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by Nathan Allen on  

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Students of professor Solomon Darwin’s Building Smart Cities course stand with him in front of the Taj Mahal. Courtesy photo.

 

 

VIEWING URBAN POPULATION GROWTH AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM

Politics aside, Darwin and others see rapid urban growth as a business problem. “Cities have traditionally been run by politicians that have vested interests,” Darwin says from his Berkeley office. “Many are about power, prestige, and greed. But technology and the internet has allowed citizens to be engaged. The citizens now can say, ‘This is the type of city we want to live in and these are the ones we don’t want to live in.’”

So Darwin, who grew up in Vizag, India – a city that has seen 650% population growth in the past decade as rural residents fled to cities – created a new course. The first part of the course was to go to India during winter break to visit existing and developing smart cities. “India could be a real laboratory for building cities and technologies,” Darwin says. “In America, we over-engineer things and build too many features we don’t use. The iPhone is an example of that. We probably use about 10 percent of its capability. My eight-year-old can use 10 per cent. When the Indians build, they build the basic model and use 90 per cent of a product.”

And it’s that type of efficiency that forms the crux of smart cities. With booming populations and unstable resources, efficiency is key. “The students spoke with politicians in India about how smart cities of the future need to be run like companies,” Darwin continues. “They need a business model. They need to answer questions like, ‘How do you cut back expenses and advance revenues? What can you share with other nearby cities?’ This is all what Prime Minister Modi is subscribing to.”

On March 5, Saundarya Mehra found herself standing before a panel of brilliant innovators: VPs from Tyco and HCL Technologies; directors from IBM; chief innovation officers of cities near and far; even a consul general of India. Mehra and her team were pitching them their very best ideas to use open innovation and business models to create smarter cities. They were also receiving a sizable portion of their course grades from the industry and community leaders.

It was all part of U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business professor Solomon Darwin’s Building Smart Cities course. The smart city, a concept taking hold in India, is broadly defined as a city that uses technology to enhance infrastructure, health, and well-being. A smart city’s various infrastructure systems run more efficiently and allow citizens to interact more with leaders. In short, smart cities represent a marriage of big data, technology, and infrastructure, to run a community like an efficient and cost-effective business. “The mayor is more like a CEO,” Darwin says.

The project goes back to last May (2014) when India elected its new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Months later, Modi announced India would establish 100 smart cities. In September of last year, President Barack Obama announced the United States would be lead partners with the Indian prime minister to develop three specific cities—Ajmer, Visakhapatnam and Allahabad.

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The panel of judges listen to presentations from Building Smart Cities teams. Center is Chief Judge: Ambassador Venkatesan Ashok, Consul General of India. Courtesy photo.

 

VIEWING URBAN POPULATION GROWTH AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM

Politics aside, Darwin and others see rapid urban growth as a business problem. “Cities have traditionally been run by politicians that have vested interests,” Darwin says from his Berkeley office. “Many are about power, prestige, and greed. But technology and the internet has allowed citizens to be engaged. The citizens now can say, ‘This is the type of city we want to live in and these are the ones we don’t want to live in.’”

So Darwin, who grew up in Vizag, India – a city that has seen 650% population growth in the past decade as rural residents fled to cities – created a new course. The first part of the course was to go to India during winter break to visit existing and developing smart cities. “India could be a real laboratory for building cities and technologies,” Darwin says. “In America, we over-engineer things and build too many features we don’t use. The iPhone is an example of that. We probably use about 10 percent of its capability. My eight-year-old can use 10 per cent. When the Indians build, they build the basic model and use 90 per cent of a product.”

And it’s that type of efficiency that forms the crux of smart cities. With booming populations and unstable resources, efficiency is key. “The students spoke with politicians in India about how smart cities of the future need to be run like companies,” Darwin continues. “They need a business model. They need to answer questions like, ‘How do you cut back expenses and advance revenues? What can you share with other nearby cities?’ This is all what Prime Minister Modi is subscribing to.”

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Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland speaks with students. Courtesy Photo.

MEETING WITH CITY LEADERS

The teams met with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. The mayors told the teams what specific needs their respective cities had. Despite sharing a boundary, the needs of both communities are completely different, according to the mayors. Schaaf cited community safety, sustainable infrastructure, food and housing, and government transparency. Bates spoke of an aging infrastructure in dire need of maintenance and improvements.

“What are the social determinants of health—including employment and safety? How do you integrate the different races? How [can we] grow a permanent base if we cannot create confidence that Oakland will be safe and stay safe,” Schaaf reportedly asked the class. The teams worked together and with city leaders from Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, and San Francisco to present their solutions on April 15. As with their March presentations, about half of their course grades were given by the panel members.

 

“Oakland is the best of what an American city can be,” Schaaf said in a prepared statement. “It’s diverse. It’s got architectural beauty. It’s got natural beauty. It’s got arts and gritty industry and a blue-collar aesthetic and incredible potential and opportunity for social movements, for entrepreneurs. It is America’s most exciting city.”

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The San Jose team with Michelle Thong. Courtesy photo.

 

SOLVING SAN JOSE’S “TALENT DRAIN”

Team Berkeley suggested solutions from using smart water metering to “intellistreet” street lamps – a combination street light security camera – to new and efficient bus ticket sensors. San Jose and San Francisco provided unique challenges to the teams. Despite being California’s most educated city, San Jose suffers from “talent drain” and an older demographic. It’s home to many large tech organizations but nearby Mountain View is taking many new tech companies and the techies largely want to live in San Francisco.

Consequently, Team San Jose proposed corporate housing, smart transportation, and a governance portal to eliminate bureaucratic barriers that small businesses currently face when trying to move to San Jose. “Across the board, I was highly impressed by the quality of the Haas students’ research, analysis, and presentations,” says Michelle Thong, a business development officer for the City of San Jose.

“San Jose did a remarkable job,” Darwin says. “They said, ‘Let’s take all of this land we have and let’s use it to create housing in and for Silicon Valley’. For a minimal cost, you can build housing facilities, have 24/7 wifi and provide a transportation system for access to the rest of Silicon Valley and San Francisco.”

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The San Francisco team with San Francisco’s Chief Innovation Officer, Jay Nath. Courtesy photo.

A DISRUPTIVE SELF-DRIVING CAR TRAFFIC SOLUTION

All of those techies ending up in San Francisco has created some large-scale traffic issues. Team San Francisco focused on tackling that issue, by proposing a program they called Pilot on Demand. The project would link tech giants with car manufacturers and the city government to provide on-demand self-driving cars. The cars would pick up people from the same areas traveling to similar destinations. All of the car activity would be tracked and the data provided to the city to improve the flow of moving people.

“The driverless car method uses the same infrastructure but it eliminates so much travel time and reduces pollution and adds safety as they are proven to have less accidents than human-operated vehicles,” explains Darwin. “I thought that was a phenomenal idea. But the judges didn’t seem to like it as much. But that is true with every disruptive proposal. A disruptive idea is never popular. I give credit to my students for thinking disruptively.”

A MORE TRANSPARENT AND COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTION?

Another disruption is the idea of smart cities in general. Darwin believes involving private businesses in community and traditional government issues will create a more transparent and accountable process. “The competition for the bids on various projects will now be much more transparent with an open data and open business model,” Darwin explains. “Everyone has a say in it. Before, there were closed doors and kickbacks and now everyone is going to hold others accountable and they can do it cost-efficiently.”

Ideally citizens would be able to see the bidding process and be able to interact with decision makers on which companies would be used to make the cities smarter. Darwin also believes citizen involvement will lead to companies with outcome-based business models. “I think more and more players and younger companies from around the world will come to bid to provide more lean technology – technology that does the same job as older companies but at a better cost,” Darwin says.

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Solomon Darwin presenting the student projects with Venkaiah Naidu, India’s Minister of Urban Development. Courtesy photo.

 

‘THERE IS A GLOBAL AWARENESS OF PEOPLE MOVING TO CITIES NOW’

Other countries seem to support the smart cities concept. When Darwin travelled to India to present his students’ work at the Innovation Round Table, a representative from Finland approached him. “He asked if my students from Berkeley would come to Finland and help them develop smart cities,” says Darwin with pride exuding from his voice.

“There is a global awareness of people moving to cities now,” Darwin says. “It’s why cities are being so important. They give a sense of community, belonging, and pride. They give security and fun. That’s why so many people are moving to cities and San Francisco. People feel like they belong in community with others. And that movement is going to continue because that’s the way we are.”

Darwin says the course will continue to focus mainly on India for its international component. And, for now, the course is scheduled for the next five years.

PIQUING SOME PAIN-POINTS

“The students learned a lot,” Darwin says. But that did not happen without some pain-points. “There is a lot of anxiety and frustration and challenges in this course and others I teach,” continues Darwin. “It’s because the students want to find a solution. But innovation is messy. And students don’t always want to deal with mess. Students want directions on how to get the ‘A’. It’s a can of worms and there is no road or path and you need to deal with ambiguity. At the end of it all, they look back and say, ‘Gosh, I learned so much’. That’s what I feel a lot of students come away with, they don’t like the pain and stress but at the end they look back and like it. I’m not a popular professor, because I put them through a lot.”

Popular? Perhaps not. Unique? Most definitely. Darwin comes from a poor family in India. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University, he founded a school and hospital for poor citizens in India.

“I believe a business model that does not create value for many is a useless model,” Darwin explains. “We always build products for rich people. There are about 1.5 billion rich people in the world. We never build products for the 5.5 billion poor people. Do you want to make a thousand by selling to one person or by selling a thousand products for a dollar each? Tech allows us to do a lot more for a lot less.”

Darwin, who has seen multiple students from the school he founded in India attend American universities, believes giving opportunity to all people could lead to wide-scale change. And smart cities play a role in the transformation.

“I have learned in my own experience to give people an opportunity and education,” says Darwin. “With that, they will transform society and the social landscape. Oakland, for example, can be transformed if we deal with the root and not just put Band-Aids on the issue. And the root is including basic things like food and education.”

– See more at: http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2015/05/19/biz-students-work-to-make-cities-smarter/4/#sthash.o66Tg9Hz.dpuf

By: Nathan Allen