
beyond.are, as well as, the amazing possibilities;
for example, where and who will data not be able to
help? How can we measure the intangible qualities
of a place, district, city or region? In this sense
we see a clear disconnect between what we can
measure and what we need to know.
BEFORE WE WENT…
In preparation for this Smart City World Expo, the
team at TGAC had been doing in depth research
into the current trends, advancing technologies and
major players moving in the Mobility field, as well
as attending events like Wired: Next Generation,
in London. While this was a little underpowered
on the technology side, the messages were clear
– you can do anything and there have never been
more ways to get it involved – Creativity was the
key message, feed it, value it and don’t ever give
it up was a sentiment strongly put forward by
speakers, including visionary gastronomist, Heston
Blumenthal.
Alongside this we had been having a range of
highlevel meetings and conversations with Smart
and Future City leaders like Intel, ICRI, Future
Cities Catapult, Crossrail, Bell Labs and more.
During this process, we’ve been dealing with some
complex concepts which have been emerging,
such as; the circular economy, reversible destiny,
multimodal transport, natural systems design,
polycentric cities, cognitive computing, mobility as
a service, as well as, the huge range of ideas that
different people include in the term ‘Smart City’.
We are moving into a world of bold claims and high
intentions, technologies that are apparently going to
‘change the way we…’, do everything, amid oceans
of data. But when it comes down to it research
often raises more questions than it answers: What
are the cities of the future going to look like? What
will it be like to live in them? Who is going to make
it happen and how will we assess the results? On
these points there is little agreement.

4. QUALITY OF LIFE...TOWARDS SMART CITIES…
According to some estimates, the global Smart
City market will hit around $1.6 trillion in 2020,
with more than 13 Smart Cities expected in Europe
and North America by 2025. There is also a strong
trend, growing for the last several decades, of
global urbanisation, the rebound from Cold War
de-centralisation.
Predictions about numbers of city dwellers
vary, but often they run close to some 80% (in
developed countries) by 2025. This is going to
cause serious problems and challenges for city
planners, yet at the same time, opportunity. The
decisions we make now will set the tone for future
developments, and the principles we instil in this
development process need to ensure that the end
user, the citizen, the individual…you and I…are
the core considerations.
Cities and governments are starting to make the
move from the traditional silo-based approach
and organisation to one of increasingly dynamic
and strong collaborations, but this is new territory
and finding the path between genuine opportunity
and wasted time and investment is proving
a challenge.
One of the most effective ways to guide success
is broadly shared knowledge between citizens,
city planners and the technical providers.
It is the work of companies like TGAC and City-
Insights to work with and at the intersections of
governments, public and private sector teams, and
especially communities to develop creative urban
‘knowledge interventions’ and creative physical-
digital placemaking projects, growing knowledge
where people want to share it, capturing,
developing and playing with sense of place to
have a meaningful and valuable impact.
There is an idea rising that cities are ‘machines
for living’ in both academia and almost across the
board with technologists; a utopian ideal where
all problems can be solved with a handy tech
intervention, or the natural frictions that occur
when lots of people have to share space and
resources will disappear because of big data…
But it is important to remember that there are
times and cases where this is demonstrably not
the case, one issue that clearly highlights this
potential disconnect is equality…We need to know
what the limits of a Smart City are, as well as, the
amazing possibilities; for example, where and who
will data not be able to help? How can we measure
the intangible qualities of a place, district, city or
region? In this sense we see a clear disconnect
between what we can measure and what we need
to know.

5. There is a large body of research into the quality
of life effects of technology, and the results aren’t
always what the tech companies want to hear.
The disconnected, text-based communication is
making it more difficult for people to understand
what others really think or mean even to really
know who they are, and 24 hour access to
distraction has made it difficult for the younger
generation to ‘be in the moment’ and appreciate
the world and experiences happening around
them. Studies are showing that the average
attention span is dropping, not to mention the rapid
changes that language is undergoing at the hands
of a tech savvy, instant-gratification culture.
In many ways we are outsourcing our intelligence
without integrating the benefits it into our own
– the desire for Artificial Intelligence (smarter
machines) has outpaced the desire for Intelligence
Augmentation (smarter humans). The e-book,
after an initial boom, has seen a dip in sales
and has been taken up most enthusiastically by
unexpected sections of the population Megalithic
online institutions, like the newspaper broadsheets
before them, now run the serious risk of being
undercut by alt media despite monumental
investments into online resources/services.
One question to raise here is, how do we judge
a project to be a success, what could/should
our metrics be? For a company, sure, increased
optimisations and efficiencies mean greater
profits, but what if the result of those gains to
the company means that more CO2 enters the
atmosphere – is it still a success?
According to Natalie Jeremijenko, of the
Environmental Health Clinic, one of the best
metrics for success you can use, on any project, is
health; does this intervention/initiative/innovation
add to the health of the people? Not in an
atomised and prescriptive and expensive way,
like a pill from a doctor, but on a grander scale,
the greater good; Will this project make the air
better for everyone? Will this new way of moving
be accessible to anyone and everyone? Is this
project something everyone can benefit from even
if they aren’t a data producer or consumer? It is
important to establish these desired and desirable
outcomes from the start, to build a human-centred
environment within which to innovate and which
will produce results aimed at improving the quality
of life for all people

6. STARTING WHERE WE ARE...
What is called for now is serious thought
and commitment of cities, local and national
governments, as well as public and private
companies to develop urban spaces in a way
considerate to and driven by social issues,
quality of life and the deep, intangible qualities
that give a city its identity and make people
want to be there.
The reality is we live in the same buildings our
predecessors did, and the most popular places
to visit are usually hundreds, if not thousands of
years old – how can we marry this to the idea of
many technologists that the cities of the future
will be unrecognisable – that technology will
change the way we live?
Lots of people like the way they live. To do
this will take a serious amount of research and
in-depth and rigorous comparative studies.
Casestudies are well and good but what is
needed is for researchers to be looking at what
has worked, where, for whom and why, is it
replicable and is it scalable?
There is no doubt that some of the leading
technology companies in the world are getting
their teeth into the Smart City movement, but
the question still remains to be seen; Will Smart
Cities deliver better urban living? And more
importantly, what does ‘better’ urban living mean?
Looking around the world at places that have
survived thousands of years of earthquakes and
natural disasters for example, it behoves urban
designers to understand how and why they
manage it – in many cases there is a back-to-
nature potential to learn from our environment
and the unimaginable complexity and synergy
of nature.
There is a danger that cities simply end up
using a patchwork of technologies to ‘deal
with symptoms rather than the disease’.

7. SMART CITY EXPO HIGHLIGHTS
Smart City as a work-in-progress
As explained by Carlo Ratti, of MIT, and echoed by
many speakers – Smart City is not a destination;
instead it is a journey towards ever Smarter Cities.
There is no one thing that we can wrap-up and put
in a box and say, “Here is your Smart City”. We
are moving into a world that will need to be built on
dynamic, transdisciplinary collaboration and strong
public-private-government partnerships. What
we saw from the outset was clear evidence that
companies and cities are thinking about Smart,
but what isn’t happening yet is the necessary
cooperation and collaboration; the sharing attitude
that will be crucial to considered and meaningful
development in the advancing socio-technical
landscape.
Speakers make it clear that the cities of the future
will look, to all intents and purposes, remarkably
similar to the cities of today, and the main changes
will be seen in the ways we interact with them;
how urban spaces and things will be able to
speak to us and we to them – a two way data
exchange. How we can use that knowledge, and
massive collection of data, to improve quality of
life and create ever more inclusive and accessible
social experiences, were core themes across
the speakers - notably championed by Geoffrey
Hamilton of the EU Commission, Peter Friess,
Pere Obrador, Daniele Quercia and Nesreen
Barwari, the former Iraqi Minister of Municipalities
and Public Works.

8. CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP
Among the most prevalent ideas posed was
the movement away from traditional ownership
towards a service-based economy. As Ellen
Macarthur put it; why do I need to own the
materials that went into my washing machine,
when I could simply have one on a pay-per-wash
basis that the supplier can then retrieve and
re-commoditise when I’ve finished with it? Or
Robert Cervera of Berkeley, California, echoing
several other speakers with the idea that the
future of transport is dynamic, socially-networked
ride-sharing…
Now, while ride-sharing has been the norm in
the developing world for generations, I don’t
think Robert had this in mind…
Rather, he and others spoke of interconnected,
multimodal transport systems, talking to each
other, allowing you the freedom to choose the
transport you need, when you need it and only
pay for the amount you used. For instance, “I
have to take the kids on a birthday trip so we
will need the minibus today”…or…“I fancy a
drive up the coast, let’s get a convertible for
the afternoon.”
Connect this mobility as service model to smart
devices and clever software and the potential
for seamless personal mobility is huge! One
demonstrator working in this field who we spoke
with were the developers of Jiffiapp, running a
trial project in Tartu, Estonia, at the moment.

9. VITAL PARTNERSHIPS
Another major call, put forward by many of the
speakers, was to create strong and flexible
public-private-government partnerships with
the ability to create demonstrably achievable,
agile projects at the scale and speed necessary
to address the complex, integrated, and global
nature of accelerating change.
There is a clear demand from citizens to have the
advancing technologies of the 21st century be
made widely available, and yet some of the most
fundamental issues facing the world were not
even touched on at the Smart City Expo. How are
we going to power all these new smart devices?
What are the limits of the Internet? What is
the benefit to humanity of a billion connected
devices when it is quite clear that the majority of
companies and organisations have no idea what
to do with the data they already have?
It was Frans Anton Wermast, of the City of
Amsterdam, who said on the Thursday that
it is local governments’ role to organise the
citizen demand which can be used to drive and
focus private investment, to develop initiatives
which are citizen-centred; building an Internet
of Citizens instead of an Internet of Things. His
clearest call, however, was that government
should not subsidise private businesses in this
endeavour, as he says; there is plenty of money
in the private sector.
Is he correct? – some of the smaller private
companies are really the ones making big leaps,
with the potential to be truly disruptive, and
instead of the usual situation where they have a
good idea and are immediately bought by a much
larger company, it might be nice to see their work
being recognised in equal partnerships – but the
core of the message was clear.

10. UNEXPECTED ENTRY
We have the technology, there are smart people
all over the world getting together and inventing
mindboggling bits of tech, like autonomous
vehicles or frontline drone support for health
workers in Africa. We also see a wave of new
entrepreneurs leveraging existing and advancing
technologies in new and innovative ways; like
using the free space in your home to earn money
and build a community (Storage Together),
cryptocurrencies that could incentivise and
reward positive behaviours (Currency Alliance)
and new types of encryption and authentication
which can transform a home video into a piece of
courtroom quality evidence (Capester).
Time and again, what we see holding us back are
things like regulation and insurance. There are
plenty of bugs to work out, true, but the biggest
obstacles to this technology entering the market
place, when it boils down to it; Who pays when an
accident occurs? A discussion that will take years
to resolve. But, keep an eye out for driverless
freight movement – this may well be where
some this technology makes its entrance, since
there are clear economic benefits and a strong
business model to work from/see returns in.
SMART CITY HACK CHALLENGE
One of the highlights of the event was the
Smart City Hack Challenge 2016. Entrants were
shortlisted to the top ten stand-out projects,
who each had three minutes to pitch their idea/
product to the formidable panel of judges and the
audience.
Though all the projects were great, the winners
and runners up rightfully earned their places,
and at the same time showed that the younger
generations are thinking about smart in a slightly
different way. Firstly the winners, Storage
Together; this was an energetic young group
from Arizona who developed a system they
term, “The Airbnb of storage.” In an outstanding
pitch Co-Founder, Luke Amargo, showed how
the extra space in your house could help build
a community of sharers and problem-solvers in
a safe, peer reviewed way with a clear shot at
some of the big players’ revenues.
Second Place went to, Psonrie; an anonymous
online psychologist service offering counselling
and specialising in the ‘problems of everyday life’.
The idea is to catch and combat mental illness
at its source by making advice, or just a person
to talk to, available when people need it, not by
appointment.
What this showed was a clear desire from the
younger developers and innovators to leverage
advancing technologies for social good, as
well as profit. The driving motivations for these
millennials seemed to be rooted in the ‘human
experience’, in a desire to make people’s
lives better.

11. What’s more is this seemed to go without s
aying, which is the big take-away point here,
the new faces are here to build communities
and help people.
The younger generation, just starting to enter
these competitive spaces, have social impact
built into their DNA, and this is something
we have built into TGAC and City-Insights;
technology is only as good as the experience
that it can deliver and, when it comes down to
it, every interaction will come back to the
human experience.
CONCLUSIONS…
There were a number themes, trends and
shortcomings that became clear over the three
days of Smart City World Expo & Congress 2016.
Almost any discussion about the socio-technical
advancement of cities touched on, or poignantly
omitted, these points in some combination.
OPPORTUNITY
Cooperation and Collaboration – These may
have been the two most repeated words from
the various stages of the Smart City World
Congress. Not a talk passed that didn’t promote
the vital need for companies, organisations,
people and governments to be in close and
constant contact, to implement iterative and two-
way communications and working practices to
develop solutions that benefit people, support the
planet and remain commercially sustainable.
What became painfully obvious whilst walking
around the display stands in the various halls,
was the clear disconnect between the speakers
and the businesses. Even in large displays,
like that of Microsoft, where we might hope to
find a more integrated set of solutions being
proposed, instead what we find are a collection
of individuals doing their own thing, not sharing
their knowledge and expertise with the people
around them.
What became clear is that we (Humanity) need
a ‘global, multifaceted, general long-term view
of the future with bold long-range goals to
excite the imagination and inspire international
collaboration’, but what we often see in these
situations, as was definitely the case at SCWE16,
are X-hundreds of discrete inventions that don’t
speak to each other, jostling and competing with
each other for space and recognition.
The positive; there is a huge opportunity for a
genuine revolution in the way things are being
done. Mobility touches all areas of life from
transport to healthcare to food and education.
In the connected world integrated collaborative
efforts, with life-long and life-wide objectives
are more possible every day, so the future could
definitely be bright.

12. CONNECTIONS
Walking around Expo and talking with the
innovators and representatives, we started to
see the invisible connections between multiple
stands, straddling the spaces where one
innovation ends and another begins, how they
could be woven together in interesting and
dynamic ways to create much broader, more
inclusive and people-centred solutions – how
cryptocurrencies could link with environmental
data, integrated multimodal transport systems,
location based services, smart parking, intelligent
IP systems and many more to create truly
immersive, pre-emptive mixed-reality landscapes.
We came here expecting to see things through
an Expo lens, but the scope and potential on
display goes far beyond. At Dubai Expo 2020,
we have an opportunity to compose and deliver
a real sense that the world of today is changing,
that the world of tomorrow is unknown and rich
in potential, but most importantly that it will be in
safe hands.
PEOPLE
What we saw, backed up by many of the
speakers, was a real need to start developing
initiatives and projects from the human/citizen-
centred perspective. When any innovation leaves
the lab it enters the human realm with all its
preconceived notions, biases and established
ways of doing things. For an intervention to have
meaning and impact it needs to be rooted in and
aimed towards people and what they need – from
their perspective – not just profit.
Trends, like the move towards a subscription-
based lifestyle, wove through the majority of
the speakers and innovators showing their work
at the Expo; the move away from traditional
ownership models to a pay-per-use ways of living
and working. By the end of Ellen MacArthur’s
keynotes speech on day two; extolling the
potential, need and opportunity to develop a
complete circular economy, you could feel
the sense that people agreed that user needs
should be always be considered first, with the
absurdity of built-in obsolescence, and of the
individual needing to own the minerals that went
into their machines.
In the face of in-built componentisation, the
complete reusability of an entire unit designed
into the entire manufacturing process and smaller
bills, the importance of ‘ownership’ as we’ve
come to know it, the power of the person to
have things, seemed a little daft, the rhetoric
of consumerism breaking down and revealing
itself for the selfish and destructive ideology it
has grown into.
So what is being asked for here? This new model
with this new focus on people would require a
seismic shift in the way manufacturing is done
and systems designed – there has been no
indication that this move is even recognised,
let alone desirable, within a sector that has
remained almost unchanged in more than two
centuries since the industrial revolution, but
maybe need or public demand will be able to
tip the scales.
Another serious point to be raised at this juncture,
a glaring omission from many displays, was
the fact that the vast majority of the showcase
technologies were firmly aimed at the developed
West, completely overlooking the 85% of the
world’s population who live in other parts of
the world.
We know through research, and common sense,
that the vast majority of global growth in the
coming years will be in underdeveloped countries
such as China and Africa. But, what does the
rural African farmer care about smart parking,
how does that make his life better?

13. Knowing that the majority of the development of
future cities will be happening in the developing
world – we ask the question, could it be that
underdeveloped countries might actually be in
a better position to accept and incorporate the
new technologies and systems due to the less
established natures of their infrastructure and
networks? To develop programs and initiatives
that don’t feature these data poor regions, to
continue the habit of leaving people outside of the
conversation, could lead to even greater disparity
and wealth inequality.
There are people in the world who have almost
no contact with data, they don’t consume it and
they don’t produce it. We need to work with these
communities, to use the analog methods to find
out their needs and their dreams and ambitions for
the future and develop solutions with them that are
sensitive to the needs of all humanity.
New socio-technical developments will need to be
founded on principles of Inclusivity and Access to
live up to the world’s expectations – people need
to be involved from day one, before if possible.
To give people the quality of life they desire,
without destroying the planet will be the supreme
challenge of the 21st century and I don’t think a
lamppost that can tell you the temperature will
cut it.
DATA
In this new landscape of smart devices, oceans
of data will be produced. It is already being
produced at such a rate that the vast majority
of companies, organisations and governments
have no clue what to do with it, but they all know
it has value. The global companies, the FANG
companies (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google),
for example, have made their fortune off the back
of data through providing free/almost free tools
and services in exchange for it (there is no such
thing as ‘free’, remember).
There were demonstrations of new business
models that are trying to get to grips with this
new commodity. Peter Bjorn Larsen, of Hitachi
Insight Group, for example was showcasing the
City Data Exchange – a data marketplace where
public and private sector bodies can access data
on a subscription basis. This was a great initiative
to make data available in usable forms, though it
leaves the, “What can/should we do with data?”,
question completely open.

14. This new commodity is vague and the uses of it
are, as yet, little understood beyond the top line.
Without a clear idea of the good that data can do,
who can/should own it and how to use it, it seems
likely that the flood gates will continue inching
open and more and more data will accumulate,
begging for the right conditions to recognise and
realise its potential. We see that creative and
dynamic partnerships of technologists, artists,
writers, thinkers and more will provide the best
toolbox for making sense of and envisioning
these potentials.
POLICY
Over the three days we spoke with technology
developers, City representatives, academics,
politicians, NGOs and more…
In the vast majority of cases the challenges
and obstacles to be overcome are grounded in
policy, regulation and enforcement. When a car is
driverless, who is responsible for it? If there was
a replacement for oil, how would countries cope
without their vast oil revenues? What would a
world look like where the petro-dollar was a quirky
anachronism, where everyone has enough energy
to power themselves for life?
Our challenges are transnational in nature and
will require transnational strategies to combat
to overcome – that one country becomes
carbon neutral is good, but it won’t change the
state of things. We need to develop a global,
multifaceted and long term view with goals set
that bring together, excite and challenge the best
thinkers in the world. In the face of rising global
nationalism, we need to think clearly about the
risk-reward equation of the free global movement
of ideas compared with the tightening of national
boundaries.
What we took away from the Smart City World
Expo 2016: Barcelona was a fascinating glimpse
into potential of future city development; that while
the technology marches on at an ever increasing
speed (having now left Moore’s Law in the dust),
People is the new conversation landscape. Who is
this for, why, and how will it help them, is this a fair
exchange, what do I want/need to own..?
We are heading rapidly towards a crossroads
in the development of our societies, not only in
the developed West, but across the world. The
centres of the world are shifting from West to East
with more than a billion people expected to come
online in China and India alone over the next
decade. They will expect a better quality of life and
access to new resources, to materials and, above
all, to energy – at the moment what we see are
comparatively poor countries like India investing
heavily in sustainable technologies while countries
like the US, on the whole, refuse to genuinely
participate in the conversation.
Academically, we seem to be moving in the
right direction. Companies and organisations
are starting to form new types of partnerships,
adapting to new business models and paying
attention to increasingly informed, focussed and
powerful citizen demand.
Technologically, we are seeing incredible
advances and combinations of technologies
that are quite literally changing the way humans
behave and think, how we will spend our time,
share knowledge and experience, or simply get
from place to place.
Socially, we are still in our infancy. Over the
generations, many have tried to predict how
life will be x number of years from now, which
technologies we won’t be able to imagine our lives
without...with varying degrees of success – though
usually very little. The challenges/opportunities
we face in this generation, and how we respond
to them, will shape the world of the future;
technology for technology’s sake is a mentality
that needs to be revisited, alongside one of the
real threats to the planet – consumerism. We have
the capacity, as the human race, to not only face
and overcome these challenges/opportunities,
but to transcend them – to set in motion ways
of being, living and interacting which benefit all
of humanity through the caring, considered and
considerate implementation of socio-technological
developments and rational, human-centred
approaches to dealing with change.