Thinking About The Future: Our Role In Building Smart Cities (EVENT)

In two weeks, global thinkers about the future of cities will converge on Brooklyn to talk about what that the rapid technological change means for all of us, urban dwellers.

Whether you hail your ride via app, book your reservations on OpenTable, use CityBike, monitor your home wirelessly, participate in protests and marches organized using social media – you are using technology to change the way you interact with the city, and the way city interacts with you.

The Smart Cities conference brings together world’s leading universities and companies to share the current thinking and challenges on how to make cities better, safer and smarter for all of us: How do we make sure future cities are places people actually want to live in. What kinds of jobs will go to robots and what will the rest of us do?

If you ever ponder:

• How will technology connect residents and empower them? Will that help previously marginalized communities and how we can make sure it does?
• How do we build large scale infrastructure projects that our cities need, from water infrastructure to planning for public spaces and moving goods and people – with so much data that can be gathered and analyzed, how do we plan smarter for growth? How do we make cities water-smart and sustainable? A team from Harward University will be leading a workshop on that.
• What will the cities look once the self-driving vehicles take over, which will be sooner than we think, and how can the cities be ready for it?  MIT researchers have been thinking about this in depth.
• By 2050 more than 70% of world’s children will live in cities – most of them poor – how do we make sure they are growing up in environmentally safe and supportive environments?
• How and which new business ideas are likely to disrupt cities (like ride sharing apps or Airbnb have done already) and how to think about rules and regulations?

You may wish to join the thinkers, and doers at Brooklyn Navy Yard May 3rd to May 6th, and explore how technology impacts our urban environments and dream a bit about the future. We’ll be there, and we want you to be there as well.