Smart City Dialogue: Together towards smart municipalities and regions

In this podcast we talk with Yuka Sogawa, Director at Project PLATEAU from the Japanese Ministry for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) which is promoting the development of urban digital twins across the country. Through its dedicated PLATEAU initiative for urban development policy the Japanese government provides an infrastructure onto which cities, science and industry can develop new ideas on how to harness the power of city twins with impressive virtual environments – from park management to improving emergency responses.

Hubert Beroche is the founder of Urban.AI, a think tank specializing in the field of AI in the urban context. In this podcast episode, we’re discussing with Hubert Beroche, what role AI currently plays in cities in Europe and beyond, what use cases are emerging and what challenges are still to be addressed.

Brian Bidolli heads the Redevelopment Agency of Norwalk, Connecticut. In a move towards more sustainability and resilience, the city released a sustainability and resilience plan (SRP) with the ambition to become Connecticut’s greenest city. Among the biggest resilience challenges that the city is facing are extreme heat events and storms, as well as rising sea levels. As priorities Norwalk has set out to improve access for citizens to the waterfront and to open spaces and parcs, but also the redevelopment and transit-oriented developments. The use of data and digital infrastructure is the bracket binding together all these efforts.

Tiffany Davis is a seasoned expert in data and data governance for urban development. She worked as an Open Data Specialist in the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, advised the City of Baltimore and currently heads the John Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence. Additionally, she leads the AMALI Data Programme – an initiative to support cities in Africa in managing data for better urban planning and development.
In this interview, we’re discussing the role of data governance as a basis for every city and region to work with data.

Masaka is a booming city in Uganda. The city recently embarked on the journey towards becoming a more liveable and more resilient city. In this episode, we’re talking to Mayor Namayanja to hear how the city is achieving its goals – by planting trees, analyzing data and connecting with other African cities for better data governance.

Buenos Aires is a bustling and densely populated megacity. Nearly 14 million people live in the Gran Buenos Aires metropolitan area - and the city continues to grow. The city started working with data and publishing open data early on. Recently, Buenos Aires developed the open-source tool Ciudad 3D to speed up urban planning and provide a more efficient and digital way for citizens to obtain building permits. And there is much more to come. We'll talk to Axel McCallum, Undersecretary for Administrative Innovation, about current and future projects and how to drive innovation in a city government.

In this episode of the ISCN podcast, Anita Klingel (PD) and Marlene Damerau (City of Gelsenkirchen) discuss the transformative potential of AI in cities.
The podcast explores the role of cites in the development of AI, the impact of regulations such as the EU AI act, and the German communal competence centre for urban AI (URBAN.KI).

Utrecht is a city in the real world. But it also exists in the digital realm. The digital copy is called a digital urban twin. In this podcast, we will dive deep into the Utrecht 3D twin and how it came to be with Marcel Duffhuis, Programme Manager Digital Twin at the city of Utrecht. We will put a particular emphasis on how the twin came alive, how the cooperation with Amsterdam worked and what comes next for the Utrecht Twin. The podcast provides a wealth of information for city representatives, who are currently playing with the idea of implementing a digital twin themselves and supports them with new ideas, do’s and don’t’s.

Urban Digital Twins are changing the game for cities and regions at the intersection of city development, data and digitalisation, and citizen engagement. We’re talking with experts about their experience with digital twins, opportunities and the work ahead, in this episode with Prof. Dr. Ursula Eicker from Concordia University Montreal with a focus on net-zero city planning with digital twins.