WHAT IS AN INTELLIGENT CITY?

It typically has innovative use and re-use of space and materials; a high capacity for learning and innovation central to the creativity of its population and its institutions of knowledge creation; and a rapidly evolving digital infrastructure for communication and knowledge management.

The first dimension of innovative environments relates not only to space and material innovation, but also to people in the city: the social intelligence, inventiveness and creativity of the individuals who live and work in the city. This perspective was described by Richard Florida (2002) as the ‘creative city’, gathering the values and desires of the ‘new creative class’ formed by knowledge and talented people, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other creative people. These are the people who determine how the workplace is organized, whether companies will prosper, whether cities thrive or wither. (see Creative Class Vs NEOs)

These influencers and leaders were described by Ross Honeywill (2006) in NEO Power as the new economic order or NEOs. The 59 million NEOs in the US and the 4 million in Australia determine the future of cities, governments, economies and intelligent societies. Their ‘creative city’ is the NEO Neighborhood where the three elements of work, live and play must be present, all fuelled by the NEOs’ deep desire for human scale, authenticity, relevance, design and personal engagement. Honeywill proposes that a NEO Neighborhood is the manifestation of the principle of diverse solutions for diverse people. It celebrates authenticity and diversity both within its own blurred boundaries and with the broader community in which it exists.

This is the place where a NEO wakes up each morning, starts up her computer, downloads the latest music collection, strolls downstairs to the edgy cafe for coffee and a feisty discussion about Stephen Soderbergh’s latest film, and then heads across the laneway to join work colleagues for a strategy workshop in the project-space. She uses the Internet to read what others are saying about her favorite author’s latest novels, browses reviews, and then decides to make a purchase. She chooses the experience ahead of the transaction. So the NEO Neighborhood is much more complex than the local shopping mall, the office tower or the traditional residence combined. It is something new, something else. It is the intelligent city.

The second dimension of collective intelligence was described by James Surowiecki Wisdom of Crowds, a book that explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant they might be — better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. In his book, Surowiecki uses the example of the hit television show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He argues that, every week, Millionaire pitted group intelligence against individual intelligence — and that, every week, group intelligence won. When a contestant asked the audience, a crowd of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than sit in a TV studio picked the right answer 91 percent of the time. Collective intelligence, Surowiecki proposes, is more powerful than the intelligence of an individual.

The third dimension is a shared digital landscape embedded into the physical environment of the city and available to the city’s population: communication infrastructure, digital spaces, and public problem-solving tools available to the city’s population. The collective intelligence of a city’s population is ‘the capacity of human communities to co-operate intellectually in creation, innovation and invention’; ‘the collective learning and creative process realized through exchanges of knowledge and intellectual creativity’; ‘the capability for a group to organize itself in order to decide upon its own future and control the means to attain it in complex contexts’ (Atlee 2004). This dimension is based on the institutions of the city that enable cooperation in knowledge and innovation.

Thus the concept of ‘intelligent city’ integrates all the three dimensions of the physical, of people and of digital spaces. Consequently, the term ‘intelligent city’ describes a territory with (1) a higher than average social intelligence quotient (SQ ); (2) well developed knowledge-intensive activities or clusters of such activities; (3) embedded routines of social co-operation allowing knowledge and know-how to be acquired and adapted;(4) a developed communication infrastructure, digital spaces, and knowledge / innovation management tools; and (5) a proven ability to innovate, manage and resolve problems that appear for the first time, since the capacity to innovate and to manage uncertainty are the critical factors for measuring intelligence.

Working In An Intelligent City

IC workers are not workaholics — they are lifeaholics. They define themselves not by their work but by their interests, talents, and abilities. Who happens to pay for those talents is less important than the talents themselves. And there will be many things they do that they will not get paid for. For example, a, IC worker may be a well-paid stock market analyst in a large broking house, as well as being an author or composer or an expert gardener. He or she may be a business analyst in an energy company by day, while also splitting ‘spare’ time between a voluntary position on the executive of a national homeless youth initiative and earning money writing occasional articles for a business magazine.

The intelligent city workplace has the look and feel of an environment designed, not for the organization, but for the people who work there. It is designed around the people who use it, and the interface between customer and employee is a tissue rather than a wall. This organic, user-based connectivity celebrates the knowledge–work nature of most intelligent city enterprises.

How workers in an intelligent city do their work depends on how the workplace itself has been structured. It isn’t enough that a workplace has an iconic staff ‘canteen’ designed by a renowned international architect if the rest of the workplace is designed in the traditional mode. The building and its facilities must all be designed to assist people to work in high-performance teams operating in a 24/7world, free to reconfigure their facilities to fit their work objectives. Factor-in a place to live, and a range of cultural activities, and the workplace is being redefined as one suited to the intelligent city worker.

This new breed attracted to the workplace in an intelligent city doesn’t make the distinction between work and other activities because their brains are always engaged. The experience is important; they seek experience as well as achievement, but don’t want achievement at the expense of experience.

The intelligent city workplace is a ‘thinking coliseum’ where people come to test their own ideas, principles, and theories in a robust and challenging environment filled with colleagues. In this model there is a menu of learning activities including lectures, tutorials, and assignments. There are also clear performance-objectives that people work to achieve, either together or separately. If an IC worker advances to another level in a year’s time it’s not because he put in the hours; it’s because of what he achieved in thought leadership or project management.

Workers in an intelligent city switch slow time and fast time to their advantage to make the most of their own productivity. This rewards employers with, rather than robs them of, employee productivity. Employers need to provide facilities that support IC workers’ 24/7 mode of operating rather than destroy it. Employee shopping or banking online during ‘business hours’ is not a corporate price to pay; it is a positive contribution to productivity.

This shift in power and focus is a celebration of individual determinism, rather than corporate or employer determinism, because in an intelligent city, the constructive outcomes are shared.