From smart city to wise Citi-verse:
using the Pathways Toolkit for collective urban intelligence
Do smart cities serve the citizens, or the elites who control them?
In collaboration with the Manchester Urban Institute, Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation and London South Bank University, this training workshop at the World Urban Forum, Nov 4-8th in Cairo, was based on the emerging Citi-verse models and Pathways toolkit. Examples included urban innovations from – Bontang, Kampala, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Guangzhou, eThekwini, Dubai, Tampere, Mannheim.
This workshop was an excellent start on the journey from ‘smart’ to ‘wise’ cities, with a ‘people-centred Citi-verse’…
- event page – https://tinyurl.com/4ecncuyp
- project page – Synergistics | Citi-verse pathways
- draft report – Pdf – https://tinyurl.com/yhdfup6m
BUT… we finished on Nov 6th just as final news came from USA – that the world’s richest man will be running the white house & extending his monopoly of global satellite systems / data systems / extremist platforms… The cartoon here is non-fictional…
In that light, we could follow up this Citi-verse Pathways event, with more challenging scenarios, and more searching questions – i.e. for every so-called ‘smart’ system we have to ask: –
- how can the elite (tech bros / gangsters / dictators) use this system for power / money / other advantage?? (this question was put up on Nov 6th but we hardly got started)
- how can the wider AI systems, & global data / surveillance systems, be steered / hijacked for the interests of such elites??
And in response:
- how can the ‘people-centred’ / ‘smart-wise’ / ‘Citi-verse’ approach make a counterpart to such extreme power?
- What transformational systems of CHAI (‘collective human-artificial intelligence’) could emerge?
- What practical examples can be proposed?
a follow-up forum (online) is proposed…. ideas & comments welcome… dates coming shortly
Background
The Manchester Urban Institute hosts the international Mind-Lab, which promotes the Pathways Toolkit in many projects and locations around the world.
The Citi-verse lab continuously monitors digital tools and AI in cities around the world. Participants to the event are invited to subscribe to the newsletter for free to be periodically updated on latest development, and progress being made by existing and new use cases. The Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation is the thought leader behind the Guangzhou Award for Urban Innovation, with use cases & lessons for training. leadership & capacity development via peer -learning & city-to-city cooperation.
The Pathways approach is enhanced by contributions on collective urban intelligence processes, from experts at London South Bank University, and University College London
The Smart-wise City and the CHAI (Collective Human-Artificial Intelligence’ is a long running theme in the Mind-Lab / Laboratory for collective intelligence – see chapters from the Deeper City book
