New models, new partnerships, new technologies: the Volkswagen Group is shaping the transition to the mobility world of tomorrow in the key sales market of China. “Shaping the future together” was the motto of the event on the eve of Auto Shanghai 2017 when the Group showcased a large number of new models including three electric world premieres: the Audi X17 BEV Coupé, the ŠKODA VISION E and the Volkswagen I.D. Crossover concept. The Group is thus underscoring its ambitious goals regarding e-mobility and driving forward its strategic realignment. That is also confirmed by the China premiere of “Sedric”, the first self-driving concept car, as well as a smart city partnership with Tongji University. In 2017 alone, the Volkswagen Group and its two Chinese partners will be launching a total of 30 new models in China, including several SUVs. Advanced voice recognition in the current fleet is to enhance user friendliness still further. To that end, a new joint venture with MobVoi, the Chinese company that specializes in artificial intelligence, has been set up.
Read MoreMore than 500 Chinese cities have started or are expected to start their "smart-city" transformations during 2017, according to the Economic Information Daily.
Read MoreIn this feature series, the Smart Cities Dive team will take an occasional look at the practical, logical and down-right genius innovations that are transforming urban centers. Our aim is to ignite a thought or fire up a discussion that impacts the way you perform your job. We can't do this alone; pitch topics, talk to us and help us set the agenda.
Read MoreHouston, Dallas, Fort Worth
Read MoreSensors-on-lampposts have become a smart city cliché, the go-to image of urban technology in action. But these projects have a Bigfoot quality about them: often discussed, seldom seen.
Read MoreWhy become a smart city? When we reflect upon the push and pull – industry, cities, citizens – it’s important to remember that the “why” isn’t the same everywhere. If you ask Brent Nair, Chief Information Officer for the City of Memphis, he’ll tell you that his passion is in finding technologies that will serve people today.
Read MoreSmart energy startup Totem Power wants to change the way cities and residences function. In collaboration with cross-disciplinary design studio AE Superlab in Brooklyn, the Bedford, N.Y.–based company has created Totem, a multi-platform service that is able to provide uninterrupted power even during emergency conditions when electricity is sparse, or completely unavailable. The product's minimalist aesthetic is intended to accentuate urban landscapes, combining form and function in one elegant package. ARCHITECT spoke with Totem Power CEO Brian Lakamp via email about this platform, which is expected to go live in summer 2017.
Read MoreThe Smart Cities movement has produced a large number of projects and experiments around the world. To understand the primary ones, as well as their underlying tensions and the insights emerging from them, the editors of this special issue of the California Management Review enlisted a panel of experts, academics, and practitioners from different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. The panel focused its discussion on three main areas: new governance models for Smart Cities, how to spur growth and renewal, and the sharing economy—both commons and market based.
Read MoreGoverning a city is arguably one of the most complex management tasks facing organizational leaders. Based on an analysis of Vienna, London, and Chicago, this article demonstrates that city leaders treat cities as ecosystems, structured and governed either as “extended enterprises” where inputs from specialized organizations are coordinated and integrated into the final service or as “platform markets” where direct interactions between third-party service providers and citizens are facilitated by the city leaders. If cities are viewed as the “ecosystem of ecosystems,” then successful city governance requires an orchestration approach where leaders choose the appropriate structure and manage the ecosystem dynamically in a constantly changing environment.
Read MoreInitiatives to redesign cities so that they are smarter and more sustainable are increasing worldwide. A smart city can be understood as a community in which citizens, business firms, knowledge institutions, and municipal agencies collaborate with one another to achieve systems integration and efficiency, citizen engagement, and a continually improving quality of life. This article presents an organizational framework for such collaboration and employs it to analyze Smart Aarhus, the smart-city initiative of Aarhus, Denmark. Based on the experiences of Smart Aarhus to date, it offers a set of lessons that can benefit the designers, leaders, and policymakers of other smart-city initiatives.
Read MorePressures on infrastructure—due to growing urban populations, the ubiquity of new technologies, and collaborative business models—are fostering a new form of entrepreneurship focused on addressing quality of life in cities. Urban entrepreneurs are challenging the logic of formal market structures, forcing us to re-frame our thinking around the interactions between place, individuals, institutions, and the resulting innovative outcomes. Urban entrepreneurs—operating at the neighborhood, city, and global levels—are developing alternative forms of private-public-people partnerships and unique business strategies.
Read MoreThe article presents a framework for exploring the drivers, structure, and dynamics of open data initiatives in the city context. Drawing on a case study of the city of Barcelona complemented with other cases, it develops a stepwise framework that can serve as a practical guide for both urban and private leaders to implement open data strategies. Following this model can enable managers to minimize risk and effectively harness the power of open data.
Read MoreThe prevailing geographic model for high-technology industrial organization has been the “nerdistan,” a sprawling, car-oriented suburb organized around office parks. This seems to contradict a basic insight of urban theory, which associates dense urban centers with higher levels of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. This article examines the geography of recent venture capital finance startups across U.S. metros and within a subset of them by neighborhood. It concludes that the model is changing. The suburban model might have been a historical aberration, and innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship are realigning in the same urban centers that traditionally fostered them.
Read MoreThe world is evolving rapidly towards mobile and digital formats for many everyday tasks.
Read MoreThe city of Portland made headlines last year when it was one of seven cities from across the country in the running for a total $50 million prize in the Smart City Challenge – a national competition that asked cities to come up with transportation plans for systems that would use data and technology to help people and goods move more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Read MoreAccording to researchers around the world, there is increasing momentum from some of the world’s most innovative universities to align curriculum, research and overall mission to city development that specifically focuses on technology-based systems and services. In other words, progressive higher education is linking itself more than ever to the Internet of Everything.
Read MoreThe United States is in the midst of a generation-long structural shift in labor, productivity, jobs, and pay. This shift began in the 1980s and is set to accelerate with the increasing adoption of advanced robotics and machine learning technologies. We are experiencing the most important changes in the nature of work since the Industrial Revolution, changes that affect nearly everything, from crime to electoral outcomes to national competitiveness.
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