‘Challenge ‘dark matter’ to make smarter cities’
TO create truly smart cities citizens must challenge the “dark matter” – the rules and regulations of modern society – to make things happen.
That was the message from Dan Hill, the keynote speaker at the launch of Manchester’s FutureEverything festival, billed as a summit of ideas and invention.
Mr Hill, who started his career as a designer in Manchester before moving on to spend four years as head of interactive design at the BBC, is now managing director of Fabrica in Italy, Benetton’s communication research centre.
He said it was the dark matter, or things we cannot see, that often shape our environment. This should be challenged by citizens, often helped by social media, and the authorities should be more flexible.
By way of example he cited a snack kiosk in Helsinki that was always closed. He later found out the minimum lease was two years. Food hygiene regulations are also strict in the city so budding caterers set up annual Restaurant Day where they sell food from their homes and in parks, flouting the rules.
“Networked organisations can effortlessly sidestep bureaucracy,” said Mr Hill, but he conceded such networks have little impact when the big decisions that affect cities are handled by the “old institutions”.
“The architect Cedric Price said, ‘technology is the answer, but what’s the question?’. We have jumped on technology as a solution and we need to step back to think what do we want to do in the first place? It’s about decision making, why do some things happen? It’s about politics.
“We’re trying to make cities more sustainable and we all look to the institutions that created these problems to also solve them. The institutions themselves are in a bit of a crisis.”
Mr Hill was in Helsinki working for the innovation body Sitra which once proposed a wood-built 12-storey building that was knocked back by the planning authorities because it breached a 100-year-old building code. Sitra challenged the regulations and plans for four such buildings have now been approved, providing a new market to Finland’s timber industry for a high density wood composite.
He said: “Like dark matter, you can’t see the building code as you’re walking around but you’re constantly dealing with the affects of it. And it’s the same with hygiene regulations and leasing structures.”
He added: “If you’re going to figure out what smart cities are all about we need citizens to engage and to engage with the dark matter. Think about what you want the city to be about, what you would want the city to feel like. The most interesting use of technology in cities now is from the citizens themselves. We need institutions to come the other way as well and re-think what they are.
“We need active, engaged government and engaged citizens and to focus all the time on what the city can be. With that we might end up with much smarter cities.”
