The idea of Connected Urban Development (CUD) was first discussed at a dinner in Washington, DC, in June 2006, when representatives from Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group met with an advisor to President Bill Clinton. At that time, several cities in Europe were launching broadband programs aimed at providing citizens and businesses access to a next generation digital infrastructure which would give rise to dramatic improvements in their quality of life and economic development. A similar trend was unfolding in North America, where an impressive number of local governments were about to launch wireless city initiatives. Most of the focus at the time, however, was on providing connectivity to city constituencies (citizens, business, and the government) and ideas on what services would be enabled by the availability of those infrastructures were still in their infancy.
But 2006 was also the year when, according to author Thomas Friedman, global warming and sustainable development assumed a prominent position on the public stage, and when corporations began to conceive of sustainable development as a significant business opportunity. The convergence between corporate social responsibility and business opportunity quickly made “green” a key issue at the board level for many companies. Convergence between technology infrastructure and global warming policy and operations was beginning to take root.
At the dinner table in Washington we began discussions on how pervasive connectivity could enable a concept by which information could be brought to people, rather than requiring people to travel to reach sources of information. The parties decided to continue those discussions and this eventually led to a four-way commitment from Cisco CEO John Chambers, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam, and Mayor Oh-se Hoon of Seoul, in September 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative global forum in New York. In partnership with the three mayors, John Chambers committed Cisco to invest $15 million over a five-year period to develop innovative ICT and broadband-based solutions to reduce CO2 emissions in large metropolitan areas. The Connected Urban Development (CUD) program was born.
Eighteen months on, we are celebrating the success of our first CUD Global Conference, held in San Francisco on February 20th and 21st. At our event, we witnessed the development of the first CUD proofs of concepts – the Connected Bus, the Personal Travel Assistant, and the Smart Work Center – which will soon transition into operational programs, providing a measurable impact on carbon reduction, citizen inclusion, and economic development for the three founding CUD cities. Moreover, we were thrilled to welcome Birmingham, Hamburg, Lisbon, and Madrid as four new partner cities and we look forward to exploring jointly how technology can foster a more sustainable urban environment for all.
The story of the program since the initial announcement in New York is one of personal commitment, innovative thinking, and passion to create lasting change on the part of all those – in both the public and private sectors – who have been involved in the program so far, across the globe.
During the course of the last twelve months, four basic principles have emerged from our work to date:
- While ICT provides a direct negative impact on energy usage and CO2 reduction, industry efforts aimed at developing energy-efficient technology solutions can contribute to a substantial reduction of the information technology footprint in cities. Collaboration between government and industry, as well as the development of effective policy, are instrumental in this regard.
- Improved energy efficiencies can be achieved by deploying broadband-based applications and services. Those can be clustered in four major areas: Connected and Sustainable Built Environments, Connected and Sustainable Mobility, Connected and Sustainable Work, and Connected and Sustainable Energy.
- Pervasive urban broadband infrastructure and continuous development of application and service clusters can enable radically innovative practices in the areas of urban form and planning, energy policy, new working practices, and new lifestyles. The pervasiveness of ICT and the emergence of Web 2.0 are having dramatic ramifications for the socio-economic tissue of a city, as well as on its energy efficiency plans.
- ICT and broadband connectivity have become enablers of holistic, city-wide urban policy, and as unifiers of heretofore disconnected operational programs. Integration of data and processes across siloed government initiatives is becoming a reality. Mobility, the built environment, and energy-related efficiency initiatives can now be successfully combined into integrated urban development programs.
These programs are becoming foundational to the work brought forward within the program. At the first Connected Urban Development Global Conference, a community of more than 200 thought leaders from all over the world carefully examined those principles and their impacts. As noted by Senior Vice President Gary Bridge of Cisco in his final closing remarks, CUD embodies the essential kind of partnership needed to conceive and implement the required solutions to global warming and sustainable development. CUD explicitly acknowledges there can be no solutions without a meaningful partnership between public, private, academic, and NGO leaders. ICT is a common denominator in solutions, and holds enormous potential to reduce global warming by providing information when and where it is needed in order to make informed consumption and resource decisions, but it is also part of the problem. Industry must respond by making energy efficiency a key goal.
In this context, we are introducing the first incarnation of the Connected Urban Development portal. We sincerely hope that collaboration between a growing number of thought leaders and cities will be supported by this technology platform and that the discussions initiated at the San Francisco conference will continue online, until the community meets again in Amsterdam on September 23rd and 24th for the second edition of the Connected Urban Development Global Conference. Cisco is here to act as a broker of new relationships and as an enabler of those interactions that will spur more innovative thinking on sustainable cities.
Nicola Villa
Global Director, Connected Urban Development
Cisco - Internet Business Solutions Group