A Hope for the Post-Pandemic Future: Smarter Cities
Published on Governing.com, May 18, 2020
The COVID-19 crisis has inspired new thinking about how communities can embrace technology to better serve the people who live in them. We can be intentional about what we create.
COVID-19 has accelerated the digital revolution to warp speed. We all want to know what happens next. How will our urban landscapes change? How will our public-sector systems change? How will this affect how we live and how we relate to each other?
These are big questions to ponder, and the only thing we really know for sure is that we cannot predict the future. But we can be intentional about what we want to create: smarter cities. Here are four ways — four hopes for the future — for how we can take lessons learned from this crisis and forge a better path forward:
Hopeful future 1: We fully embrace a digital world. As we entered 2020, we all felt the push of technology's increasing pace. Industry has predictably led the innovation agenda. Capitalism has the luxury of an unapologetic push for profit and a focus on the target market that can produce the greatest returns. The result is efficiency and optimization.
The government and social service sectors have been slower to adopt tech-enabled norms, ranging from cloud computing to remote work. Their target market spans entire communities, especially the most vulnerable, so returns are measured differently.
But now that we all have been forced to embrace tele-everything — from work to health care to education to city council meetings — government is having to figure it out, and fast. There have been challenges, for sure. But amid the chaos, there have been a few positive outcomes, including greater virtual participation in city council meetings and the ability to support a remote government workforce.
My hope is that, once the frenzy slows, city leaders continue on the path to explore how technology can enable our most human capacities: creativity, collaboration and innovation. When fully embraced, our communities can be more connected.