| VISION by Protiviti

Protiviti's Claire Gotham and Tyler Chase on powering the city of the future

Amanda, a thirty-something professional, is a typical urban dweller in the year 2030. She wakes up each morning in a city apartment that is served mostly by electricity—but the sources of that power are quite varied. A heat pump from the coffee roastery in the building next door provides much of the space heating for her apartment. A photovoltaic cell on her balcony supplies the power for her coffee maker and other small appliances. Her tiny apartment and electric vehicle (EV), which has been charging overnight in the underground parking garage, both receive much of their energy from the local utility. The utility, in turn, generates its electricity largely from renewables such as wind power and solar panels.

Amanda is not just an energy consumer. She is also an energy provider through her building’s microgrid, which sells excess electricity back to the utility. The microgrid, which serves both residents and a data center business on the ground floor of Amanda’s building, is composed of EVs, photovoltaic cells, rooftop solar panels, and behind-the-meter batteries and generators used for emergency backup—a closed-loop system that provides minute-by-minute transparency via a building power dashboard and can be controlled by the users.

Unlike power consumers of today, Amanda enjoys energy supplied by a grid that is largely self-sufficient, resilient and green. If the local utility should suffer from equipment outages or overloads, her microgrid and those of neighboring buildings can pick up much of the slack. Moreover, her carbon footprint is a fraction of the typical consumer of 2021. Living in a compact city where multiple-use zoning is the rule, she can find practically every lifestyle need within a 15-minute ride.

If this scenario sounds too idealized, bear in mind that most of the technology to achieve it already exists. The real question is whether 21st-century cities will embrace the policy and business decisions that will turn sustainable energy into a reality.

Economic, climate and societal pressure is building to push for this future. Based on a number of indicators, such as the rapid growth of cities, which currently consume 78% of the planet’s primary energy, electricity use is going to soar in the coming years. Burgeoning technologies like EVs and distributed ledger systems (e.g., cryptocurrency) will need massive amounts of power, as will all the data centers that form the backbone of the digital economy. And legacy technologies, such as air conditioners, are not going to disappear overnight, which means the hunger for energy—and for renewable sources of that energy—will grow for the foreseeable future. For example, the International Energy Agency has forecast that the number of installed air conditioners will grow by two-thirds from the 2 billion units currently installed.

Climate change is a pressing point. As the planet warms, not only is the need for cooling technologies growing, but extreme weather events are causing widespread disruptions in electricity supply. Electric grids with built-in resilience are becoming a necessity, and yet the current model of centralized, often-remote energy generation and long-distance transmission is not set up to meet that need. A new generation of power companies is capitalizing on this weakness of traditional utilities by grabbing large sections of the power market, such as airports, hospitals and school districts, which depend on reliable energy, and supplying them with efficient, reliable, locally generated and locally stored energy—typically from clean and renewable sources such as wind and solar. These disruptors are growing in number and market share, with a projected market value compound annual growth rate of 27% for the next six years.

And then there is the customer, who with each passing year is having a greater influence on the future of energy. Whether through Wall Street, Main Street or government, the investing, buying and voting public wants to know the source of its electricity. A number of cities, such as San Francisco, already offer utility customers green energy options. And much like the organic food movement of the last century, consumers are indicating that they will pay more for personal and community health.

Climate change is a pressing point. As the planet warms, not only is the need for cooling technologies growing, but extreme weather events are causing widespread disruptions in electricity supply.

Future-enabling energy policies

While stakeholders ranging from government and business leaders to consumers and community activists appear as the face of the sustainable energy movement, economic forces in and of themselves are driving 21st-century economies toward renewable energy and electrification. The banking firm Goldman Sachs has forecast that investment in the clean energy sector will hit $16 trillion through 2030, surpassing fossil fuels. In line with those figures, Rewiring America, a nonprofit organization devoted to complete electrification of the country, has predicted the creation of 25 million new jobs of all types in the United States over the next 15 years, with five million sustained jobs by mid-century.

Government leaders are facilitating the transition toward renewables through such measures as stricter vehicle emission standards, phase-out programs for internal combustion engine vehicles, and subsidized campaigns to build widespread access to EV charging stations. The United Kingdom, for its part, has created Clean Air Zones (CAZs) on its roads and in its cities where polluting vehicles must pay a toll.

Partnerships between utilities and governments at all levels further promote electrification of final energy use. For example, a number of investor- and government-funded grid modernization projects are underway in the United States to make grids more responsive to changes in demand and supply, and to connect with and optimize input from microgrids. Currently, obtaining regulatory approval for such utility expenditures takes an average of 13 months.

Much wider partnerships involving government and businesses of all kinds could dramatically improve energy efficiency through the development of compact cities. With better land use, consolidated urban housing, and multiple-use buildings, cities can produce fewer emissions, require far less energy and promote healthier and happier lifestyles. Stockholm and Pittsburgh, for example, have comparable populations, but Pittsburgh sprawls over five times more land than Stockholm and produces five times the amount of emissions per resident. By contrast, Stockholm’s compactness enables it to produce a flourishing economy and a well-regarded quality of life.

These growing trends only touch the surface of policy shifts that could greatly enhance the energy efficiency of cities. Other changes include a circular economy approach that considers the energy use of all civic and infrastructure components, such as water, waste and building materials in comprehensive, interconnected ways, as well as cross-industrial synergies, such as those created by automakers and utilities working together to develop EVs and EV infrastructure.

The banking firm Goldman Sachs has forecast that investment in the clean energy sector will hit $16 trillion through 2030, surpassing fossil fuels.

Technology, a driving force

Technology is a major player in energy’s future. Digitization is key. If every watt and every use of it can be translated into ones and zeros (or, soon enough, qubits), both energy providers and consumers can have a much better understanding of what they are using and paying for, and what could be improved. Digitization also provides a foundation for more advanced applications. Consider the technology that enables a building—or even a city—to gauge its use/occupancy level on a real-time basis and then adjust its energy delivery accordingly.

Other areas that will likely benefit greatly from advances in technology include power flow control and power storage. And as the Internet of Things grows exponentially, data platforms will become ever more important in ensuring that the energy needed to run a city in 2030 will be available, sustainable, reliable and distributed equitably.

In sum, it will be a challenging but exhilarating world that Amanda will inhabit in 2030. In this brave new world of energy, some companies will be the disruptors that lead the industry away from the centrally managed, outdated grid to one that uses multiple, distributed, green sources and is both flexible and resilient, while others remain stuck in legacy mode, their prospects growing dim. Which one will yours be?

And as the Internet of Things grows exponentially, data platforms will become ever more important in ensuring that the energy needed to run a city in 2030 will be available, sustainable, reliable and distributed equitably.

Claire Gotham is a Managing Director at Protiviti and the Lead for Power & Utilities in North America. In her 25 years in the energy industry she has worked with senior leadership, to innovate on a wide range solutions across all segments of the industry, including risk, resiliency & sustainability.

Claire Gotham

Managing Director, Protiviti

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Tyler serves as the global leader for Protiviti’s Energy & Utilities industry and has spent over 20 years focused on the wide ranging challenges in the industry. Tyler teams with a global network of experts across the Power & Utilities, Renewables, Oil & Gas, and Mining segments to stay ahead of trends and build solutions that enable success across the industry.

Tyler Chase

Managing Director, Protiviti

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Veda Praxis: Eying Indonesia’s capital move out of Jakarta through a digital lens

The relocation of the Indonesian capital has been on the central government’s agenda for a long time and has yet to be realized. The proposal to move the capital to Palangkaraya or Samarinda, Kalimantan was first put forward some 60 years ago and has been revisited several times since. The latest, and most definitive attempt came in August 2021, when President Joko Widodo announced the location for the new capital city—an area that stretches across North Penajem Paser Regency and Kutai Kertanegara Regency, East Kalimantan. The potential cost of the move, along with the massive disruption to daily life, merit further examination of the challenges and opportunities to be faced in the development of the new capital. This article attempts to offer an increasingly important techno-governance lens on the relocation proposal from Veda Praxis, a governance improvement innovation firm based in Jakarta. Some key takeaways are provided to help the Indonesian government prepare for a better and more forward-looking digital presence. Why a new capital? There are several motivating factors that have been commonly touted to drive the urge for a new capital. We have highlighted three.

Superdensity challenge. Both Jakarta and the island of Java, where the current capital is located, are facing the issue of rapid and uncontrolled population growth. At more than 270 million people, Indonesia's population remains concentrated on the island of Java with more than 151 million people or about 52% of the national population. The central role that Jakarta plays is highlighted by the fact that the vibrant city is viewed as the center of both Indonesia’s government and business. This has led to the superdensity of the current capital. With an area spanning some 622.33 km2 and a population of over 11 million (16,704 people/km2), the capital’s density far exceeds any other area in Indonesia. Euromonitor International predicts that Jakarta will replace Tokyo as the most populous city in the world by 2030. Severe congestion and other mobility issues could cripple the city. A 2020 congestion survey names Jakarta as one of the worst congested regions in the world, ranking it 10th with an average congestion of 53% and a peak congestion of 87% during working hours.
Wealth distribution. Despite the emergence of new urban centers and campaigns for infrastructure distribution to other islands, the wealth of Indonesia remains in Jakarta (Even the growing infrastructure projects that have been sprouting in other regions have not matched the output of the country’s most populous island. The population concentration is followed by the unequal distribution of Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Java’s economic output accounts for about 59% of the country’s GDP in the period from January to March. Amid the population inequality, there is a significant gap between the GPD contributions of each island. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that Java still contributed a majority of the country’s GDP in 2020, accounting for 59% of the total national GDP. The issue of inequality remains unsolved. The government’s plan to establish a new location in an area at the center of Indonesia is an effort to fix the imbalance by creating a need for governance, investment, business, mobility, and wealth in a new capital of Indonesia.
Environmental imbalance. Various environmental issues have been plaguing both Jakarta and the island of Java. Java is facing the worst water crisis ever seen in Indonesia. The greater Jakarta area is facing extreme water scarcity, which does not occur in the surrounding areas. Furthermore, land subsidence has been occurring at the rate of 10-20 cm per year, making the coastal city vulnerable to sinking below sea level. Another concern is that land conversion or consumption on the island of Java is occurring five times faster than in Kalimantan. It is predicted that by 2030, overdevelopment in Java could reach 43%, threatening local heritage.

At more than 270 million people, Indonesia's population remains concentrated on the island of Java with more than 151 million people or about 52% of the national population.

The new capital

The new state capital will be located in East Kalimantan, in an area that stretches across the two regencies of North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara. Many factors were taken into consideration in determining the location for the new capital. Socio-economic disparity and population density in Java are the main factors that led to the decision to move the capital city to East Kalimantan. The state capital-to-be will span an area of 256,142 hectares (about 989 square miles), consisting of 5,664 hectares (about 22 square miles) for the planned central government core and 56,180 hectares (about 217 square miles) for the planned state capital area. The remaining area is earmarked for the expansion of the state capital.

The Indonesian government has made various preparations for the move, including finding the proper location, establishing a budget of IDR573 trillion (about US$40 billion) under three financing plans, and setting up a special governance for the region. The development of the new capital will also be focused on the environment and digitalization, adopting green government by enforcing green space and fully environmentally friendly construction. In terms of digitalization, the plan has carefully accounted for future infrastructure needs to enable digital transformation and a smart city design geared toward information and communication technology (ICT) to support connectivity and enhanced logistics.

Considering the development of the region as part of the state capital, population in the new capital city is expected to surge through 2045. The total number of residents in the region is expected to gradually increase from about 100,000 residents to between 600,000 and 700,000 residents in 2025, 1.5 to 1.6 million residents in 2035, and 1.7 to 1.9 million residents in 2045, according to Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning.

Strategic digital view

Indonesia is greatly diverse in many aspects—socio-cultural, geographic, local government profiles, and economic potential—which certainly poses a unique level of complexity. Such diversity, however, has also generated a lateral potential value that could serve as a global competitive advantage. Spanning an area of 1.9 million km2, Indonesia needs to go digital if it wants to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. The new capital may further push digitalization within the Indonesian government as the primary enabler of a new, digital economy. Digital infrastructure, business processes and services must therefore be carefully crafted to equip the new capital with digital innovation capabilities. The following six strategic technological considerations help analyze a range of high-level matters in the context of techno-governance.

Strategic planning

Digitalization and the green government concept will likely be the major drivers in the government’s effort towards its smart, green, beautiful, and sustainable vision for the new capital. The need to adopt smart interconnected technologies has been repeatedly highlighted by President Widodo when talking about plans for the new capital. Aside from making sure that user experience is supported across business processes, the underlying digital infrastructure also requires an agile and open architecture, such as a mixture of microservice and monolithic APIs. Strategic planning for digitalization is therefore vital to meet the goal.

Strategic digital planning will produce a strategy for digital services and processes, which, in turn, will produce a plan for the development of diverse governmental applications. The overarching goal of putting digital strategy first is to ensure that strategic alignment is attained between business objectives and digital capability. As the relocation initiative has been incorporated into the 2020-2024 Medium-Term Development Plan, the appointed central digital authorities need to take a number of steps for strategy formulation and planning. The first step is, of course, for the committee to take a look at the organizational and digital goals so the information required for the different business processes can be identified. Given that there is a great number of digital capability elements involved, the era of the new capital will likely be marked with considerable and distinct innovations in the governmental business process. Digital technology will play a major role in the shift.

Digital governance

With respect to the new capital city, digital governance focuses on establishing stewardship, accountability, roles, and decision-making authority for the city’s digital presence. The Indonesian government needs to establish a well-designed digital governance framework to prevent misalignment during the execution of the digital strategy. The governance framework specifies who determines the direction for the new capital’s digital presence; a range of rules associated with the government-citizen digital activity; and the decision authority on digital investments.

Considering the extent of the digital vision for the new capital, and the fact that such governance will be deployed in a brand-new environment, vastly different challenges emerge compared to deployment in a relatively mature and stable environment like Java. Prioritizing compliance and risk mitigation in such an unpredictable environment at the early stages of the digital state capital might prove to be ineffective. The government needs to provide a flexible digital governance program that accommodates multiple initiatives without sacrificing structure and accountability.

From a smart city to a smart nation

More than the physical relocation of governmental buildings, the anticipated capital move provides opportunity for the rise of Indonesia as a digital nation. Therefore, the preparation needs to cover the management of not only a smart city, but a smart nation. Indonesia has begun a smart city transformation in a number of big cities in the country, even joining the ASEAC Smart Cities Network (ASCN) in 2018, which fosters the sharing of good practices and knowledge.

The smart city concept is key for driving innovation and preventing and overcoming various problems, and, ultimately, improving the quality of life for the country’s residents through the use of ICT. However, strong infrastructure, technological ecosystem and networks are needed for a functioning smart city. Extreme transformation in terms of digital mindset, regulation and infrastructure is extremely important considering that Indonesia is ranked 40th out of 64 countries globally in the Digital Government Ranking report by Waseda University, Indonesia.

Building an adequate technological ecosystem to support the smart properties of the capital is one of the challenges faced by the government. Technological infrastructure such as CCTV, traffic lights, optimized digital population data, as well as weather monitoring technology—including rainfall, wind, and Air Quality Index (AQI) is needed. A strong backbone network is required to connect the thousands of technological devices of different types that will be spread across the capital city. Additionally, connecting various devices means that a large amount of data will be generated every second. It will be a unique challenge to ensure that such data is easily accessible and adequately scalable to support the decision-making process in improving the quality of services as well as government operations.

The road to a smart nation begins with the establishment of the capital city as a digitally enabled society hub. Here, the mobile-first concept can be used as the foundation for all public services. This requires a combination of data-driven services and smart collaboration based on the data obtained from the OpenAPI and microservice architecture used in a wide array of constantly interconnected digital objects. Such digital experience will in turn improve the digital literacy of residents through the experience of utilizing available Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions (MICE) buildings. To build these capabilities requires optimizing a range of infrastructure technologies such as hyperscale cloud service, integrated smart waste sensors, 5G connectivity, and fiber optic support.

The following principles will provide room for a balanced governance program:

Support the advancement of initiatives at the individual or unit level while maintaining an inventory of information on those initiatives.
Implement decentralized governance as the units grow more mature digitally.
Challenge the governmental units to come up with ideation but centralize evaluation and prioritization.
Establish a proper responsibility accounting system with properly mapped KPIs for the digital initiative.
Develop the governmental digital solution around the business process to ensure data compatibility, technical consistency and agile integration.

E-Government

Despite the dream of becoming a digitally enabled nation, government services have been plagued by unintegrated data, siloed data, lack of information sharing and ownership, and unpredictable business processes. This has resulted in dissatisfactions and poor system performance. Presidential Regulation (PP) No. 95/2018 marked growing expectation for a better integrated electronic-based government system (SPBE). It provides a regulatory framework for national digital transformation covering four major domains: internal policy, governance, management, and service. The launch of SPBE aims to create efficient, effective, transparent, and accountable work processes and improve the quality of public services.

SPBE measures the maturity level of 47 e-Government indicators as the subcomponents of the four domains. These indicators include data center infrastructure, open data, business process innovation, government sharing system, infrastructure audit, application and security, risk management, change management, intra-government network, data management practices, appointed task force for SPBE, and central-local government integration. SPBE infrastructure development must be accelerated within a period of three years, including the development of an intra-government network.

The capital city establishment might both be influenced by and influence future e-Government regulations. In its strategic plan, the Ministry of Communication and Information has targeted for the 100% completion of the national data center. The national data center will be constructed in two locations—Jakarta and the new capital city. Meanwhile, the Indonesian One Data policy as mandated by Presidential Regulation No. 39/2019 is expected to heavily influence the design of big data architecture and infrastructure for the future capital city. Lastly, the SPBE regulation requires all governmental units to use the National API Gateway in delivering their services. To what extent the API Gateway will influence the architecture of information and services of the new capital needs to be considered in determining the direction of the strategic planning and governance.

Digital talent

The establishment of a smart city is necessary to accommodate the future needs of Indonesia’s young digital talent. Between 2030 and 2040, Indonesian professionals in the 15 to 64 age group will make up 64% of the total population. The jobs available will be more automated, digitalized, and dynamic. As the relocation deadline is fast approaching, the Indonesian government should start preparing the workforce for the coming digital innovations of the new capital city. Digital talent demands in the future will shift towards generalists that demonstrate cognitive, interpersonal, and self-leadership skill sets supported by specialized digital proficiency. The new capital strategy should take digital talent acquisition into account as it will determine the target set for the level of digital maturity of the working and living experience.

Security

In the development of a smart city, the most important infrastructure other than cloud or cloud computing for data storage and maintenance is the network. Problems such as hacking, submarine cable disruption, and other issues can break the main or backbone network. Without a backbone network, devices and platforms cannot communicate with each other, cutting access to the monitoring system and applications and thus interfering in decision-making as well as with public and government services.

Business continuity practices are pivotal to ensure uninterrupted connectivity at the state capital to prevent down time. For a continuous network, a backup system and extensive network consisting of different networks and backup data centers are vital to ensure the continuity of the technological services.

In addition to maintaining continuous network availability, a smart city must protect the privacy of residents against cyber threats. The long and complex process of the drafting of the Privacy Data Protection Act has threatened the privacy of the population. Cases of population data leakage are frequently found, in which population data is processed and stored without any protection and encryption.

64%↑

Between 2030 and 2040, Indonesian professionals in the 15 to 64 age group will make up 64% of the total population.

Hamzah Ritchi is Veda Praxis' research partner and both an associate professor and Head of Center for Digital Innovation Studies at University of Padjadjaran, Indonesia. Ritchi is an expert in business process management and innovation, accounting information systems, and IS governance with more than 15 years’ experience in consulting services and research. Ritchi has a keen interest in process science and analytics, the cognitive aspect of information systems, risk and internal controls, and IS governance.

Hamzah Ritchi

Research Partner, Veda Praxis

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Syahraki Syahrir is Veda Praxis' Chief Advisory and President of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), Indonesia Chapter. He holds several GRC-related certifications, including CISA (Certified Information System Auditor), CISM (Certified Information Security Manager), CDPSE (Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer), and GRCP/GRCA (Governance Risk and Compliance Professional and Auditor). He holds a degree in accounting from Padjajaran University and Master of Management degree from Binus Business School Indonesia.

Syahraki Syahrir

Chief Advisory, Veda Praxis

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Protiviti’s Jonathan Wyatt: Personal transport will drive future cities’ success

In this interview with Jonathan Wyatt, Europe Regional Market Leader for Protiviti, Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, sits down with him to discuss mobility and how we’ll move around in cities in 2030 and beyond.

Kornik: As you think of cities in 2030, what are some of the big changes you see coming for the way we move around cities? What are the possibilities? What are some of the challenges?

Wyatt: Looking that far ahead is difficult. The real challenges are political, not technological. We have the technology today to completely change the way we look at transportation and provide a very high quality, personalized and efficient system. There are, however, many barriers to this. Some people like to own cars and will object if this right is taken away. Many people’s careers will be adversely impacted by automation and therefore the unions will resist change. We have already seen this with automation on trains. This requires leaders that are ready to take a stand to force the change through, and the right public mood to make it happen. COVID was one catalyst for change that forced us to take a leap. Climate change should be another.

Kornik: Leaders winning hearts and minds seems like a big ask, but particularly about something that requires a shift in thinking, like autonomous vehicles

Wyatt: Right. It’s also important to remember that one accident involving a driverless car could have a significant impact. The reality is, of course, that accidents with humans at the wheel happen all the time. Public reaction, however, can be very different when it is seen as a fault with the technology. Even though it is very irrational, there will be a tendency to over-act as a result of very occasional accidents, even if they occur with lesser frequency than they do now. The other key emotional issue is determining who is at fault in an accident and/or who to protect in situations whereby an accident is deemed inevitable. If a child steps out into a road unexpectedly and the vehicle cannot avoid an accident, do you protect the passenger or the child? Who makes this decision? Do you consider the demographics and/or medical history of the passenger when making these decisions? It’s these types of decisions that will delay adoption; not technological considerations.

Kornik: That makes sense, but I’m still stuck on whether people will willingly give up driving their own cars. Will they?

Wyatt: Like a lot of this, I think it’s generational. Look at the adoption rates of Uber and Lyft among younger people; it’s not even crossing their minds to own a car. This is the future. This is a rich topic for urban planners around the world. Beijing, China and Phoenix in the U.S. already have autonomous taxis. Whatever city decides to take that leap to eliminate personal cars completely would immediately become a leader on the world stage. It wouldn't surprise me if a city like London, where I’m based, made some bold decisions around transport, and maybe even banned petrol-driven cars sooner rather than later. A decision like this would set off a cascading chain of events that would, ultimately, result in a complete redesign of the city center—and ultimately, in my opinion, create a better city.

The real challenges are political, not technological. We have the technology today to completely change the way we look at transportation and provide a very high quality, personalized and efficient system.

Kornik: There will be first movers, for sure. Do you think most cities will be equipped to handle this potential new reality?

Wyatt: Car ownership, and especially electric vehicle ownership, is going to be a major issue for cities. People have to park those cars, and cities will have to put electric charging stations in public places all over the city. That’s an issue that cities are already dealing with, but if you don't want to have to solve that problem, you skip ahead to the point where you just ban personal cars in cities. An app will call an autonomous car to you, and it will take you where you want to go. You don’t have to park it, you don’t have to charge it, you don’t have to service it. All the technology already exists to do this, and the way forward seems obvious. Look at how Amazon delivers, particularly in big cities—the routes are completely optimized by computers. What they do with packages, we could do with people. For me, this should be the future: An autonomous vehicle picks you up and takes you exactly where you want to go in an efficient, convenient and environmentally responsible way.

Kornik: What about the massive infrastructure changes that would come along with this type of change?

Wyatt: There will be work required, of course, but it’ll lead to better cities. There should be little to no traffic delays because roads will be completely optimized, and the increased efficiency should result in fewer roads but probably the addition of what I’ll call superhighways, multilevel roadways that would accommodate many cars to keep other areas of the cities clear. Computers will manage the traffic flow so that there are no delays, no blockages and no accidents. Remember, in a world of fully autonomous vehicles, computers will manage the traffic flow so the vehicles can travel much faster than they do on current roads. Cars will constantly be communicating with other cars and adjusting speed accordingly. You can therefore have cars going through interchanges at high speeds in multiple directions. Scary to watch and no doubt slightly uncomfortable to experience initially, but completely safe, or at least significantly safer than the roads today. Many roads could be re-imagined as parks or green spaces or walking paths. This, of course, assumes that everybody can walk the last few hundred meters to their home. What about the elderly or people with a severe medical condition? What about deliveries of larger items? We’ll still need to find ways to get people and things right to their door. And we will; there will be alternative technological solutions to that problem.

Kornik: We haven’t touched on mass transit. What role does it play in cities of the future?

Wyatt: One of the big questions for cities, I think, is whether mass transit will still need to exist in cities of the future. Removing mass transit from city centers is probably going to happen; not by 2030, of course, but eventually. Today, I often see large, mostly empty buses and trains. We do that because we really don’t have an alternative, but we will soon. So, if mass transit is part of the long-term future, it will have to be radically redesigned for a completely new world. I certainly prefer the idea of personalized transit designed for the passengers, not the driver, with the capacity to enable a group travelling together to meet and socialize in comfort whilst travelling.

Kornik: It’s funny you say that because Los Angeles is part of a pilot program with the World Economic Forum to look at how to bring autonomous vehicles—flying taxis—to cities. Part of that plan is to make sure it is “mass transit” and not just for the super wealthy. What role do you see that playing in the future?

Wyatt: Whenever I see a city like that in a movie, it looks dreadful, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live there. To me, a pleasant city is one where it’s much easier to walk places or where you’ve got quiet electric vehicles that are personalized transport and optimized for full efficiency. I think the reason anyone is even considering flying vehicles—especially in a place like L.A.—is because it’s often too difficult to drive there so we need alternatives. So much of a city’s traffic is a consequence of the inefficiencies required to accommodate limitations of humans, as well as allowing for humans driving badly. It seems like flying taxis are going to be part of an urban future, but I’d rather look up and see sky, not traffic. I’m sure others feel differently, but for me the minute a city starts to feel chaotic, I start to look to a life in the country or by the sea. Now, I suppose if you happened to live right next to one of those superhighways I was talking about earlier, it could be horrific, I’ll admit. Still, probably no worse than living next to a seven-lane highway with lots of traffic today that runs through many cities. And it’ll be quieter. And cleaner. And some cities, I’m certain, with a little planning could find clever ways to hide those superhighways away.

Look at how Amazon delivers, particularly in big cities—the routes are completely optimized by computers. What they do with packages, we could do with people.

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Urban planning on a whole new level: What are we to make of “instant cities”?

When it comes to urban planning, there’s nothing more urban and planned than so-called “instant cities,” or cities built by visionaries from scratch in strategic global locations. Frustrated with the limitations of today’s cities to address overcrowding, pollution and inequality, visionaries are pursuing instant cities, which tend to share the common ideals of creating connected, sustainable, inclusive and equitable societies, thereby providing residents with a life in balance.

Instant city developers seek renewable energy sources like solar and wind to reduce carbon emissions and counteract climate change. Similarly, they want to eliminate the need for cars and streets, and they lean heavily toward the construction of energy-saving green buildings. Using water more efficiently is an overarching theme, as is employing artificial intelligence to discover how day-to-day life and city services can be improved.

What follows is a brief overview of instant cities of note—two that are not yet built and two that are currently under development. The four cities with eccentric names—Telosa, Neom, Masdar City and Songdo—range from grand, bold and futuristic blueprints to projects that are still very much works in progress, as all cities are, to some extent.

Greg Lindsay, Senior Fellow at NewCities and a visiting scholar at New York University’s Ruden Center for Transportation Policy and Management, has been studying instant cities for more than a decade, and says he finds them fascinating on multiple levels. “One is the realization of just how hard it is to build a city,” Lindsay says. “It seems no matter how much time and effort a team of architects and engineers can put into it, they can never quite replicate that lived-in feeling.”

Lindsay says instant cities serve best as prototypes for what you can achieve by networking cutting-edge technologies into a unified system to see what’s possible. Songdo, for instance, has pneumatic tubes for waste collection and burns that into clean electricity.

But the larger problem is, as fast as these cities get built, they don't get built fast enough. “We call them instant cities, but when I visited Songdo there was sprawl all the way around the urban edge that popped up long before they ever even broke ground on the sustainable district,” Lindsay continues. “So, it underscores that urbanization is going to happen much faster than any of these prototype cities can solve.”

Frustrated with the limitations of today’s cities to address overcrowding, pollution and inequality, visionaries are pursuing instant cities, which tend to share the common ideals of creating connected, sustainable, inclusive and equitable societies, thereby providing residents with a life in balance.

Telosa

Telosa is a proposed instant city that promises to set “a global standard for urban living, expand human potential, and become a blueprint for future generations.” In a video introducing the project, Lore suggests that the growing income and wealth disparity is harming the quality of life in the U.S. As a built-from-scratch city, Telosa can reverse that trend, he continues, or at the very least provide a new societal model from which to learn.

The guiding principle behind Telosa’s economic system is Equitism, a concept in which residents share ownership in a city’s land and prosper along with the city. If a community endowment that was focused on improving the quality of life of residents owned all the land in Manhattan, the argument goes, it would be worth more than $1 trillion today. That would generate $60 billion a year in income to invest back into the community—about twice the current annual spending—to provide residents with the best services available.

Lore proposes to invest an initial $25 billion to develop 1,500 acres for a population of 50,000 residents, with the first of those moving in by 2030. Planners envision a total of population of 5 million in 40 years with 33 residents per acre, which is on par with San Francisco’s density.

Telosa at a glance:

Location: U.S. (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and Appalachian region under consideration)

Cost: US$400 billion

Size: 150,000 acres

Visionary: Marc Lore, entrepreneur, former president and CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce

Status: Proposed

Neom

Neom, a combination of the Greek word “neo” (new) and the Arabic word “mustaqbal” (meaning “future”) is an ambitious plan to create a city in harmony with nature in a region bordering the Red Sea. The endeavor was announced in 2017 and is a central part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a long-term strategy to open the country to foreign investment and build an economy that is less dependent on oil revenue.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman envisions renewable energy sources powering Neom, and in early 2021, he introduced his plan for The Line, a linear city stretching 105.6 miles across the Tabuk region. The Line seeks to preserve 95% of Neom’s natural habitat and would be free of cars, streets and emissions. All essential daily services for its 1 million residents, from schools to medical clinics, would be within a five-minute walk, and high-speed transit would accommodate longer trips. All transit, freight delivery, utilities and other networks would occur on two underground levels.

Additionally, to date Neom has announced partnerships to build the world’s largest coral garden at Shusha Island in the Red Sea, a fish farm to promote local aquaculture, and a green hydrogen power plant, among other infrastructure, commerce and cultural projects.

Neom at a glance:

Location: Tabuk region, Saudi Arabia

Cost: US$500 billion

Size: 10,232 square miles

Visionary: Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

Status: Planned

Masdar City

Construction of Masdar City began in February 2008 with the vision of bringing together residents, students, entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors and academics in a collaborative, innovative and green community. Located near the Abu Dhabi International Airport and 40 minutes from Dubai, Masdar City has attracted some 800 companies from six continents, the region’s first clean technology start-up accelerator, and a technology park built out of recycled shipping containers. In addition to several retailers and restaurants, amenities include parks with urban farming areas, a recreation path encircling the city, and sports and gym facilities.

About 1,300 people currently live in the city, and ambitious plans call for an underground “personal rapid transit” system of driverless pods that will move people throughout the city to keep streets free of cars. After initially being bankrolled by Mubadala Investment Co., Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Masdar City is now attracting third-party investment.

Masdar City at a glance:

Location: United Arab Emirates

Cost: US$22 billion

Size: 2.3 square miles

Visionary: Mubadala Investment Company

Status: Work in progress

Songdo

Planners conceived Songdo IBD in 2001 on reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea and within the larger footprint of Songdo City. The master plan calls for an ideal mix of live-work-play environments, including 40 million square feet of commercial space, 10 million square feet of retail, and 35 million square feet of residential units. Some 40% of the acreage is reserved for public green space—primarily the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea and a central park.

Construction began in 2005, and planners originally envisioned completion in 2015. But Songdo IBD remains under development, and the population remains lower than first envisioned by 2022. An estimated 1,600 domestic and global companies operate in Songdo IBD. The district has 20 million square feet of space that meets the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards, including an exhibit hall, a school, a residential tower and the Sheraton Incheon Hotel.

Songdo International Business District at a glance:

Location: Incheon, South Korea

Cost: US$35 billion

Size: 1,500 acres

Visionary: Collaboration between Incheon Municipal City, Gale International, and Posco Engineering & Construction

Status: Work in progress

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Protiviti: Emerging technologies, IoT will impact just how smart cities become

The Internet of Things is a game-changer that is slowly—and sometimes not so slowly—transforming the modern world before our eyes. The IoT market is growing, and it’s only a matter of time when smart cities will be a grid of connected devices that communicate with each other in real time. They will have the power to provide humans, computers and entire systems with data designed to improve our lives in any number of ways. But all this connectivity could be a double-edged sword. VISION by Protiviti’s Editor-in-Chief Joe Kornik sat down with Protiviti’s Christine Livingston, Managing Director, Emerging Technologies – IoT, and Geoff Weathersby, Director within the same group, to discuss the future of smart cities, IoT, privacy and regulation.

Kornik: You both spend a lot of time thinking about emerging technologies. What’s the potential for smart cities? How “smart” can cities get and what could that mean for the future?

Livingston: When it comes to cities, we’ve already started to see many of those emerging technologies. The critical infrastructure that supports cities is being controlled and sustained by these connected devices. And that can mean things like your water supply, your power, your electricity, the traffic lights… all the infrastructure that enables these cities to operate. One of the things that's been interesting is, we can start to see those devices pivot to play multiple roles. For example, traffic lights or intersections may have devices that were installed to monitor traffic flow and accidents, but now they could be used to investigate crime. So, things that were installed for a single purpose are pivoting to a much larger scale of possibility.

Weathersby: You’re 100% right, and I think we'll see more of those multiple uses being applied as cities continue to mature and adopt more technology. I think, as Christine said, we’ll see that improved infrastructure creates more efficiencies on the maintenance and support side. Cities have apps now where residents can react in real time and report something, whether it’s a pothole or graffiti. Suddenly, there’s visibility, and a city can act in a much shorter time frame. That communication, ultimately, results in an improved customer experience for people in cities. That could mean real-time synching of traffic lights, resulting in less traffic. That’s one area ripe for change, I think; we’re going to see big changes to mobility in cities. On a smaller scale, look at smart parking meters where you pay with an app, for instance. But I think the real impact on consumers and individuals is going to be better access to information, which leads to a more seamless interaction with the city around you.

Kornik: You mentioned both utilities and mobility, two services that are impacted in a smart city. What are the key issues in those areas, and which of the two will impact city dwellers in a more significant way?

Weathersby: Well, I think the most visible one is going to be mobility, for sure. We take energy for granted, especially here in the United States. We hit that light switch, and we expect it to work. Most of us don't really care about the carbon emission footprint or the kilowatts we’re using every day, at least not now. We're going to see a lot of movement on sustainability, and we'll see that develop, certainly, over the next 10, 15 or 20 years. New builds are very conscious of this and are built to smart building standards, but in a city there’s a lot of retrofitting required. How do you turn a 150-year-old brownstone in Manhattan into a LEED-certified building without tearing it down? Well, same thing is true with mobility. How do we retrofit mobility in cities? You’ve seen some cities in Europe decide to just block off cars from certain areas of the city, and people will travel on scooters or bikes or in autonomous vehicles to get around. As far as the most visible and disruptive game changer, it’ll be mobility.

How do you turn a 150-year-old brownstone in Manhattan into a LEED-certified building without tearing it down? Well, same thing is true with mobility. How do we retrofit mobility in cities? [...] As far as the most visible and disruptive game changer, it’ll be mobility.

– Geoff Weathersby, Protiviti

Kornik: Are you confident city officials will be savvy enough to use all this data they’re gathering in the right way? And while we’re at it, aren’t there some privacy and cyber security concerns to consider?

Livingston: Absolutely. I think about things like the Colonial Pipeline attack or the Florida water supply security event earlier this year as examples. It’s not all that interesting to think about how your water or energy is delivered to your home. It’s easy for it to feel invisible; it’s not a concern until it is a concern. But once systems are connected, that introduces a certain amount of vulnerability, and that's where you start to see some of the security concerns. There needs to be intentional thought about what those devices are being deployed to do, and the potential impact if there's a bad actor. City officials must develop mitigation strategies and know how they are going to keep a city’s infrastructure up and running in the event of an attack. It's really important for officials to think through those contingency plans and how all that technology and those devices will be used.

Kornik: Seems to me that how that data is used and shared, specifically between the private and public sector, will be a big key to the success of smart cities. How do you see that public-private relationship playing out?

Livingston: I think we started to see some really interesting things happen in the data sharing space with COVID, actually. In March of last year, as you know, hospital systems and states started sharing the data they were seeing, the patients they were treating, the treatments they were providing. And there were a lot of concerns around sharing and transmitting that data, and also a lot of unprecedented cooperation between some of those agencies. So, I think it’s interesting that we've already started to solve some of those problems. The ethics of how you maintain individual citizens’ privacy while making the right information available to the right people at the right time is going to be interesting. I suspect we’ll see many passionate ethical debates on that.

Weathersby: I think you're right, Christine. We’re already starting to see some of that transparency bubble up. The recent Apple commercials have been addressing privacy, and three years ago hardly anyone was even talking about it. We've seen more awareness lately on the consumer side as they're becoming more familiar with just how much data is being shared. There’s going to be demands, as Christine said, to understand where that privacy line is so we don’t cross it. It's finding that balance between convenience and security. Everybody loves that an app can tell you if you’re going to arrive somewhere two minutes late, but nobody is really thinking about the data that app is collecting on every phone to provide that information. And Apple just announced a digital driver's license. All of these technologies are going to continue to evolve over the next 10 years, and I think there's a big cultural shift going on in cities. How do you keep that extended network secure? We’ve got connected, smart parking meters; how do officials make sure they don't become the breach into the overall network? So, it's not just the data cities are collecting; it’s being able to secure that large, integrated network that you need to make a city a smart city.

There needs to be intentional thought about what those devices are being deployed to do, and the potential impact if there's a bad actor. City officials must develop mitigation strategies and know how they are going to keep a city’s infrastructure up and running in the event of an attack. It's really important for officials to think through those contingency plans and how all that technology and devices will be used.

– Christine Livingston, Protiviti

Kornik: How do you see the regulatory environment evolving here in the United States as these technologies become more prevalent? Where is that headed?

Livingston: I think things are evolving so quickly; had you asked me this a year ago, or maybe even a month ago, the answer might have been different. And it will surely be different in the future. Look at some of the health data we're now collecting and monitoring just so someone can travel. Who knows where that ends up? And I think that's going to break down some of those long-standing barriers and expectations around data privacy, and what is and isn’t available to the government. And every state in the U.S. has different privacy laws and different regulations. There will be variability in how states communicate with the federal government. A lot of this has to do with the notion of consent and understanding what constitutes consent in certain scenarios. I think that landscape is rapidly shifting and was greatly accelerated by COVID, as were many other digital transformation efforts.

Kornik: I know it's difficult to look too far out into the future but give me your long-term vision of what a smart city might look like in 2030 and beyond?

Livingston: We’ve touched on the biggest one and it may come even before 2030, but I don't think you'll see very many individually owned vehicles in cities. In fact, you may not see any. And we know Amazon is already experimenting with new technology such as drones for delivery, and I don’t think that’s very far off at all.

Weathersby: If you drop a person into New York City or London or Tokyo in 2030, I think they’ll notice a few things: I think cities are going to be quieter. I think they're going to be cleaner. I think you're going to have a lot more electric and autonomous vehicles, and you're going to have more automation and more autonomous robot sensors. I think you're going to end up seeing a hybrid world where city officials will know in real time what needs to be maintained and when, and residents will experience a world of connected commercialism. You’ll get off the train, and you’ll get an alert that your favorite coffee shop has a franchise two doors down. Your daily life is going to become more seamless, much the way you get in your car today and your phone picks up Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and your devices will pass along data about the world around you and your own behavior and patterns. That's what I think will be most noticeable in the future as we envision it here in 2021. However, it’ll be completely seamless and largely unnoticeable to those living in 2030.

Christine Livingston is Managing Director with Protiviti's Emerging Technology Group – Internet of Things.

Christine Livingston

Managing Director, Protiviti

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Geoff Weathersby is Director with Protiviti's Emerging Technology Group.

Geoff Weathersby

Director, Protiviti

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The cities are alright: Yes, they’ll survive... and be far more important in 2030 and beyond

There’s some debate as to where and when the first cities on Earth began. Most scholars agree urbanization began in Mesopotamia in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. It’s biggest city, Jericho, probably had about 3,000 people clustering together for survival. It was a few thousand years later that Uruk in present day Iraq emerged as a religious, cultural, and political center of influence for its 40,000-plus residents. Uruk, more than Jericho, often gets the distinction as Earth’s first “city” since it brought more to the table than the simple survival of the species.

ABOUT

Joe Kornik

Editor-in-Chief

VISION by Protiviti

Joe Kornik is Director of Brand Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, a content resource focused on the future of global megatrends and how they’ll impact business, industries, communities and people in 2030 and beyond. Joe is an experienced editor, writer, moderator, speaker and brand builder. Prior to leading VISION by Protiviti, Joe was the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Consulting magazine. Previously, he was chief editor of several professional services publications at Bloomberg BNA, the Nielsen Company and Reed Elsevier. He holds a degree in Journalism/English from James Madison University.

Why this historical background on the origin of cities? Because it’s important to remember that cities as we know them today weren’t always here. We created them… with purpose. And that criteria of cities as centers of purpose and influence carries forward all the way to today.

Cities remain the cultural, political, creative and economic centers of influence. They are the heartbeat of humanity. Today, more than 4 billion people—more than half of the world’s population—reside in urban areas. By 2050, the United Nations estimates two-thirds of us will call cities home. By then, almost 7 billion of the estimated 10 billion people on Earth will live in cities. So yes, they are vastly important to the success of the planet and all the people who live on it. If our cities fail, we all fail.

This is why, when Protiviti decided to launch a global resource for the C-suite and boardroom focused on the transformational forces that would impact business in 2030 and beyond—VISION by Protiviti—the future of cities seemed like the perfect place to start.

Cities were facing significant challenges even before a global pandemic rocked them in a way they’ve never been rocked before. But 2020 saw residents fleeing urban areas en masse and businesses getting shuttered. Many offices anchored in central business districts remained empty as workers shifted to remote work. There was no shortage of “this is the end of cities” commentary out there. But are cities really dying?

We partnered with professors in the University of Oxford’s Sustainable Urban Development department to conduct an exclusive global survey of CEOs and executive board members to find the answers to this and other questions. Among the many key takeaways from the data, this one stands out: Despite all they’ve been through, a whopping 94% of CEOs believe cities will either be more important (64%) or as important (30%) to their overall strategy a decade from now.

These findings are significant and highly relevant. Cities may have bent, but they’re not broken. They’ve been pushed to their breaking point as waves of political, social, and economic upheaval subjected them to the ultimate stress test. And the verdict is in: They passed. From where we sit, reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.

As New York Comptroller Tom DiNapoli so eloquently states: “I think the city has the potential to be stronger than ever in 2030. New York has come through many crises over the years, including a pandemic, and our history as a city says that whenever we come through a crisis, we end up better, not worse.”

For this project, we interviewed more than 50 luminaries, futurists, physicists, strategists, executives, innovation officers, information officers, architects, urban planners, politicians, policy makers, professors, pundits, journalists, and other big thinkers outside our organization, as well as several of Protiviti’s own thought leaders and subject-matter experts. We asked them about the future of cities, and specifically, how that future would impact business over the next decade. The content created is the culmination of their insights representing perspectives from six continents.

When diving headfirst into the subject of cities, there are myriad aspects to consider. For this topic, we broadly explored technology and what are commonly called “smart cities,” infrastructure, sustainability and climate, leadership and the role both the public and private sector would play in cities’ future.

By 2050, the United Nations estimates two-thirds of us will call cities home. By then, almost 7 billion of the estimated 10 billion people on Earth will live in cities.

Technology and smart cities

Most cities are using cutting-edge technologies and AI sensors to track data in real time to enhance performance, service and user experience. But where we are now in terms of deployment is nowhere close to where we will be even a few years from now.

As Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D., Professor and smart cities expert says, “We’re looking at multi-trillions in new technology opportunities over the next decade and beyond.” Almost universally, most experts seem to think we’ll also see an abundance of electric vehicles and even some autonomous vehicles in cities by decade’s end. Mick Cornett, mayor of Oklahoma City from 2004-2018 says “a full integration of autonomous vehicles is probably more than a decade away, but when it does happen, it will have a profound effect on how cities function.” Many cities have already started to restrict automobiles in certain areas and personal mobility devices, such as scooters and e-bikes are on their way… perhaps even summoned by your phone or wristwatch. The revolution of personal electric mobility is really taking off in Europe, says Greg Lindsay, Futurist and Senior Fellow at New Cities. “More than 10% of households in Germany now have electric bicycles and forward-thinking cities like Paris, Milan, Madrid, and others offer personal subsidies for an e-bike or a scooter.”

And speaking of taking off, the FAA is expected to certify an urban air mobility aircraft in 2023 and if that goes well, many operators are looking to get their fleets off the ground in 2024, says Clint Harper, an Air Mobility Fellow with the City of Los Angeles, which is part of an air mobility pilot program with the World Economic Forum. Meanwhile, Petra Hurtado, Research Director for the American Planning Association, says she’s “confident flying taxis will be in the U.S. by 2028, sooner in Europe and Asia.”

But all this connectivity could come at a price, say Protiviti’s cybersecurity experts Scott Laliberte and Krissy Safi. There’s already been some pushback: In Toronto, where Google had planned to build its own smart city, residents complained that the level of surveillance was too invasive, says Ron Blatman, Executive Producer of Saving the City, a non-profit focused on city advocacy. Google pulled the plug in 2020.

And just as we begin to wrap our heads around the possibilities, it won’t long be at all before quantum computing and its mind-numbing capabilities change cities in ways most of us can’t imagine, says Protiviti’s Konstantinos Karagiannis.

Climate and Sustainability

Cities will survive but major changes are inevitable. To illustrate: In many ways, cities are the epicenter of the climate crisis. “By 2030, we’ll know what cities will be unlivable,” says Andrew Winston, a renowned sustainability strategist. “There are several places where we won’t be living in 40 or 50 years. Or at least not living the same way we do now.” Winston says he fears too many executives are unprepared for the coming climate crisis. “The executives I’ve spoken to clearly haven’t given much thought to what it will mean to conduct business in a climate-constrained world,” he says.

But some cities have already started the planning. In Indonesia, the government recently announced an ambitious plan to relocate the capital city due, in part, to environmental issues. By 2050, the United Nations estimates much of Jakarta will be under water, but that hasn’t stopped Jakarta’s MRT (Mass Rail Transit) from building the country’s first metro system.

Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, says “I think climate change is overwhelmingly our biggest challenge we have to face for the future. I think that's what we should all be putting our minds to right now,” she says. Sydney has made progress with its Sustainable Sydney 2030 strategy. “We made a commitment to get our emissions down by 70% by 2030. And just last year, we partnered with three regional areas to purchase renewable energy from them,” Moore says. “Sydney is now powered by 100% renewable electricity, and it's based on energy coming from those wind and solar farms in surrounding areas.”

By 2030, we’ll know what cities will be unlivable. There are several places where we won’t be living in 40 or 50 years. Or at least not living the same way we do now.

– Andrew Winston, sustainability strategist

Public policy and leadership

For cities currently facing the dual threats of climate and COVID, “city leadership is just about to become the most important job on the planet,” says Greg Clark, Group Advisor, Future Cities & New Industries, at HSBC Group. “The next 50 years will be a great reckoning, and it has already started.”

Leadership is always more important in a crisis, and Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and current president and CEO of the National Urban league, says U.S. mayors have been the real champions. “They were required to make difficult decisions without a real national plan, they were required to do it in an environment of great chaos and uncertainty, and they were required to do it while their tax revenues plunged,” says Morial, who is also a member of the board of directors for Robert Half, Protiviti’s parent company.

That’s why it’s so important, he says, for corporations to invest in cities. “As cities go so goes this nation,” Morial says. “We need to start treating cities like the jewels they are." He’s been on a campaign to encourage technology companies like Google and Amazon to look at cities when they are making decisions as to where to invest. “We need more American businesses to invest in our cities. We need more employers to look to cities as places to locate and then make a commitment to the residents of those cities to help create economic opportunities and quality jobs.”

But what those jobs look like in the future is another story altogether, says Dr. Michio Kaku, a futurist, theoretical physicist, and best-selling author. “The next phase of all this is artificial intelligence. AI will be everywhere in the future, but one job that will not be replaced by artificial intelligence is the innovator… the creator of imaginative things; someone who speculates, dreams, and creates new things, these are the people who are going to change history. The companies that foster this mentality will flourish in the future.”

What’s your vision?

Here, we’ve highlighted just a few of the voices that make up our Future of Cities initiative. But there are a lot more visions of the future to be examined. Explore insights from leaders and experts worldwide and subscribe to VISION by Protiviti to come along on this journey with us. And we want to hear from you, so share your thoughts in the comment section below.

For cities currently facing the dual threats of climate and covid, city leadership is just about to become the most important job on the planet. The next 50 years will be a great reckoning, and it has already started.

– Greg Clark, Group Advisor, Future Cities & New Industries at HSBC Group

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Eye on energy: How the Enel Group's "circular cities" are changing the game

In this video, Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, hosts a panel of six representatives from the Enel Group—an energy company that began in Italy some 60 years ago and now has a global reach that extends to more than 30 countries on six continents. Enel has a major focus on the future of cities, and in particular, what it calls the Circular City model that they believe is essential to the long-term success of a city. Luca Meini is the Global Head of Circular Economy at Enel. He is joined by his collegues from around the world: Bettina Mirabile, Vivien Green, Jean Paul Zalaquett, Nhiura Coaquira and Giovanni Bertolino. All of them are leading future-focused initiatives at Enel related to EVs, mobility and sustainable energy.

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Eye on energy: How the Enel Group's "circular cities" are changing the game – Video transcript

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Director of Brand Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our quarterly content initiative where we look into the future to examine the strategic implications of big topics that will impact the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. In this, our first topic, The Future of Cities, we’re exploring the evolution urban areas are undergoing post-COVID and how those changes will alter cities over the next decade and beyond.

Today, we’re fortunate enough to have a rare look inside the Enel Group, an energy company that began in Italy some 60 years ago and now has a global reach that extends to more than 30 countries on six continents, and we’ll hear about the work being done in some of those countries in just a few minutes. Enel has a major focus on the future of cities, and in particular, what it calls the Circular City model that is essential to the long-term success of a city. Here to talk about Enel and the Circular City concept is Luca Meini, the global head of Circular Economy at Enel. Luca, thanks so much for joining me today.

Luca Meini: Thanks, Joe.

Kornik: Luca, before we dig into the Circular City concept, if you could just spend a minute or two telling us a bit about the Enel Group.

Meini: Enel is a global utility that is solely working in all the value chain of energy from production to distribution to final use and smart technologies for the electric vector like electric mobility, et cetera. So we call it the whole value chain and we are present in around 30 countries. To give you an idea of the size, we are the biggest renewable energy producer and we are the widest base in terms of final customer and the user of the distribution grid. As a company, we started a strong transition towards sustainability around a decade ago, first engaging ourselves in the de-carbonization and then moving and expanding to the circular economy approach along our whole value chain. So, we had a strong commitment on de-carbonization with a target of reducing our emission by 80% by 2030 and to be totally de-carbonized by 2050.

Kornik: I know it’s a very progressive energy company. I know sustainability is at the heart of a lot of its initiatives and it’s a very visionary company. Can you explain this idea a little bit that Enel adopted about the benefits of a circular economy, and as a result, circular cities?

Meini: To get into this concept, I can say we have started — the first we did is a decision to bet strongly on de-carbonization, basically behind this idea that a business to be sustainable and also economic in the long term has to positively contribute to the main challenges of the planet in the context where it is operating, so de-carbonization was the first step. Then the natural evolution of this concept was to extend the approach toward all of our national power activities, and the circular economy was the tool to do this. Circular economy, just to highlight that, is not about waste management. Circular economy, for us, the mainstream concept nowadays is about redesigning the whole business model from the design and the sourcing phase. So we engage in this direction that for us represents a source that I can say of sustainable competitiveness both because you can on one side be more sustainable, that allows you to have a long-term stability and positive interaction with all your stakeholders.

At the same time, you have to do it of course in an economically positive way so you need to do it throughout innovation. Basically, design the whole economic model because if you try to change just the steps of your business, it doesn’t work. You need it to be designed from the beginning in order to create value along the whole value chain. In this framework, we put a strong focus on the cities because cities is the place where basically 80% of the GDP is created, 70% of emission and energy are consumed, so it’s really a laboratory to address the main challenge of the planet and solve the problems of the city. The challenge of the city is basically solving the challenges of the planet. So we put a strong focus in it from the very beginning and it's even more important now because cities with the COVID phase has also accelerated the reflection on how to redesign the future. Because of COVID, we have many discussions. The cities will have a bright future.

Kornik: Thanks, Luca. Next, we’re going to hear from you colleagues from around the world for some unique perspectives on the exciting work that the Enel Group is doing on the future of cities. First up is Bettina Mirabile, Head of CSV and Sustainability Projects Development, Global Infrastructure and Networks, to discuss the smart grid as a circular enabler.

Bettina Mirabile: Let me start by highlighting the strategic role of the smart grid into enabling the energy transition by accelerating the penetration of renewable resources and the electrification of consumption as the e-mobility. Cutting edge grid technology are a strategic key and tool to enable the city of the future we are aiming at by enabling the customer centricity and an environment focused on net-zero emission. Urban Futurability is the Enel smart grid project that is meeting this challenge by leveraging on an Industry 4.0 solution to apply the circular cities approach. The core of this project is the network digital twin, which is a digital twin, that is a full digitalization of both Enel infrastructure and the whole neighborhood. So we are transforming the area of the city into a living lab where we co-design a new circular solution together with the stakeholder to improve the quality of life and the resilience of these cities.

We stared for the first time of the insulation of the green open meter which is the most important circular economy project that we are facing in Italy because it’s not only cutting-edge smart media of the second generation but it’s also a more sustainable one, because we have been creating this smart meter, leveraging on regenerated plastic from these meters so we are able to reduce the environmental footprint consistently. To get you an idea, if we consider 10 millions of circular smart meters, we are able to save more than 70,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

Kornik: Thanks so much, Bettina. Next up, well hear from Vivien Green, Urban Futurabililty and Sustainability Specialist at Enel, and the work that she is doing around enhanced smart grid and Urban Futurability in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Vivien, could you just tell us a little bit more about that?

Vivien Green: Hi. As Bettina was saying, we are developing the Urban Futurability project in several countries. We have one in Brazil which is Urban Futurability Sao Paolo, which is a concrete example of innovative and disruptive technology integrated with concepts of smart and circular city. The projects being developed in Villa Olimpia neighborhood, which is a very dense area and financial heart of the city embracing 10,000 inhabitants per square kilometer and has many technical features favorable for us to test cutting-edge technologies. As Bettina was saying, it's perfect living lab. The project comprehends over 40 initiatives including the network digital twin that she mentioned, the sensor, thermal cameras and much more. All of those contribute with the great digitization and de-carbonization, leveraging predictive maintenance, improving equipment lifespan, material reuse, data sharing and much more.

This is the first step for evolved platforms that empower new concepts as energy-as-a-service. This technology helps us to promote great awareness in terms of energy use, efficiency and safety, along with for us to think in the time ahead of risks caused by extreme weather events that are knocking on our doors constantly. Moreover, the project is using sustainable technologies as well, through the principles of sustainable construction site, reducing environmental and social impacts. Example of those are the shared trenches, the less invasive excavation methods, the development of new equipments using recycled materials and optimizing design, leading to less usage of feed stock. Sustainability indicators are also being monitored during the civil work following safe polarity aspects and the identification of opportunities for improvement and impact mitigation.

Kornik: Thanks so much, Vivien. Next up, we're going to focus in on the work that Enel X is doing. First up is the electrification of the Pan-American Highway as we check in on something called project Long Way Up. For these insights, we're joined by Jean Paul Zalaquett, Head of e-Mobility at Enel X, Latin America. Jean Paul, tell us a little bit about project Long Way Up.

Jean Paul Zalaquett: A year ago, we were approached by Ewan McGregor and Boorman about their project of doing a documentary called “Long Way Up,” with two electric bikes and two electric trucks they would cross all the continent up. So we had the challenge to build a charging infrastructure for them. Since our motto is really to enable electric mobility in the continent, we found that very stimulating and we said yes. Well, that entailed building 200 charging stations across 20,000 kilometers, 11 countries, so that's about half the circle of the earth. While that was a great project, we really managed to have fun and deliver with — you can see the results in the documentary, Long Way Up. Well, that was a true demonstration that electric mobility can be enabled through investment and building infrastructure. We've been building chargers in major cities in Brazil, in Columbia, Peru, Argentina.

For example, in Chile as well, we have committed to install 1,000 chargers in major highways every 60 kilometers, that is the electric route. Because we think that charger infrastructure cannot be a limitation for this revolution of carbon emission reduction, of really having fun using electric vehicles. It's a great experience, and Latin America cannot be behind, so we have a lot of projects and we are so happy to make that happen and to be able to develop this technology in the continent.

Kornik: Thank you so much, Jean Paul. Next, we're going to focus in on the e-buses and strategy in Chile and Columbia with Nhiura Coaquira, Head of Business Development for Latin America for Enel X. Nhiura, what's Enel X up to when it comes to the future of e-buses in those regions?

Nhiura Coaquira: Well, as you may know, here in the region, we have achieved over 1,300 buses served, so the movement and the promotion of electric buses in the region is going up. We have the biggest fleets outside of China here in Columbia, in Chile and in the region so that's why Enel X is making all the efforts to provide the best solutions to these regions and worldwide. With these customized solutions that we are planning here in the region we can offer a complete solution to the operators, to the cities. The plan for the future is to make a circular economy and providing with sustainability solutions to the final clients. How do we make feasible these models here in the region is to make a division into the provision of the fleet, which means the ownership of the fleet being separated to the operation.

This is the model that we are choosing right now in Chile and Columbia, and that we want to promote to other countries like Peru, Ecuador and Mexico to develop in this way that would be much easier for the cities, for the operators to manage and to increase the fleets of electric mobility.

Kornik: Finally, we have Giovanni Bertolino, the Head of E-mobility for North America, to talk about Enel X's work in mobility and the renewables in North America. Giovanni.

Giovanni Bertolino: Hello, Joe. Yes, Enel X in North America in mobility is [Unintelligible]. We are one of the main providers of smart charging solutions for EVs. I'd like stress the smart word because it's really what it is about. We are providing chargers who have the ability to optimize when the charging happens, and that is extremely helpful for utilities and for customers who track best rates or optimize around the carbon emission of the electricity which flows into the grid at any given time.

On the other side, we are starting to bring into this market the model that we have developed in Latin America around electrification of public transportation. We feel that it's an extremely important opportunity to further address carbon emission in a sector where in North America there are almost 100,000 transit busses on the roads, 500,000 school buses and millions of other heavy- and medium-duty vehicles.

We've started there with a couple of projects in Massachusetts for which we have received a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. One is with MBTA, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and we're helping them in defining how they are going to charge their buses. In their roadmap, that want to deploy hundreds electric busses and convert depots to support those busses, and the question is, "How do I design the charging infrastructure? How do I optimize the charging to reduce the cost and make sure that it can meet those routes?" We're helping them in that specific piece which is key to inform their strategy going forward.

Kornik: Yes, thank you so much, Giovanni, and thank you all for a wonderful look inside Enel and the future of cities, fascinating stuff from all over the globe. Thanks again to all of our participants and speakers today for their insights. Luca, thank you so much for providing this unique and insightful look inside the Enel Group today.

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Luca Meini leads Enel Group’s circular economy activities. He is in charge of supporting business line initiatives, coordinating cross-divisional activities and positioning the Enel Group externally. He has held previous position at Enel Group within the Market Division and the Generation & Energy Management Division. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa and an MBA from University of Bologna.

Luca Meini

Global Head of Circular Economy, Enel Group

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Lessons in leadership from a former mayor: Successful cities of the future

“One of the things you’ve got to do is convince older people to build a city for younger people.” One of the most successful city mayors in the U.S., former Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett, shares insights on how to build a city that’s modern, attractive, successful and healthy. Watch Mayor Mick in conversation with Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti.

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LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP FROM A FORMER MAYOR: SUCCESSFUL CITIES OF THE FUTURE - Video transcript

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Director of Brand Publishing and Editor-in-Chief for VISION by Protiviti, a quarterly content initiative where we put megatrends under the microscope and look into the future to examine the strategic implications of big topics that will impact the C-Suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. In this, our first topic, the Future of Cities, we’re exploring the evolution urban areas are undergoing post-COVID and how those changes will alter cities over the next decade and beyond. We’ve got a great guest today. Mayor Mick Cornett, served as the mayor of Oklahoma City from 2004 to 2018, and was re-elected three times; once by an 88% margin. He has been a proponent for urban issues and initiatives such as rapid and mass transit, economic diversification, urban renaissance, and civic beautification. Cornett’s most recognizable achievement as mayor was the successful lobbying that resulted in Oklahoma City’s first professional sports team, the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. He also passed a $777 million quality-of-life infrastructure program. He gained notoriety for putting Oklahoma City on a diet and transformed its infrastructure to encourage walking and biking. Meanwhile, under Cornett, the economy was humming. The month he left the office, Oklahoma City was named the top city in the U.S. to start a business. It’s no surprise that awards and accolades followed. In 2012, Newsweek named him one of the five most innovative mayors, and Fortune Magazine ranks him 25th on its list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2018. I’m thrilled to be joined today by Mayor Mick Cornett. Thanks so much for being here today.

Mick Cornett: It’s great to be here. Thank you for asking me to join you.

Joe Kornik: Such an impressive resume, mayor, and series of accomplishments in your 14 years as Oklahoma City’s mayor. It really was and continues to be an extraordinary transformation for the city. In many ways, you were a visionary. So, I’ll start with an easy question. Back in 2004, now this is only nine years removed from the bombing at the Federal building, did you ever imagine you could have the kind of staggering success that you did as mayor of Oklahoma City?

Mick Cornett: It would have been hard to foresee all of the things that happened to us but I do think that I knew my predecessors had done a lot of the right things. We had invested in the core of the city. We had invested in the K-12 education. I felt like one of the big stumbling blocks was just our own citizens didn’t really believe in themselves. We’d come through an economic collapse of the ’80s and the emotional impact of the bombing in the ’90s, and I think we needed a boost in civic pride. We also had really no identity nationally or worldwide. The world had kind of forgotten about us and, if they did think about us, it was only it terms of a tragedy. So, I think we had been branded by the images of that 1995 bombing and you can’t build an economy on sympathy. So, I think we had some challenges trying to bring outside capital into the community, trying to get people willing to invest, and I pride myself on being a communicator and building on positive energy, and we started from there, and the brand of the city had to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Joe Kornik: Yes, we’re going to get into branding in just a minute but before we do that, I’ve heard you say Oklahoma City was built for the automobile and relied too heavily on it. I know that was one of the key things you noticed when you first took over. I think this is a problem actually in many cities—probably the vast majority of cities, to be honest. What can be done about it? How did you address it in Oklahoma City and I’m curious how you think autonomous vehicles fit into the future of the city’s overall infrastructure planning?

Mick Cornett: Well, most western cities in the United States were built in the 20th century, which means they were built around the automobile and the use of interstate highways and suburbia, and people commuting in and out of a downtown core. In Oklahoma City, we were an extreme case in that. I joked that if you were a car, it was the perfect place to live, because it seemed like every decision we made from the civil engineering standpoint was to make it easier to be in your car, and we did a really good job. I mean, traffic congestion was almost non-existent. You could live 20 miles outside the city and be downtown in 20 minutes. You could get a speeding ticket during rush hour. It was an amazing place if you wanted to live in your car but there was a cost to that. We had virtually no sidewalks. We had not invested in jogging and biking paths. The health of our community was suffering from it. I really just went to our civil engineers and challenged them verbally. I said, “We have built this city around the car, let’s take a new perspective. Let’s start building it around people and let’s see how it looks different.” From there, it was amazing to me just how enlightened our civil engineers seemed to be and all of the different ways and the funding mechanisms we were able to use to build hundreds of miles of new sidewalks, jogging and biking trails, and just really reinvent the inner city. We did a complete makeover of the infrastructure inside the city. So, streetscape projects, fully sidewalk, on-street parking, and so our entire downtown grid took a complete overhaul in a span of just a few years. The city looks and feels different and young people have noticed.

Joe Kornik: Right, and you can’t use sidewalks if you don’t have them, right? I’m curious, just your thoughts quickly on the future of the autonomous vehicle and how you think that will impact urban settings?

Mick Cornett: Well, I think first of all, you’ll see autonomous vehicles on our interstate highways, I think very, very soon. I think long haul trucking, I think, is a perfect use. We have, for years, been thinking that it would start integrating into our urban cores sooner rather than later. The longer it takes, the more I realize just how tough that is to try and integrate. So, I think a full integration of autonomous vehicles is maybe decades away and nothing is going to change the design and the use of a city more than the autonomous vehicle. I just think the integration is going to be very, very messy. But, with it comes a completely new way of thinking about parking lots and land use and interacting with the pedestrians. It’ll have a drastic change. I just don’t think it’s coming very, very soon.

Joe Kornik: Got you. So, all of those bike paths that you put in, all of those walking paths served their purpose. You received a lot of notoriety when you first started for putting Oklahoma City on a diet early on. I know it even got you a seat next to the First Lady at the 2010 State of the Union Address, and then invite on to the Ellen DeGeneres Show. So, talk to me a little bit about that effort and why you launched it and ultimately, how it led to some of those design and planning changes that we saw on Oklahoma City?

Mick Cornett: Well, when I was first elected mayor, I was trying to build pride in our community and draw attention to our city from around the country and so I started talking about what I call the list. They were putting out things in magazines and on the internet about best city to do this and best city to do that. We were starting to show up on a lot of those lists and we’ve never really been on lists before. So, it was a big deal for us to be like number 15 in “the best place to start a business” or number 22 in “best downtown” but then came out the list of the most obese cities in the country and there we were. I was embarrassed by it, didn’t really know how to act. I got on the scales, realized that I was a part of the problem. I started losing weight. I lost a pound a week for about 40 weeks and along the way, that’s when I started examining our city’s infrastructure and how it had been built around the automobile and the unhealthy nature of the culture of our community, and so that was really the enlightenment that I needed to kind of try and lead the city into understanding that the infrastructure had an impact on our health and that really, weight loss was largely resting on individual shoulders. I mean, people just got to understand they’re going to need to eat differently, and eat less probably, but certainly eat differently. So, the idea of putting the entire city on a diet was to draw attention to it, to create a splash and more than anything, to start a conversation because obesity seemed to be a subject in our community that people didn’t want to discuss. It seemed a little bit too invasive and a topic that even our civic leadership didn’t want to bring up, and I forced the conversation on it and that ultimately led, I think, to the passage of several initiatives that allowed us to change the infrastructure.

Joe Kornik: Right. We saw during the pandemic where there were bike paths, where there were walking paths. I mean, there were some of the most crowded places, certainly in my town, people were really anxious to get out and to use those public spaces but of course, they can’t use them if they don’t exist. So, certainly something for planners, I think, to keep in mind. You mentioned making all of those lists. I mean, that goes into sort of a city, the overall branding, and earlier on you sort of alluded to branding. I know it’s been a big focus for you and I’m not sure that enough mayors or city officials focus on it. It’s a sort of a new way of thinking, I think, isn’t it? Cities need to sell themselves and highlight maybe what makes them great and you did this by selling the NBA on Oklahoma City’s potential. That couldn’t have been easy. So, talk to me a little bit about branding a city and how important you think that would be for the future success of all cities?

Mick Cornett: Well, what I noticed when I was speaking nationally about Oklahoma City in those early days was when I said the word Oklahoma City, people had this flashback, this vision of the bombing, and those horrific images of that day. I thought to myself, I’ve got to get them to have a more positive image of Oklahoma City. I realized, from my background in sports broadcasting, that probably nothing could change the image of the city more quickly than to get a major league franchise. So, I started flying to New York to talk to the commissioners of the NBA and the NHL, trying to draw attention to the idea of our arena, which had just been recently constructed to be a home for an NHL or an NBA team. I wouldn’t get anything very far. The NBA Commissioner David Stern told me he did not have a team for me. He said he’d try to help me with a hockey team. He really enjoyed my passion for what I was trying to do and then Hurricane Katrina hit in the fall of 2005. I called Commissioner Stern and he said, “I didn’t call you right back because I knew which you wanted.” Lo and behold, in a matter of weeks, we had relocated the New Orleans franchise to Oklahoma City, which inadvertently gave us a trial run to prove if we could support an NBA franchise or couldn’t. Our business community and our fanbase knocked it out at of the park. We sold out every game. We led the league in sponsorships with only a six-week notice before the season started and, at that point, it seemed inevitable that we were going to wind up with a franchise. As it turned out, some of our business leaders went and bought the Seattle franchise and when they couldn’t get an arena deal there, they were free to move the team to Oklahoma City.

Joe Kornik: Do you think that the whole branding piece is something that other mayors or other leaders of cities around the world should be more focused on? It doesn’t seem like they view that particularly as maybe part of their role.

Mick Cornett: Yes. Well, it seems like your brand is what it is and it can’t be changed. What I noticed was a lot of cities’ brands were determined by pop culture, by being mentioned in a song or in a sitcom. I mean, think of the show Frasier from that era and it was in Seattle. Even though I don’t think the show was filmed in Seattle, that was the image you have. The same thing when you talk about the Upper West Side and Seinfeld. Oklahoma City was just kind of forgotten city. People just didn’t ever think about us and you can’t suddenly try to get investors to come in and invest in your city when it’s a place they are not used to going to or not used to even thinking about. An NBA team gave us sort of a superficial level of equality with cities we had never been mentioned with before because, to a certain extent, you are who your sports teams play, and we were playing Amarillo, Wichita, Little Rock, which are all fine cities. That’s who we’re associated with. Then suddenly, seemingly overnight, we were associated with Chicago and Los Angeles, and New York, and Dallas. All of a sudden, we have a whole new group of peer cities and people start to think of you differently because they know the NBA doesn’t choose its cities randomly. They don’t just throw a dart at a map and say we’re going to put one there. They knew if Oklahoma City was going to have an NBA team, that special things must be happening and, indeed, they were, and this allowed us to draw attention to it.

Joe Kornik: Right, and we shouldn’t overlook the NBA franchise was a huge piece of this. We shouldn’t the work that you are doing for the residents of Oklahoma City with all of that public policy things that you put in place. It seems some cities have a difficult time putting the longer-range plans and the motion. There’s always been sort of shifting political climate, and leadership changes quickly. I mean, you led the way the successful passage of MAPS 3 initiative, which was eight quality of white capital projects in Oklahoma City over a decade. I think you were unique in that you had a chance to see a lot of those plans come to fruition because you were there for so long and re-elected so many times. Any secrets for how you can make that happen? I mean, it seems to me that that’s a huge factor to a city success.

Mick Cornett: One advantage that we’ve had in Oklahoma City is we’ve had clean handoffs between mayors. My predecessors had done good work and I made sure that I completed their priorities and then added my own along the way. Then lo and behold, when I stepped out of office three years ago, my former chief-of-staff became the new mayor and he’s doing a wonderful job in implementing a lot of the strategies and initiatives that I started. I think the citizens really do notice when the elected officials and the leadership of the city get along and that positive energy can continue to build on itself. If you stop and start every time you change mayors, you’ll never really going to get very far because you’re always stopping and starting over again, and so I do think that clean handoff between administrations has been very, very helpful and indeed, by staying at office 14 years, I was able to see a lot of the things that I thought the city needed to become accomplished. Building a city is like a journey where you’ll never reach your destination. You’re always working on things and I was proud of what we accomplished but I still believe the best days of the city are yet to come because, at the end of they day, what we’ve done is create a city for highly educated 20-somethings and they are moving in, and they will drive the economy in ways we can imagine today.

Joe Kornik: Right, which sort of brings me to my final question, and you wrote the book on it literally. I see it over your shoulder there. What is next for cities? What should leaders of cities worldwide be focused on right now and what do you think are some of the keys to successful cities of the future?

Mick Cornett: Well, be listening to young people because, as I mentioned, highly educated 20-somethings are going to drive the technology that is going to lead our economy in the next generation and beyond. So, be mindful of that. One of the things to keep in mind is, on election day, older people vote and so one of the things you’ve got to do is convince older people to build a city for younger people. That’s not an easy sales pitch ordinarily, but that’s the goal and I think a lot of people miss out on that. Young people who are moving into Oklahoma City, we have in migration from Texas and California, things that we’ve never really had before, they seem to appreciate mid-size cities that don’t have traffic congestion, have a low-cost of living, and have an abundance of fresh water and clean air. The quality of life in a city is a higher priority for the millennial generation and the people coming in just behind it than it was for my baby boom generation. This group of people wants different things and they want a quality of life in a city where it’s healthy and education is prioritized and they can imagine a life that’s hassle-free and, at the same time, you’re not spending all your time in your car.

Joe Kornik: [Laughter] Right, right. Thank you so much for the time today, mayor. I really appreciate it. Congratulations on all the success and keep up the good work. I know you’re out there advocating for better cities in the future and certainly, we need your voice to help of guide that conversation. Again, thank you so much for being a part of VISION by Protiviti’s future of cities initiative and I really appreciate it.

Mick Cornett: Well, you’re welcome. These are my favorite topics so thanks for asking. [Music]

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ABOUT

Mick Cornett

Former Mayor

Oklahoma City

Mick Cornett was the the mayor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, between 2004-2018. He was the first mayor in Oklahoma City history to be elected to four terms and remains the longest-serving mayor among the 50 largest cities in America. Cornett was cited as one of the most honoured mayors in the history of the United States. An international panel named him as the No.2 mayor in the world during his service. Furthermore, Newsweek magazine referred to him as one of the "Five Most Innovative Mayors in the United States," among many other notable titles in magazines such as Politico and Governing.

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How Los Angeles is shaping the future of the urban air mobility movement

Los Angeles is where dreams become reality—and seamlessly integrating air mobility into a city-wide, sustainable and equitable urban transportation network may just be the next dream come true in Los Angeles. Watch this video where Joe Kornik, VISION by Protiviti’s Editor-in-Chief, discusses the possibilities with two LA officials—Julia Thayne DeMordaunt, an executive officer focused on mobility innovation in the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Clint Harper, Los Angeles air mobility fellow.

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HOW LOS ANGELES IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE URBAN AIR MOBILITY MOVEMENT - Video transcript

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Director of Brand Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our new quarterly content initiative where we put mega trends under the microscope and look far into the future to examine the strategic implications of big topics that will impact the C-Suite and executive board rooms worldwide. In this, our first topic, the future of cities, we’re exploring the evolution urban areas are undergoing post-COVID and how those changes will alter cities over the next decade and beyond.

Today, I’m joined by Julia Thayne DeMordaunt, an executive officer with focus on mobility innovation in the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, along with Clint Harper, Los Angeles air mobility fellow. Los Angeles, under Mayor Garcetti’s leadership, is at the forefront of all kinds of mobility initiatives that will not only drive the future of the city, but will help drive the urban air mobility movement worldwide. Some exciting stuff coming out of the city of Los Angeles. So, Julie and Clint, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon.

Julia Thayne DeMordaunt: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Clint Harper: Yes. It’s great to be here.

Kornik: As I mentioned in my introduction, really impressive where the city of Los Angeles is right now when it comes to sort of shaping the future of urban mobility. Why is this such a huge priority for the Garcetti administration?

DeMordaunt: It’s a fantastic question. When the mayor started his administration eight years ago at this point, his vision from the very beginning was for LA to be the transportation technology capital of the world. He knew that LA’s past was very much about poor air quality, about congestion, about building more highways. Its future needed to be the opposite of that. So, he really set out this vision powered by 3 E’s, so Equity, Environment and the Economy, to have LA be setting the tone and doing the future of mobility. In terms of why we decided to take that approach it’s because we knew that we wanted companies to headquarter and hire here, and we’ve made progress on the front across all types of transportation technology companies. We knew that zero emissions had to be the standard, that if we were going to get rid of that poor air quality, we have to start out with a sustainable mode of transportation and use that as the baseline.

Then finally, in terms of equity, it was about Angelenos. Angelenos want to try things. They want better mobility options. They need to get to work or to hospitals, or to wherever else. So, all three of those E’s were really at the center of this vision of LA being the transportation technology capital of the world. With that said, there’s still a long way to go, and we know that to get there, we need a flexible policy framework. So, a lot of the work that I do is around setting up that flexible policy framework to get to that future of mobility that we all want.

Kornik: Yes. Thanks. I know one of the bigger initiatives that I’ve been reading about is sort of the Urban Movement Lab, which I think brings communities, local government and mobility innovators into sort of a think tank to explore the future and bring sort of some of the big ideas to life. Julia, I know you’re actually on the board for that effort. So, can you tell us a little bit about the work that it’s doing and some of the important innovations that are emerging from that Urban Movement Lab?

DeMordaunt: It’s very much linked to what I just mentioned, which is that LA, in order to be that capital of transportation technology, needs to have this flexible policy future. I think we, as policy makers in LA, know that the public sector, the private sector, and communities all have to work together to deliver it. In terms of Urban Movement Labs, it was set-up to bring those three groups together and to help accelerate some of the transportation technology projects. In the past, we’ve had sort of an antagonistic [Laughter] relationship between public and private sectors. They haven’t always gotten along when it comes to trying things and trying things quickly. There’s also been some one-off dialogues with community, rather than having more of an ongoing discussion. Urban Movement Labs exist so that we could have collaboration and not antagonism between public and private sectors, and so there can be that ongoing dialogue with the community. Urban Movement Labs has been fantastic since we founded it two years ago at this point. It’s very much an outsource innovation arm for the city and it helps city staff to grapple with new transportation technologies. It provides some immediate clarity to companies who want to test things here but they’re confused by California [Laughter] legislation or they’re confused by local legislation.

Then finally, I think having this objective third-party broker with communities helps to articulate needs and co-design solutions in a way that wasn’t happening before. I’m very excited about all the work that Urban Movement Labs is doing. They’re doing curb mapping and management, zero emissions, last-mile delivery pilots. There’s an affordable electric free floating car sharing program, which is just fantastic. Then, the sky’s literally the limit. That’s why Clint is on this call too, because Urban Movement Labs is doing a lot of work on urban air mobility as well.

Kornik: You mentioned urban air mobility, so let’s talk about it. Sort of a fancy way of saying flying taxis or flying cars, drones. There’s all sorts of ways we can talk about them. I know that Los Angeles is part of a pilot program with the World Economic Forum and sort of released the principles of the urban sky a little while ago. The two organizations are LA and World Economic Forum. Clint, can you walk us through those and sort of where that stands right now, where we are in that process?

Harper: Absolutely. So, a little background on me. I have 21 years of aviation experience, and when I really entered into this vast air mobility space, it was to advocate for community integration and community involvement within the planning. Really, the principles of the urban sky were a response to the flurry of announcements coming from industry about their operational plans. Now in particular, many vehicle manufacturers targeted Los Angeles for introductory services. As the industry is pressing forward with a lot of well-intentioned ideas of how to advance air mobility to the city, they were doing it without much feedback or input from the cities themselves. In the case of urban air mobility, cities have taken the lessons learned from the introduction of ride sharing, macro ability, and started to proactively plan for a thoughtful integration. This is really the nexus of the seven principles of the urban sky.

Of course, safety is paramount in anything to do with aviation. The impeccable safety record the aviation has on the commercial side of the operations is something that we want to maintain, that we want to facilitate. Safety is the first principle of the urban sky, sustainability is the second one. We really want to improve environmental outcomes and embrace innovation to achieve more sustainable behaviors. This is really a system’s response and the system’s take on urban air mobility, which is something that I think is critical as new transportation technologies are evolving. Then, of course, there’s equity of access. The equity of access is something that’s very important to the FAA, but they’re looking at equity of access to the air space. Well, we want to do that and look at what is the equity of access for the folks on the ground, not just to the airspace itself, but for the widest range of demographics that we can possibly enable.

Being in Los Angeles, there is a lot of helicopter traffic. Urban aviation isn’t new to the city. What most people associate with that is noise, and so encouraging manufacturers and operators to embrace the low-noise potential of these new aircraft is something that we’re really pushing to get out there. We want to make sure that as we address this, we’re taking it community by community and using a community-first approach to it all.

The second, also going into the introduction, the industry was looking at using ride sharing networks to really expand what urban air mobility was going to do and how to solve that first and last mile problem. That’s another thing that I wanted to address. Ride sharing is great, but if we really want access, as many people and give people as many options as possible we need multi-model connectivity. Connectivity and integration into the existing transit networks, connectivity to transportation links, so we want to promote walkability and bicycle safety, and just safe pedestrian environment, to the extent that we can with urban air mobility.

The next principle of the urban sky is local workforce development. What we’re trying to encompass with this is understand all the jobs that are going to be created through the introduction of urban air mobility and advanced air mobility. These are jobs that are going to be associated with manufacturing the aircraft, servicing the aircraft, maintaining the aircraft, and providing support services, and understanding what the training needs are going to be associated with those jobs and preparing local residents to fill them is something that we’re trying to understand and we want to make sure that we’re ready to fill those jobs and to support the industry as it’s needed.

The last principle of the urban sky is purpose-driven data sharing. Really, what this targets is, we’re trying to get to an optimized system, an optimized transportation system where all providers across all modes are able to quickly respond and meet passenger needs and passenger demand, and also meet market demand on this.

Kornik: Yes, Clint. I mean, some really exciting things there. I’m just curious. How excited should we be about urban air mobility? Will it be a niche sort of amenity for the wealthy or do you envision it becoming mass transit eventually? Is this the big game-changer that we’ve sort of been hearing about for a little while now, and when will it be reality? When can we expect this to sort of take off?

Harper: I think that it certainly has the opportunity to be the big game changer with all this. What we do not want is it to be a niche amenity for the wealthy or the privileged. We want it to be a part of the solution. I think that’s maybe where the industry got off on the wrong foot when they kind of advertised what urban air mobility was and they posited it as a solution to congestion and the solution to air quality issue. I want to make sure that we understand that we are not the solution. Urban air mobility is not the solution. It’s a part of the solution. As we integrate this into a wider transportation network, we have the chance to optimize the system and robust traffic connections, and pedestrian connections, extra transportation connections, and just really be a game changer in that way and that we’re contributing to a more efficient and optimized system.

The thing that I think a lot of the OEMs and the vehicle manufacturers are waiting for is aircraft certification, which is in the FAA’s court right now. It’s not something that they take lightly. They want to make sure that these aircraft are safe, that they’re going to respond in a variety of different environments. People are asking, how is this going to respond in weather? How are they going to respond when power is lost? Just a host of different scenarios. The FAA really accounts for that and its aircraft certification process, for that reason, is a slow and grueling process that the manufacturers have to go through. With it, the FAA is expecting to certify an aircraft around 2023, if all continues to go smoothly. With that date in mind, I know a lot of the operators are looking at the 2024 launch to take this off the ground.

Kornik: Wow. That’s sooner than I thought and not that far off. So, last question for me, and I’ll ask you to look a little further out in 2024. That’s for you to sort of paint the picture of Los Angeles and mobility in, let’s say, 2030 and beyond, even beyond. Go out as far as you’d like to dream of what can be the reality. What’s that future look like for LA and mobility in 2030 and beyond.

Harper: You know, not being a native Angeleno, I’ll speak a little bit more broadly and within my own history of aviation, I would like for all modes of transportation to really break out of their planning silos. I want us to work together, because our goal is to provide transportation solutions. I think right now, there is a lot of competition. People are framing urban air mobility to be a competitor with transit. I don’t think that needs to be the case. A transit has a role in getting point A to point B. Personal vehicles have a role in getting people from point A to point B. Ride shares have a role and urban air mobility is going to have a role.

To make that happen efficiently, safely and in optimized manner, we really need to get out of the silos and start talking to each other. How can I make urban air mobility a tool of transit? How can I make urban air mobility a tool of the new rail system, the high-speed rail system? How can we complement each other into an integrated system? That’s my ultimate goal for 2030 and beyond. I want us to start planning for an integrated system that gets folks from point A to point B in the best and most efficient way possible.

Kornik: Julia, any thoughts on this?

DeMordaunt: My dream, what I want to have reality be in 2030 is no traffic, bikes everywhere, 72 degrees and sunny all the time, clean air, just that perfect transportation utopia as I see it. That said, [Laughter] I think that’s not everybody’s transportation utopia. What I would love to see in 2030 in LA is that transportation is both a verb, a way to move around, and a noun, a place to stay. I think we have a reputation now, and for that matter, is reality that transportation is very much a way to move around LA, albeit slowly, but our streets are not really safe places for pedestrians, cyclists, or scooter-ers, [Laughter] people who want to be in something other than a car. By 2030, I think LA will really be both. We’ll have that multi-modal network that I was describing earlier that connects Angelenos to where they want to go. It’s got to be affordable, it’s got to be quick, and it’s got to be in a way that gives people some joy. When we were doing our scooter trials, there were some streets in LA where they were more scooter trips than there were car trips. People were having fun. People were using scooters because they had fun on them, not to mention that they provided a mobility service. I think we need to promote that in 2030 and beyond.

The other vision that I have is about street space. I think we need street space and street views to be right-sized. We’ve got to give some of that street space back for housing. We’ve got to give some of it back for open space. Like I said before, it needs to be safe for people just to be on the street, let alone to be trying to move across it. The other thing I think about a lot is the mobility future and the land use future or housing future in LA are in its strictly length. That’s true everywhere, but I think that’s especially true in Southern California. We’ve got to have dignified and affordable housing options, services nearby, and some of my other colleagues in the mayor’s office are doing some really interesting work around how we get more housing in Southern California through better design and also through these more dignified options, like I mentioned. I’d love for the transportation, the housing, and the land use people all to get together to create that beautiful transportation future.

So, I am very hopeful, very optimistic, and although I didn’t mention [Laughter] transportation technology in that answer, I do really think that we will be seeing much more transportation technology options in that 2030 timeframe and further out.

Kornik: Yes. Clearly, I think LA will be a model for other cities to follow because LA is clearly doing many, many things right, as you point out and I’m really excited to sort of watch the future with you. Thanks again for being here.

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Julia Thayne DeMordaunt is an executive officer with focus on mobility innovation in the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. She is an expert at the leading edge of systemic change for transportation policy and programs helping governments, private companies and not-for-profit organizations translate ambitious visions into actionable plans that benefit the communities they impact.

Julia Thayne DeMordaunt

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Clint Harper is an Urban Air Mobillity Fellow with the City of Los Angeles.

Clint Harper

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Cities in space with Anthea Foyer: Regulating the race for profits

Mining in space, space tourism, moon communities. Not science fiction, and already underway, says Anthea Foyer, Sector Development Officer with the City of Toronto, who has been following this race to space closely. Not really in an official capacity for the City of Toronto, but more as a passionate enthusiast of cities and space, she’s published articles on the topic and joins Joe Kornik, VISION by Protiviti’s Editor-in-Chief, to discuss this fascinating topic. Click above to listen.

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CITIES IN SPACE WITH ANTHEA FOYER: REGULATING THE RACE FOR PROFITS - Audio transcript

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti podcast. I’m Joe Kornik, Director of Brand Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our quarterly content initiative where we put megatrends under the microscope and look far into the future to examine the strategic implications of big topics that will impact the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. In this, our first topic, “The Future of Cities,” we’re exploring the evolution urban areas are undergoing post-COVID and how those changes will alter cities over the next decade and beyond. Today we’re in for a treat as we’re boldly going where this podcast hasn’t gone before, outer space, to discuss the cities that will soon be there. As we’ve all been so focused on life down here coming to a standstill during COVID, quite the opposite was happening up in space as development seem to be accelerating faster than I realized. With major players now involved in the space race and lots of money to be made, it’s no surprise that’s where a lot of attention has shifted, and why not? A study by Bank of America and Merrill Lynch predicted the market would grow to some $2.7 trillion by 2040; not that far away. Others have predicted lunar colonies and even space hotels sooner than that. The implications of all of this are pretty interesting, to say the least.

Today, I’m joined by Anthea Foyer, Sector Development Officer with the City of Toronto, who has been following this race to space closely. Not really in an official capacity for the City of Toronto, but more as a passionate enthusiast of cities and space. She’s published articles on the topic and joins me now to discuss it. Hi, Anthea, and welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Anthea Foyer: Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to it.

Joe Kornik: You described yourself as an idea junkie obsessed with cities and people, art and words, entertainment, digital culture and outer space, which I just love. That’s such a great description. I was fascinated by your article a few months back titled, “City Life on Mars? Creating human-centered communities in space and beyond.” I can tell you I learned a lot from that article and there were a lot of jaw-dropping revelations in it, including how far we’ve already come in this area, which sort of shocked me. You don’t think cities and space or space communities, if you want to call them that, are that far off, do you?

Anthea Foyer: I don’t. I was surprised myself. I’m not an expert in space but I do have a strong background in cities, and smart cities in particular, and sort of social life in cities. I’m part of a global advisory board for Smart Cities World and they asked us to do a write-up. I started thinking about what would be interesting and what would kind of really look at what a smart city is, and I started to think about space. I started to think, “What does it look like when we have smart cities in space?” It felt like it would be so far off. When I started to do the research and I started to think about it, I realized it’s not that far off. There’s so much happening in space that I didn’t have any idea about and I don’t think the general population does. I feel like we’re still questioning should we go to space…

Joe Kornik: Right.

Anthea Foyer: …but I think that ship has already sailed. [Laughter] So, there’s a ton of various countries up there. There are definitely a lot of companies that are starting to work in space much more than I thought, whether it’s for satellites or mining or sort of other scientific exploration. There’s a lot happening up there.

Joe Kornik: Yes, it’s crazy. I’m not even sure people realize that there are already two existing UN treaties dealing with space. There’s the Outer Space Treaty, which is aptly named I guess, and the Moon Treaty. These things sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but the United States recently led a third treaty called the Artemis Accord. Can you explain to us a little bit about those treaties as existing treaties and what this new Artemis Accord could mean and what it’s all about?

Anthea Foyer: Sure, and I’m with you. Whenever I just talk about this I think, “[Laughter] Am I talking about like—am I in a science fiction novel?” Because reading them very much feels in that vein and so the first one was from around like the 1960s and that was the International Space Treaty. When you read it, it’s very aspirational. It talks very strongly about peace. It talks very strongly about not having weapons of mass destruction in space, of working together. It very much feels like a UN treaty in that time and era where I think a lot of countries were really trying to come together and do things internationally.

Then the Moon Treaty was about 10 years later. It’s like 1979 I want to say, and that one was, again, a UN treaty that talked about the use on the moon and, again, the moon being a cooperative space. Whenever we do anything there together, it needs to be in peace, and together, and as a united kind of group; and then the third one that’s come out recently which surprised me. I know there’s a lot going on in the world right now so I think it kind of slipped under the radar, but the Artemis Agreement, which, I think, about seven or eight countries have now signed on to. That one is lead by the US which is a bit unusual for the space treaties as they used to be from the UN. Canada, which is I’m from, has also signed on to it as well.

It’s very simple. It’s only about an eight-page document. I was quite surprised how simple it was, and it has sort of some of the same idea. It has this idea that we’ll work together there in peace. There’s a lot about business. There’s a lot of starting to be kind of the idea of the moon either as a stopping point or as actually a place to do R&D or to mine as well.

There’s already a company, I believe it’s from the UK, that has a 4G mobile network up there so that when everyone’s up there, they can easily work and communicate with each other. There’s also a couple of interesting clauses in that one. There is one that I like which is around the heritage of space. The same way that we have kind of heritage sites on Earth that we’re really protective of, they’ve started out with that. There’s already kind of heritage locations on the moon which, again, is kind of quite magical and lovely to think about.

Joe Kornik: Yes, it sure is. You mentioned mining and some R&D. What are the main activities? What do you think the outer space will mainly be used for in terms of the moneymaking proposition?

Anthea Foyer: From what I can see, it looks like it’s a mixture of—mining is huge whether it’s on moon, Mars, Titan which is one of the moons of Saturn, or asteroids. That seems to be a huge, huge moneymaker. There’s this idea that the first trillionaires are going to be people that are working in space.

Joe Kornik: Wow.

Anthea Foyer: It’s expensive to work up there, incredibly expensive, but the payoffs are also very, very good in terms of monetary rewards. I also think there are some interesting things in terms of entertainment or in terms of hotels or socializing that are within the near-Earth orbit. Because I think sometimes we think of being on the moon or another planet or somewhere else, but even now there’s a ton of—I think half the satellites in space right now belong to Elon Musk’s company, so SpaceX. There’s a ton of just sort of near-Earth activity that I think will happen, like the space hotels.

Joe Kornik: Yes, very interesting. You mentioned earlier sort of just the multiple countries and sort of the cooperation that’s needing to be happening up there, which could be a challenge. You pointed out the three countries, really the US, China, and the UAE in that article—United Arab Emirates—are already sort of active there. You pointed out that we’re sort of at a tipping point in space where nations are going to have to cooperate with each other as we start to settle space, and you mentioned Elon Musk. He’s already said, essentially, that Earth laws won’t apply in space. That once we’re on Mars, we’ll create new legislation. That sounds like, again, some sci-fi movie stuff there. This seems a little messy to me. How do you see this all sort of sorting itself out?

Anthea Foyer: I think for me this is the area that’s the most interesting because I think this is where we need to decide as a human people what we believe in, and what our values are, and how does that translate. I think we either think of humanity as a group or not. We don’t become non-human once we leave our beautiful little planet, but I think that we’re going to have to kind of get on top of it. I think if we look in the last few years around technology and the power of, say, social media on our democratic systems, these have been—I think it surprised a lot of us how deep it was and how much power it has. I think that space is kind of that same place where we’re at where we can’t just ignore that it’s there. We need to be sort of thoughtful and not think of it as this kind of ridiculous thing that may happen in the future because it’s already happening now.

As soon as you have people who are working in space, there’s the opportunity for exploitation of those workers. Once you start having any kind of business opportunities in space that changes things as well. We all want to be safe whether it’s in our personal being, whether it’s within our communication structures, whether it’s in our businesses. We want to feel as though there is some support for us and not just a kind of wild-and-free, anything for anyone. I think we’re currently in a time where we can see the effects of colonialism, which was the last big kind of push, and we’re realizing there was a lot of damage done. We do have places to learn from that we can do better as we move into space, but I think we have to be able to be thoughtful about what that looks like and what it means, which is hard because it does sound very flighty to talk about. I think it’s really important because, as I said, it is happening. It’s not it will happen. It’s, “It is happening.”

Joe Kornik: Yes, and I think that’s important to remember. When you start thinking about the implications, it’s just your mind can just run away. There are so many things to consider how that would work. You mentioned exploitation of workers. That’s something that never even crossed my mind, right? Here, we are defined by country and geography, and labor laws, and whatnot. If we’re in this place where there are no laws, it’s sort of the Wild West all over again, which is just a crazy thing to think about. You mentioned hotels earlier and, obviously, people are going to need somewhere to stay when they’re in space, right? I’ve read that a company called Orbital Assembly is actually building a hotel and resort on Voyager Station. I think they’re going to break ground, or I guess I would say break space, some time in 2025 with an eye toward opening that property in 2027. That’s not that far-off so what’s the future of real estate, hotels, and resorts in space? Are we embarking on a new sort of space race for rooms? How do you see that playing out?

Anthea Foyer: I think Virgin is also looking into it as well. I think that’s quite an ambitious timeline for getting up there but I don’t think it’s that far-off. I think as soon as we can safely get people back and forth to space, as soon as we’re comfortable with that and obviously with the new SpaceX, it’s kind of the first journeys outside of places like NASA or other governmental organizations. I think once that’s kind of down pat, I think that there’ll be a lot that happens. Who wouldn’t want to go to space? We’re such travelers as humans and so the idea of going into space I think would be wonderful for a lot of us. Just going up and doing an orbit around would be much more feasible than taking years out of our lives to go anywhere else. You know what I mean?

It’s such a fascinating idea to start thinking about a hotel in space because then that really is a smart city or a city in space. It’s a community. You start having workers up there. The workers start having their lives up there. They start needing all the kind of services, and medical services, and social services. Suddenly, you have a little village up there. So, I think that it’s quite fascinating because I think suddenly we’ll realize we’re living in space where we don’t think of hotels as a place that we live but it can’t be all over. Everyone doesn’t want a robot checking them in, and then you’ll want things like entertainment in space.

I can imagine someone like Beyonce wanting to be the first person to play a space show. How fabulous would that be? An amazing experience for the people at the resort and then also from Earth to be able to watch that. I think that that will be kind of—once that safety has been placed I think it could just explode very quickly. Maybe not become affordable for most of us but become more affordable than I think it is in the current state.

Joe Kornik: Right. Do you envision space cities looking a lot like Earth cities? Do you think we would make radical changes to the way they’re laid out or the way they function? Or do you think that we’ll follow a lot of the similar patterns and similar planning strategies we’ve had on Earth here for hundreds of years?

Anthea Foyer: I would hope that we would think differently. We would learn, but I feel like we’re not very good at it. There’s this sort of great story about why the Space Shuttle is the size it is and it’s essentially built the same size as two horses’ butts which is really bizarre. [Laughter]

Essentially, Roman roads were made a million years ago to be able to fit the size of two horses because that’s the size of their chariots. Then as we’ve sort of developed roads then we kept that size. Then we built cars that size and we have transport trucks that size. When they were building the Space Shuttle, they have to build it so that it could be transported across these roads that were built the same size as two horses’ butts. We won’t change that quickly but at the same time I think we’re going through kind of like both technology and cultural—I don’t know if renaissance is the right word but we’re definitely much more aware of how cities are built and what that means for the people that live there. I would hope that we would at least be able to take some of that knowledge and do something differently and also just with the opportunities that are different in space. Earth has very specific things like gravity or like certain kinds of views. Maybe there’s just a possibility to really rethink what that looks like and take advantage of peculiarities of being in space and incorporate that into the way that people live there, which be wonderful. We don’t need everything to be same. [Laughter]

Joe Kornik: Right, right. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads, to quote a [Laughter] 45-year-old movie at this point. [Laughter] From a business perspective, how should CEOs be sort of strategizing around this or looking at this? Do you see this as an opportunity for sort of a niche? Just a select sort of high-tech firms and first movers, or do you think there’s sort of a mainstream, more down-to-earth opportunity here? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Opportunity here for some more traditional companies?

Anthea Foyer: Sure. I think, yes, there are the obvious ones around kind of mining, engineering, that kind of thing. I think there are quite clear opportunities there, but I also think that there’s—it’s again this idea of not thinking of it as this space versus that space, but kind of connected, all connected. Even now, a lot of what’s happening in space has a lot of effect on how we’re behaving here. In Canada, because we’re so big and it’s really difficult to get things like broadband to the north, one of the things that’s been amazing with the new satellites that are up there is they’re actually being able to bridge that gap and bridge that digital divide into those areas of our country that are really hard to reach. I think that there’s a lot that can kind of connect there with here. I do think some of the things around art and entertainment could be really interesting areas to look at. I think that those kind of social/cultural contexts we sometimes take for granted although, hopefully, after COVID when we realize how much of a support all of the arts have been to us through this. I think they’re also bridge to space as well in terms of getting people used to the idea of space, to get them thinking about it, to get their comfort in it and to get people excited about it.

Joe Kornik: One more question from me and it’s sort of prediction time. What will the moon, Mars, outer space in general look like, do you think, in let’s say 2030? Will there be functioning cities with sort of residents, semi-permanent residents? Will companies be up there actually conducting business? Will it be mainstream enough that a decent chunk of the population will have gotten there? What do you see sort of a decade out or even beyond? If you want to look really far into the future, be my guest.

Anthea Foyer: I think that we will have populations up there without thinking of them as cities for a long time. We already have the International Space Station which is essentially a small community. Then with the work that’s being done on the moon, I think that’s going to happen very quickly. Even the sort of foresight of having the 4G network put up there I think just speaks to this idea that it may not be people staying there for a long time, but kind of coming together in community for various projects. I think that those are going to happen more quickly than we think.

I think that the hotels will happen as soon as that space flight is comfortable to get people there and back. I think it’s going to be quite a while before it’s affordable for most of us. I think it will still either be luxury or big business for a while. Until some of the costs come down, I think it’s going to take a bit of time. There are ideas that the first trillionaire will come from someone who’s working in space. As soon as that happens, I’m sure [Laughter] they will get very excited and there’ll be a lot of movement that way. Yes, so I think that there will be things that happen that we maybe don’t call cities or don’t call communities but really are quite quickly, but then it will take a long time for it to really become established and particularly for anywhere that’s further out. Somewhere like Mars just takes so long to get to in general that the timelines on that just become much, much longer.

Joe Kornik: Yes. We’ve got some of the best minds on this planet thinking about it, I know that. If there’s money to be made, I can only imagine that, as you suggested, it’s a matter of time. Matter of when, not if. It’s happening. Since we’re looking at the future of cities in this project, I wanted to just make sure that that we cover all of our bases. We’re going to look to the future of potentially outer space cities. Thank you so much for your time today, Anthea. I really appreciate it.

Anthea Foyer: Thank you. That was really fun.

Joe Kornik: Thanks for listening to the VISION by Protiviti podcast. Please rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and visit us at Vision.Protiviti.com.

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VISION PODCAST

Follow the VISION by Protiviti podcast where we put megatrends under the microscope and look into the future to examine the strategic implications of those transformational shifts that will impact the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. In this ongoing series, we invite some of today’s most innovative and insightful thinkers — from both inside and outside Protiviti — to share their vision of the future and explore how today’s big ideas will impact business over the next decade and beyond.

Anthea Foyer is a Sector Development Officer with the City of Toronto and an idea junky obsessed with cities and people, art and words, entertainment, digital culture and, currently, outer space.

Anthea Foyer

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