1. Smart Cities and Communities
Recipes to make your own city smart
(instead of waiting for others to fix it)
Edoardo Calia, Deputy Director – ISMB
@edocalia
Torino, May 10 2013

3. Smart City model
Smart Economy
Smart Mobility
Smart Living
Smart Governance
Smart Environment

4. The central role of communities
• Turning a city into a smart one cannot be
done with a top down approach
• Smart services require smart users (which
does not mean technologists: just people
who care about their city, its environment
and the other citizens)
• Users are not limited to citizens: smart
cities are made by smart communities

5. Several different communities
Government/PA

6. We often don't like our cities
• What we do today (dumb cities)
1. Realize that services are poorly organized
and not working
2. Complain because we pay (taxes) for things
that do not work the way we want / need
3. Assume we cannot do anything
4. Accept with resignation that nothing ever
happens / improves (more complaining here)
5. Goto 1

7. We often don't like our cities
• Today's dumb cities
– Citizens and decision makers (funders,
politicians) are very far from each other
– There is no efficient and trusted way to
communicate with the institutions, inform
them about problems, receive replies/info
– We all have the impression to be excluded
from the decision processes
– We do not have a central role in the city
design/management. We passively live there.

8. But things can change! (believe me)
• Tomorrow (smart cities)
– Citizens and decision makers
(funders, politicians) are all part of the game
– There are efficient and trusted ways to
communicate with the institutions, inform
them about problems, receive replies/info
– Everybody has a clear vision of where
resources are going, how they are used
– Everybody feels safe contributing

9. Things will change because...
• The traditional way cities and services are
managed has failed. It's just in front of us
• Resources are scarce (particularly public
resources)
• With no resources, the PA is losing power
• Private capital and money is the only way out...
• ... but efficiency and transparency must be
guaranteed
• Young generations believe they can change the
world (just because they can)

10. A hard transition
• The transition from inefficiency and excess of
public subsidies to efficiency and targeted
government incentives will be hard
• Many industries and business will disappear
(lots of jobs lost), just because they make no
sense in today's world (unfortunately it was
very clear long ago, when there was still time
for a smooth transition)
• Public support in this phase is a must, but
resources are not available

11. A hard transition
• The transition from inefficiency and excess of
public subsidies to efficiency and targeted
government incentives will be hard
• Many industries and business will disappear
(lots of jobs lost), just because they make no
sense in today's world (unfortunately it was
very clear long ago, when there was still time
for a smooth transition)
• Public support in this phase is a must, but
resources are not available

12. In the meantime, a whole new
world is quietly starting
Efficiency
Jobs mobility
Startups
"Failing is ok"
Risk sharing
"PermanentBeta"
Create your own job
Transparency
Collaboration

13. In the meantime, a whole new
world is quietly starting
Efficiency
Jobs mobility
Startups
"Failing is ok"
Risk sharing
"PermanentBeta"
Create your own job
Transparency
Collaboration

14. A new, smart society
• Young generations know about Information
Technologies, at least as users
• They are "always on"
• Smart cities must leverage the power of new tools:
the users are ready!
• Social networks offer great support to create and
maintain personal and professional relationships
facilitating groups & communities aggregation

15. Social Networks
• New ways to create and manage your own
identity
• The Internet Galaxy metaphor
• Reputation as a capital
• Reputation mechanisms objectives
• Impact of reputation on business
• Social scoring platforms

16. Manage your online identity
• In the beginning of the Internet people
used to build anonymous profiles. Some
used it as a real identity, others sat behind
a fake ID
• Facebook message: if you want to hide
your ID, there must be something wrong /
to hide
• Dating sites: we build our identity in order
to appear as we would like to be (seen)

17. Manage your online identity
• In face-to-face relationships we group
friends, colleagues etc in separated sets
• Social networks tend to mix these sets in order to
create as many relationships as possible, making it
much more difficult to maintain isolated, closed groups
• It is like a wedding banquet where
friends, family, colleagues sit in the same room. Even
if we try to keep them separate (Google+ groups) they
see each other, they interact in a way which we cannot
really control
• Our online identity must be designed to be acceptable
enough to be shown in different groups

18. Internet Galaxy Metaphor
(Manuel Castell)
MoonNeptune
Barnard's star Sirius sharing
connectivity

19. Internet Galaxy Metaphor
(Manuel Castell)
MoonNeptune
Barnard's star Sirius sharing
connectivity

20. Online Reputation

21. Online reputation
• Like reputation in general, it is a capital
– It takes long time to be built
– It can be easily destroyed
• Reputation is different from
– Prestige, because it does not involve hierarchy
– Esteem, because it also influences economics
– Interpersonal trust, because it is collective
– Influence, because it doesn't necessarily have an
impact on choices or behaviour

22. Online reputation and social media
• Social media are ideal to build and spread online
reputation due to their:
– Transparency
– Accountability (prize and punishment mechanisms)
– Interconnection (spreading across network
connections)
• Online reputation can be applied to objects or
people
– Amazon, eBay, TripAdvisor, RateMyProfessor, Glassd
oor
Courtesy of Ivana Pais, "La rete che lavora"

23. Online reputation objectives
• Trust building: reputation encourages fair
behavior
• Filtering: most relevant contributions can
be easily identified
• Meeting: people with similar interests can
meet
• Loyalty gaining: once you have built a
(good) reputation, you don't want to leave
the system

24. Online reputation and business
• Gaining a good online reputation becomes a
competition which can affect your business
success
• An eBay seller with good reputation sells the
same items for a cost 8% higher than a new
user
• Studies are being carried out (Alessandro
Gandini) to verify the connection between
creative freelance workers' online reputation
and their salaries

25. Social scoring

26. Social Mobility and Social Networks
• The traditional model: strong impact of starting
conditions on social mobility
• The new vision: social mobility mostly depends on
individual abilities and merits
• A new tag cloud: Permanent
beta, empowerment, failure culture, fast
evoution, network
• Everybody's career should be managed as a
startup (Hoffman – Casnocha 2012)
• Social Networks: the new social escalator?

27. Government and Market
• Historically played a key role in most of
social issues providing a safe employment
context
• Today: informal regulation based on
networked logic mechanisms
• Government still has a fundamental role in
providing enabling infrastructures and
services, but can't any more help solving
unemployment and similar problems

28. Professional and organizational
identity separation
• Hoffman & Casnocha: excessive
emotional attachment to your company
makes you lose opportunities
• Employers are aware of this: they want the
best from their emloyees but in a limited
time: they don't count any more on very
long cooperation relationships
• The best employees are those who are
more dynamic in the job market

29. Prosumers
• Producer, Consumer, Prosumer
• The customer participates to all product
creation phases
• Started with information-related and
intangible products
(Wikipedia, Youtube, Open source SW)
• Today: physical objects and products
(makers, open source HW)

30. The third industrial revolution
• Democratization of competences: pro-am
– Amateur professionals or professional amateurs
– They are not professionals, but they like to be
considered professionals
• Access to information is made easy by
technologies commonly available
• Everybody can pretend to be a professional
• Are the pro-ams going to invade the reign of
experts? Common in journalism (@tigella)

31. 3D Printing
• A technology that has been around for a
while, but in these years is experiencing a
larger diffusion due to the availability of
smaller, cheaper, do-it-yourself printers
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aafp7EnzmOY
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7GXgAm7sBo
• One of the most common tools found in
Makers' Labs (FabLab etc)

32. FabLabs
• A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-
scale workshop offering (personal) digital
fabrication
• Generally equipped with an array of flexible
computer controlled tools that cover several
different length scales and various materials,
with the aim to make "almost anything"
• This includes technology-enabled products
generally perceived as limited to mass
production.
(Wikipedia)

33. FabLabs
• The fab lab program was started in
the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT)
• Research groups exploring how the
content of information relates to its
physical representation, and how a
community can be powered by technology
at the grassroots level.

34. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding
• Crowdsourcing: the value of participation
is becoming a powerful resource for the
future of business (Howe)
• Wikinomics: mass collaboration which will
change the world
• Examples: Building the Statue of
Liberty, the Goldcorp Challenge
(1999), Moonwatch System

35. Cambiamo Tutto!
• A book recently published by Riccardo
Luna, one of the most known personalities
in the startup/collaboration/innovation
areas

36. Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and
social networks
• The main difference between social networks for
freelance or microworking and crowdsourcing is
the actual participation of the community to a
common goal/project instead of simply dividing
work among different autonomous
workers/professionals
• Example: Openwear in Italy, creation of fashion
garments under a Creative Commons License.
Non commercial brand, self-
production, economical + ecological + social
sustainability

37. Crowdfunding
• Reward-based: funders are donors, and
they get from the project a reward in the
form of a sample/prototype of the result, a
special edition, a meeting with the
authors/designers etc
• Equity-based: funders get shares of the
company originated from the project

38. Crowdfunding
• Tim Scharfer: 400K$ in 7 hrs, 1M$ in
24hr, 3,336,371$ at the end of his
campaign o Kickstarter
• In Italy and EU these models are known
but still in their infancy, particularly due to
regulation issues
• UK, Holland are ahead of other countries
in Europe, but there is no common EU
legislation yet

39. Crowdfunding – Tim Scharfer

40. Crowdfunding

41. Crowdfunding – nothing new!

42. European Crowdfunding Network
• Promote and support the development of
crowdfunding mechanisms as a funding
source for European society and investors
• In Italy crowdfunding-oriented startups are
getting organized in two ways:
– Connection with crowdsourcing
(Cineama, Starteed)
– Connection with local and professional
communities
(YouCapital, Shiniynote, Eppela, Siamosoci)

43. Getting closer to each other:
Coworking
• Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are
based on the principle of collaboration
from the distance
• A different but very modern and efficient
phenomenon is coworking, which
promotes collaboration among different /
heterogeneous companies and
professionals by sharing the same working
location

44. Selective Coworking
• A step beyond offering just a common
space as a temporary office
• Co-workers are selected based on their
project, the space is co-designed with
them according to their needs, and there
may be a "facilitator" helping cooperation
• The main purpose is acceleration of ideas
and projects

45. Collaborative projects
• Involve communities to participate putting
together a project or contribute to a
common cause
• Examples: environmental
monitoring, traffic
control/observation, restoring / redesign
cultural / historic heritage

46. ISMB-Polito: collaborative air
quality monitoring
• Raspberry Pi board with WiFi connectivity
• Two temperature + Humidity sensors
• 1 Dust sensor
• 200+ students engaged, in teams of 4
• ISMB set up the central server to
collect, process and present the data
• Students built the sensor boards and
wrote the code to sense and send data

47. TrafficO2 - PUSH
• PUSH is an association of young
architects and engineers from
Palermo, Sicily
• They won a grant from the Italian Ministry
of Research and University
• Their project TrafficO2 aims at evaluating
mobility patterns collecting data from
mobile phones' embedded sensors

48. Restoring Saracen Guard
Towers
• Slowscape: a project from a young architect
(Claudio Esposito) who developed his thesis
around a project aimed at restoring several
historic buildings in Puglia, including some
ICT to offer innovation services to the territory
• ISMB and PUSH will collaborate with Claudio
to make his dream (project) become true
• Citizens and other communities will be
involved (a crowdfunding campaign is also
planned)