What happens the day cities become sentient, smarter than their citizens? Will we have a frightening, Terminator-like world? Robert Ouellette thinks not, but says the days of cities that are smarter than their humans are coming soon...

1. Smart cities – empowering
What happens the day cities become sentient, smarter than their citizens?
Will we face a frightening, Terminator-like world? Robert Ouellette thinks
not, but says the days of cities that are smarter than humans are coming…
If we start to make the right choices now, really
smart MESH Cities will offer governments,
planners, designers and inhabitants an
urban future they can aspire to (MESH is
an acronym for Mobile; Effi cient; Subtle;
Heuristics). Cities that are truly MESHed are
manageable. They are resilient – anti-fragile
– to borrow that term from Nicholas Taleb.
With every passing day new, Internet-of-
Things-powered technologies weave themselves
into the urban landscape. Not surprisingly, in
a consumer-driven world economy our homes
are ground zero for the smart ‘thing’ revolution.
Technologies like the Apple-inspired NEST
thermostat make once passive houses into
autonomous environments. They even have a
kind of rudimentary, IP-based, nervous system.
But compared to cities, houses are simple.
Project those tech-inspired changes outward to
the much more complex urban world, and we
will have an infi nite network, a nervous system,
on top of essential sewers, cables and pipes.
This massive urban change – along
with ideas on how to manage it – has
been a long time coming.
Autonomous cybernetics
Fifty years ago, science fi ction author Isaac
Asimov imagined a time when machines
outthink and outlive their inventors. Would
sentient machines be inclined to benevolence,
unlike HAL of 2001 fame? In the event that they
were not, Asimov offered a pre-emptive answer
to the question of how to take the danger
out of cybernetic systems that are smarter-than-
us. He gave us the often referred to, but
little understood, three laws of robotics.
Living and writing in Asimov’s new world,
post-war context, the idea of autonomous,
cybernetic machines with the power to perform
human tasks presented his generation an
irresistible view of a science-enhanced future.
Asimov built his career writing about the
fi ctional capabilities of automatons. As an
accomplished scientist, he realised that along
with superhuman abilities came the potential
for these machines to destroy their creators.
To prevent the displacement of humans
by their creations, Asimov came up with his
three laws of robotics, later embellished with
the ‘Zeroth’ base law (see box overleaf).
Asimov’s intent was admirable, but any
good lawyer could steer a starship through
the laws’ loopholes. In fact, physicist and
science fi ction writer David Langford offers
his modern somewhat tongue-in-cheek take
on the three laws and they are sobering:
● A robot will not harm authorised
government personnel but will terminate
intruders with extreme prejudice;
● A robot will obey the orders of authorised
personnel except where such orders
confl ict with the Third Law and
● A robot will guard its own existence
with lethal antipersonnel weaponry,
because a robot is bloody expensive.
Langford writes that even the best laws can
be ambiguous. As his parody shows, sometimes
means-and-ends thinking will take populations
places they wish they had not gone to. But
even if fl awed, Asimov’s Laws still provide a
cross-culturally understood navigational beacon
in otherwise uncharted, virgin territory. As
we make cities smarter and arguably more
self-aware, we will have to balance the needs
for operational effi ciency with the more messy
and unpredictable needs of citizens. MESH
Cities’ authors are optimistic that people will
learn to balance the power of new, Internet of
Things-based city technologies against the
common-law functionality of civil society.
With that hope in mind, what might
three realistic laws of a smart city be?
The fi rst law probably shares Asimov’s
general principle: “A smart city may not harm
humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity
to come to harm.” After all, cities have
always been places of refuge and safety
for their citizens. The fi rst law for smart
cities bakes that civil legacy into the urban
operating system (see MESH Cities site).
The second law would defi ne a mission
acceptable to city taxpayers everywhere.
Something like: “An intelligent city will
use its information-management power to
increase the energy effi ciency of day-to-day
functions like traffi c and waste management,
power distribution, and sustainable
planning and development. Tax savings
generated by these new effi ciencies will be
used to increase employment in activities
creating alternative energy innovations
and in making the city more liveable.”
And fi nally, the third law might offer this
assurance: “Smart sensors and the data
they collect will not be used to track
individuals and/or arbitrarily control human
behaviour for political purposes, or any
actions in confl ict with the fi rst law.”
The wording of our smart city laws
needs work, but the notion is right. In an
increasingly information-driven world,
we have to prepare for the day when our
creations are smarter, faster, and more
long-lived than we are. How do we begin?
Big picture cyber laws aside, preparing for
the cities of tomorrow, today, is demanding
work. City managers and urban politicians
are awash in heaving seas of change and
opportunity. With so many options, how do
we bring citizens together with new smart
technologies? How can we move cities forward
to a more sustainable, liveable future?
One example of a MESH initiative that
worked in the real world is in Toronto,
Canada’s largest city, where a mash up
between digital crowd sourcing and the
enabling power of mobile technologies
changed things. This is how it was done.
In early 2007 an ad-hoc group of young,
digitally empowered citizens (call them the
vanguard builders of the self-aware city)
jacked into Toronto’s corridors of power intent
on challenging the way the city’s biggest
people mover, the Toronto Transit Commission
(TTC), did things. A few months later Harvard
Business Review’s editors considered the
results so successful they deemed it one of
the breakthrough business ideas of the year.
Toronto TransitCamp, as the citizens’
brainstorming project came to be called,
52 Resources, links, pictures, videos and much more are available for subscribers in our digital and online editions www.crisis-response.com
Tech-inspired
changes are
giving us an
infi nite network,
an increasingly
automated nervous
system layered on
top of sewers, cables
and pipes. But far
from creating an
urban dystopia, such
as that envisaged in
Fritz Lang’s 1927
fi lm Metropolis,
the hearts, hands
and heads of
digitally empowered
citizens can create
positive urban
transformation
Metropolis is
available on
DVD & Blu-ray
from Eureka
Entertainment

2. Smart, resilient cities
made Toronto a leader among Open Cities,
an accomplishment that was upturned
when urban best practices aware mayor
David Miller was replaced by Rob Ford.
Yet the trajectory towards Open Cities as
the vanguard of smart cities continues in New
York, London, and in other competitive urban
centres concerned with attracting what Richard
Florida describes as the ‘Creative Class’. That
trend is complemented by digital powerhouse
Google Inc’s massive infl uence as an engine
of urban change. Its driverless car system is
one example of an array of data-driven services
that will upend the way people use cities.
Why should urban designers, planners,
and citizens, for that matter, care about what
digital geeks think and do about the city?
For one, Open City tools can show us how
cities really work, not how we want them to
work. That new insight – the equivalent of
gaining the conceptual high ground – leads
to better measurement and, ultimately,
management of a city’s functions. A good
example of this overview is seen in Vancouver
digital developer Andrew Walker’s work.
Walker ponders: “I was hoping these videos
would help generate some discussion on the role
of transit.” His open data based videos showing
city transit fl ow over 24 hours are as beautiful
as they are informative. Take a look at the
YouTube archive of his videos exploring cities’
often hidden transit patterns (see sources).
As with most Christensen-like (Clayton
Christensen, see sources) disruptive-of-the-old-
order projects in the history of technological
advancement, the potential for innovation was in
the air. New technologies fuelled the disruption.
A growing number of transit users were
carrying smartphones; micro publishing sites
increased in popularity; and traditional citizen
engagement methods were upended by the
so-called ‘Un-Conference’, BarCamp approach
to civic problem solving. Add to this game-changing
fuel Toronto’s abundance of young
digital developers wanting to use their skills
to improve the world, and the city’s old way
of doing things didn’t stand a chance.
Beyond the momentum of disruptive forces,
however, it was also the power of traditional
print media, hand-in-hand with strong
organisational skills, that fuelled TransitCamp
(and for CRJ readers this confi rms the
importance of strategic policy engagement,
even in the face of disruptive change).
Skills and infl uence gained as an urban affairs
and architecture critic for Canada’s National
Post newspaper, helped cut through the normal
barriers around city hall bureaucrats and
politicians. As a digital publisher, this author
people
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3. worked with the city’s most energetic and
capable, new media-based journalists. With
their help, the TTC challenge went viral, reaching
thousands of people willing to crowdsource
answers to what had become a wicked problem.
We kept the objective simple: fi nd the loose
end of the string to pull and the whole Gordian
knot of civic intransigence might just give way.
Step one was easy to identify. The TTC’s website
failed to provide transit users with an easy
way to plan trips, let alone learn when the next
streetcar was due. The next step was a call to
action. Using a hyperlocal blog, we asked city
leaders to work with us to solve the problem,
saying: “We have a challenge and an offer for
the TTC: Toronto bloggers are more than willing
to offer their insights into how the TTC site might
be designed (look at the reaction to a proposed
route map). Why not give us a call and ask for
our input? We’d be able to go to our readers
for their ideas too. This makes sense to us and
takes advantage of the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’
phenomenon the Internet provides. Will the new
Chair take us up on our offer? Stay tuned.”
To his credit, TTC Chair and city
councillor Adam Giambrone did just that.
With his support, the next six weeks tracked
towards either an innovation catharsis
for civic leaders or an embarrassing,
highly visible public relations fi asco.
City leaders did not have to worry. Hundreds
of suggestions on how to fi x the TTC’s website
shortfalls came from readers of Toronto’s top
blog sites (ReadingToronto, BlogTO, Torontoist,
Spacing, etc). In the end, a simple challenge
had Toronto’s politicians, bureaucrats, and
transit managers exchanging ideas with young
urban activists chafi ng to improve the system.
Leslie Scrivener, a journalist at the Toronto
Star, described what happened: “The 100
or so campers were young, in their 20s and
early 30s, mostly people who work in the
communications and tech industries and
university students, all madly in love with transit.
“Peering over their shoulders, watching as the
younger people moved images around on their
white Mac laptops, were the 50-somethings,
the people who run the TTC, listening and
learning. And politicians were hovering, too.
Adam Giambrone, the TTC Chair, spent the day
there. Vice-chair Joe Mihevc was also present.”
In a few short weeks the established way of
doing things was rebooted. The TTC cracked
open its data vault to eager developers. It
did not take long before phone-based Apps
were guiding riders to bus or streetcar stops
just in time. TTC users were delighted. Then
came the business spinoffs. A small but
growing cluster of infrastructure services
Asimov’s Laws
of Robotics
A robot may not harm humanity,
or, by inaction, allow humanity to
come to harm (the zeroth law).
A robot may not injure a human being or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings,
except where such orders would con ict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not con ict with the First or Second Law.
liveable without the need for Asimov-like laws
(although those laws will help keep smarter-than-
us cities on the right side of history).
New technology enables this result to
be sure, but strong people skills, good
organisation, and a design vision of how
things might be remain the key levers to
be pulled when crowd sourcing change.
If the underlying MESH Cities approach takes
hold, managing crises in tomorrow’s cities will
be easier. Just as smoke detectors have saved
countless lives since their broad deployment, if
your city boasts a smart, MESHed infrastructure
you will know when it is time to act to save a life
and keep your community liveable even in the
face of massive change. CRJ
Sources
■ www.readingtoronto.com;
claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/;
youtube.com/user/STLTransit;
blogto.com; and torontoist.com
evolved. Change fostered economic growth.
A big part of this story is that forward-looking
city leaders were willing to risk failure
in the search for new, more effective ways of
running key parts of the city. Their optimism
and trust inspired a group of young citizen
activists to do more. This was a group willing to
donate their skill and countless hours of their
time to improve the way their city worked.
City administrators should try this more
often. In many ways the approach is like the
more traditional architects’ charter: Identify
a problem; bring smart people together in
one place; get ideas on how to solve it.
The TTC Challenge Case Study shows that
providing interested citizens with enabling
technologies improves cities. In a world where
city users of all types seem eager to criticise
failures in the evolving urban operating
system, we can pre-empt that negative script
by empowering citizens, not restricting them.
Given the chance, they will work to make cities
AuthorR
obert
Ouellette
(B-Arch,
MBA, IAI) is the
founder and
Editor-In-Chief of
MESH Cities, which
helps to build
intelligent, resilient
and livable cities in
a brand-driven,
digital world www.
meshcities.com
54 Resources, links, pictures, videos and much more are available for subscribers in our digital and online editions www.crisis-response.com