Cities as platforms with Gesa Ziemer

00:00:48: Welcome to a new episode of the Talking About Platforms podcast.

00:00:54: My name is Philipp Meyer and today I have with me my regular co-host Tommaso

00:00:59: Boganza. Hi Tommaso. Hi.

00:01:02: And our guest for today, Geza Zima. Hi Geza. Hi, hello.

00:01:09: So Geza is a professor at the HafenCity University in Hamburg,

00:01:13: Germany, Germany, where she heads the City Science Lab, which is a research

00:01:18: lab that studies the future of cities with a focus on digital technologies,

00:01:23: data governance, and new forms of citizen participation.

00:01:28: Gisa is also the academic director of UNITAC, which is a United Nations innovation

00:01:34: and technology lab that conducts global research on the use of technology in informal settings.

00:01:41: And in our quest to

00:01:44: let's say expand our own

00:01:48: understanding of digital platforms and

00:01:50: ecosystems we came across gives

00:01:54: us multiple projects as they're bringing together private companies public bodies

00:02:01: research institutions and private

00:02:04: citizens treating using CDF platforms to generate shared value with,

00:02:11: I would say, a special emphasis on democratic values.

00:02:15: This is something novel to our format, looking at platforms more from a business

00:02:21: model perspective, or often.

00:02:24: While also implementing innovative measures to, let's say, reduce the bureaucracy

00:02:31: and the cautiousness, which is especially known in the public sector and that

00:02:37: the public sector often applies to change.

00:02:39: This is at least how I read the projects that I learned about on your end, Geza.

00:02:45: But before we jump into that, Tamasa, I'm happy to hand over to you for the opening.

00:02:53: Okay, so thank you, Philip, and thank you, Giza, for being here with us.

00:02:58: And yes, I mean, typically, we have these discussions and chats about platforms.

00:03:05: And one thing that we understood in these years is that there's not a single

00:03:11: way to think about platforms, but it's not a single meaning about platforms.

00:03:16: And everybody, every single guest we had is providing us with a specific perspective

00:03:23: on what they mean by platform.

00:03:26: And so this is basically the first question that we would like to ask you.

00:03:31: So when we say platforms, what do you really mean by that?

00:03:36: And we are also curious to know how you ended up, you know, making your work

00:03:42: and research on platforms.

00:03:43: Because once again, different people, different stories, you know,

00:03:48: we all had our own path to get to platforms.

00:03:52: So what is a platform to you and how did you end up, you know,

00:03:56: working on them and studying them and understanding them?

00:04:02: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, first of all, for inviting me. Exciting topic,

00:04:06: and I also think you can define it in very different ways.

00:04:09: When you traditionally talk about platforms or platform urbanism,

00:04:13: I think we all talk or think about big business and market-driven platforms

00:04:18: like Uber and food delivery services, Amazon, and so on and so on.

00:04:22: And there has been a lot of critical theory about it because it creates a lot

00:04:28: of social inequity. It's very

00:04:29: capitalistic. It's disruptive as a business model and so on and so on.

00:04:34: There has been a lot of discourses going on the last decades,

00:04:38: I would say, very critical discourses about this platform, urbanism.

00:04:42: My take on that is a bit different i would

00:04:45: say i um i i think it's more

00:04:48: it's it's not so critical it's a bit more productive because

00:04:51: we are trying to to set up

00:04:53: um platforms urban urban data platforms that would be my take on that that um

00:05:00: is a data source it's a data system that makes data available for people for

00:05:05: experts and also for laymen for collaboration and also for interaction or let's

00:05:12: say interactive collaboration.

00:05:14: So when we speak in the context of my research here in the SETI Science Lab

00:05:18: and also you mentioned UNITAC, it's more about how can we set up a good urban

00:05:22: data management system and an urban data ecosystem.

00:05:26: We also use this term of creating ecosystems that makes data available.

00:05:31: We follow open source ideas and how can we make this data accessible for people?

00:05:38: How can we create stories? stories, how can we help planning,

00:05:41: how can we help like creating scenarios, urban scenarios that is data-based

00:05:47: and also data decision-making.

00:05:49: And when we do this, we create a lot of different applications,

00:05:53: but the basis of everything is a good urban data platform.

00:05:57: And this is where the term of platform comes from when I speak about it from

00:06:01: an urban research angle.

00:06:05: And speaking about the, you mentioned the city science lab that you're leading

00:06:11: and that you have been building and growing.

00:06:15: Maybe also coming back to the question of how did you end up thinking about platforms in this way?

00:06:21: Maybe you can combine this with a little bit of the background of building also

00:06:26: this institute and entering into platform urbanism and understanding this.

00:06:32: Yeah yeah i think i'm myself

00:06:35: i'm a platform and i always speak about my

00:06:38: team as a platform because i always say that i don't want to

00:06:41: have a kind of like a team i like to have a platform around me so people that

00:06:46: that work in a non-hierarchical way with each other creating like energies and

00:06:53: creating things together and i like this this term of platform because it's

00:06:58: it's it's open and it's It's decentralized,

00:07:01: so that's a very crucial component of having a platform.

00:07:05: You can decentralize data, but you can also decentralize creativity.

00:07:09: Work forces, and so on and so on.

00:07:12: And I think this term of platform is important for us because when you speak

00:07:19: about city planning, you have to bring together so many different stakeholders. coders.

00:07:24: It is always this quarter between civil society, the government,

00:07:31: which is the authority, then science, which is us, and then there's industry.

00:07:37: So we also work with companies. We do projects with Google, with different companies.

00:07:42: And in this quarter, you have to create a kind of working workflow.

00:07:47: And this workflow is usually a platform. It cannot be a hierarchy.

00:07:51: We try to to open it up and we try to decentralize data

00:07:54: so that we always try to empower also people

00:07:57: especially when we work with the civil society entities it

00:08:01: is a lot about empowering people and not telling

00:08:04: their stories but make them tell their stories and

00:08:07: platform is the basis of a lot of like project

00:08:11: setups that we are doing in a very international context in the un which is

00:08:16: again a very specific work environment because we have a lot of power relations

00:08:20: when we work in low resource But we also do it when we work here in Hamburg

00:08:24: and other countries in the world that are more high tech.

00:08:28: So creating the project constellations and bringing together different stakeholders

00:08:32: is a lot about creating good platforms and creating ecosystems.

00:08:38: And data can help us to bring people together to make work also more interdisciplinary.

00:08:45: This is highly requested in cities because we have all those silos,

00:08:49: we have all those authorities.

00:08:51: The financial department doesn't speak with the social department and they don't

00:08:55: speak with the mobility department.

00:09:00: But in reality, every city planning or urban design question is a highly interdisciplinary question.

00:09:09: And data make it possible when we make them accessible on platforms that people can work together.

00:09:15: And this notion of collaboration, again, I think is one of the most important

00:09:19: skills when we speak about city transformation in a sustainable way.

00:09:25: And it's still not well done in

00:09:28: many many cities i also have to say that well i

00:09:31: definitely uh buy that um look

00:09:35: uh you say something very interesting at the beginning because uh

00:09:38: i said many cases people

00:09:41: when we talk about platforms uh we've got this business approach or marketing

00:09:46: approach and so it's easy for us to you know to connect uh the word platform

00:09:52: to to very specific and very known examples like Uber or Airbnb or Booking.com and many others.

00:10:00: But given that many of the people listening to this podcast probably do this

00:10:05: connection, so we do connect the idea of platform to Uber.

00:10:09: Now you're providing a different perspective on it.

00:10:12: So this idea of a platform of data and making it possible, the collaboration

00:10:18: among different stakeholders.

00:10:19: Do you have an example, just to clarify that, Our listeners can have another

00:10:26: idea of a platform with a specific example instead of always going back to Uber.

00:10:32: Yeah, I think an example is this whole field of citizen engagement,

00:10:39: digital participation, or we call it also digital co-creation or digital collaboration.

00:10:44: So in cities, citizens, they want to have a say.

00:10:48: In democratic cities, they want to have a say, they want to have a stake.

00:10:51: And this is not only here in Europe the case, it's also in many African countries,

00:10:56: Latin American countries all over, when you have a kind of like.

00:11:00: Democratic governance then the mayors

00:11:03: or the state secretaries they want to speak

00:11:05: to the people and the people want to speak to them so it's it's

00:11:08: crucial for planning issues that you have to find

00:11:11: a way of talking to people and for

00:11:15: hamburg for example we set up this digital participation system

00:11:18: it calls dpas you can look it up it's

00:11:22: dpas.org it's an open source very space

00:11:25: related software and you can

00:11:28: speak about citizen planning topics that are

00:11:31: space related so residential housing park

00:11:35: and environmental projects and

00:11:38: so on and so many different projects that have been already like

00:11:41: organized with the software so now we have a

00:11:44: huge platform of citizen statements on that

00:11:47: which is also i would say a data ecosystem

00:11:50: consists of citizen statements they

00:11:54: are all productive some of them are provocative some

00:11:58: of them are very negative some of them are very positive but

00:12:01: it's a it's a kind of like chorus of what a

00:12:04: city thinks about different planning

00:12:07: issues and for us coming a

00:12:10: bit more from the technical side it is it

00:12:13: was a lot about how do we create that software how can we

00:12:16: make it accessible for people it can be used by a mobile phone but

00:12:19: you can also use it in events because many people.

00:12:22: Are not so uh they are no digital native so

00:12:25: they need a bit guidance we have people who are

00:12:28: not very good at working on maps that's also interesting they have no orientation

00:12:33: and so on they need a bit guidance so there are different ways of putting your

00:12:37: comments into that data ecosystem and then the next step of course for us is

00:12:42: how do we then evaluate on all the data because it's a lot it's huge and this

00:12:47: is where for For example.

00:12:48: Natural language processing comes in machine learning.

00:12:51: We cluster different terms or notions that have been articulated very often.

00:12:59: Or we can also evaluate on crisis areas because obviously people argue against

00:13:05: something for different topics.

00:13:08: So it's a big, I would say, data platform of citizen comments that is super interesting.

00:13:14: And that tells us a lot about how the city works, if people are happy or not,

00:13:20: and who participates, who is not able to participate, and so on and so on.

00:13:25: You can do a lot of research about that. But that's a completely different way,

00:13:28: I think, of talking about a platform than talking about a platform in a way that you said.

00:13:33: It's not Uber, it's not market-driven, it's more like...

00:13:36: Activating and motivating people to speak about the

00:13:39: cities and of course also handing it over to

00:13:42: the planners i i didn't say that but that's of course the most important step

00:13:46: then that they also use the the results and can integrate it into their planning

00:13:52: projects i mean you said it's it is different but i think in many ways it's

00:13:58: also quite similar right so you're also So, for example,

00:14:01: what came to my mind, I have to overcome what is often called the chicken and egg problem, right?

00:14:07: Especially if you think about there should be a critical mass of participants on the citizen side.

00:14:14: And then you mentioned the planners so that if I write a comment,

00:14:18: that I also get some feedback and also have the feeling that my voice is actually

00:14:23: heard and I can have some impact.

00:14:26: Impact um so in such a project how do you like overcome the the chicken and egg uh problem.

00:14:34: Yeah i think it's um it's very interesting to um talk about how such a digital

00:14:40: platform is organized so how do you address people what is the question that

00:14:44: you are asking um and how do you pre-structure a little bit the process so because

00:14:50: it's not that we open a process about I don't know,

00:14:52: extending the bike lanes in a specific quarter,

00:14:55: and then people just can comment in wildly.

00:14:58: That would never happen. We pre-structure, of course, a bit.

00:15:01: We say, look, we have five different topics. One is about environmental protection.

00:15:06: One is about flooding. One is

00:15:07: about, I don't know, autonomous driving that takes place in that quarter.

00:15:12: And another one is about sidewalks and so on and so on.

00:15:17: So, the way of how we pre-structure it on one hand, but then on the other hand

00:15:22: to leave it also open so that people then also can comment and it doesn't feel

00:15:25: too much manipulated already at the beginning.

00:15:28: So that's a bit the game.

00:15:31: And I think it's super interesting that most, I would say 99% of the comments

00:15:38: we get, not only here in Europe, also in other countries, are negative.

00:15:43: We were terrified a bit about bashing at the beginning and so on and so on, but it didn't happen.

00:15:49: So, I mean, people who participate in such processes, there is a kind of social selection, of course.

00:15:54: They really want to contribute and they have an idea and they want to say something.

00:15:58: So, that's a bit how we do it. And I think it has to be very, very localized.

00:16:04: That's very important. The more local it is, the better the comments are,

00:16:08: the better the quality is. When you ask a question like, does Europe want a new currency like Euro?

00:16:15: If we did it like 30 years ago, it wouldn't have happened.

00:16:19: So people would have said no, because people, they don't want innovation.

00:16:23: They want to stay with the old system.

00:16:27: But if you ask them a very, very local question about what about this park?

00:16:32: Could we maybe change the, I don't know, the usage of a park?

00:16:36: And what are your ideas then many many so you have

00:16:40: to make people as local experts then it works

00:16:43: well and they have a lot of expertise and they come up with

00:16:45: good ideas so I don't know if I answered your question but it that's a bit how

00:16:50: we how we do it and that's a bit our experience well the more you speak the

00:16:55: more questions I've got on my list now that this is incredibly long and it's

00:17:00: difficult to choose but I mean among the different things you say there is again Again,

00:17:05: one that seems to be particularly interesting to me, because you say that,

00:17:09: I mean, partially you were answering now telling how you engage people into

00:17:15: collaborating on these platforms.

00:17:17: But before that, you say that, of course, there might be problems in terms of technology,

00:17:25: technology adoption, and not everybody is able to use things,

00:17:28: not everybody maybe has got the same access to the technologies,

00:17:32: especially, I guess, depending on the country in which you are.

00:17:37: How do you deal in this case with the inherent problem of the bias of the data

00:17:46: that you are collecting?

00:17:47: Because the more you've got a certain part of a population able or willing to

00:17:54: do something, the more you are collecting data about that part of a population.

00:17:59: So there is a possible inherent risk of very huge bias into it.

00:18:06: Yeah i think we cannot avoid we cannot

00:18:09: fully avoid biases and you are right i i

00:18:12: agree we try to we try to

00:18:15: address people very very broadly this is how we there is there is in hamburg

00:18:20: for example there is um in our ministry of housing and urban development they

00:18:24: have a department that is that focuses on citizen engagement and city citizen

00:18:29: co-creation and they try to promote all the the processes as wide as possible.

00:18:33: So they are super active and also getting other people be involved.

00:18:39: And this is one answer to your question. Another one is that we of course have

00:18:44: this problem of missing data a lot.

00:18:46: We have a lot of data, but we know also that a lot of social data,

00:18:50: for example, is very often not there, especially also when we work in the global

00:18:54: south, we lack of data very often.

00:18:57: And in this case, we try to work with specific organizations that we are interested

00:19:02: in, like NGOs, or we did a project, for example, on care mobility.

00:19:08: So how do people move through the cities who take care of kids,

00:19:13: of elderly people, of disabled people? And then we worked together with an NGO

00:19:17: that is for parents with disabled kids.

00:19:22: And they came to our lab and they draw their maps on our touchscreens and our

00:19:27: software to explain us how they drive someone who's sitting in a wheelchair

00:19:33: through the city, for example. It's micro-mobility.

00:19:35: We don't have so much micro-mobility patterns.

00:19:38: We know a lot of mobility in terms of logistics and private car mobility and

00:19:43: so on. So that's another way of how we do it.

00:19:47: So we try to engage with specific NGOs or specific target groups that can give

00:19:52: us data that we don't have.

00:19:54: And this is highly political. And I think it's very important that an urban

00:19:57: data platform, of course, also have data that is done by or produced by people

00:20:03: who are disabled, for example, in that case.

00:20:06: It can be also a gender topic or many other topics.

00:20:12: Violence against women, for example, is such a very often in many countries

00:20:19: where femicides and so on happen.

00:20:21: We don't have data because governments are hiding those data.

00:20:25: Then we have to work with NGOs who know where we can get the data.

00:20:29: The bias is still, of course, there. I wouldn't say that we can overcome it,

00:20:35: but at least you can be aware of it and try to engage other organizations in it.

00:20:41: Well, if I may, Philip, I got another one and then I give it back to you.

00:20:48: I was thinking if to any extent, would it be possible anyway to learn from the

00:20:57: business or marketing cases like, you know, Uber and so on?

00:21:01: I mean, one thing that these people seem to be very good at is in collecting data.

00:21:06: But the way in which they do it is not just asking for data.

00:21:10: So it's not that, you know, a company like Google, they do not ask what you

00:21:14: like or stuff like that. They offer you a service.

00:21:18: The service is for free. You are more than happy to use the service because,

00:21:22: you know, you get something for you.

00:21:25: And you know, basically, now you should know, maybe some years ago or not,

00:21:29: but now everybody probably is aware that you can get that huge,

00:21:34: fantastic service for free because you are paying it back, giving your data.

00:21:39: And probably your data for you are not so incredible or valuable.

00:21:44: So the kind of reward that you get is very, very much.

00:21:48: But if you put all the data of all the people together, there is a huge value for the company.

00:21:53: So instead of asking for data, they somehow trade the data providing services.

00:21:59: So is this part of what you do or is this applicable to what you do?

00:22:04: So what is the current situation?

00:22:07: Yeah, that's a good question. I think we are a bit cautious with this because

00:22:13: people we work with are very, very skeptical because they are very common goal oriented.

00:22:20: We speak about cities here. We don't speak about companies.

00:22:24: We don't speak about consumers.

00:22:25: We speak about citizens. So it's a difference.

00:22:28: And when you like offer people something for free, they immediately know that

00:22:33: the exchange is that we get the data.

00:22:35: So we did it a bit when we, or we do it sometimes a bit when we do crowdsourcing

00:22:40: and maybe also mobility is another.

00:22:43: It's again, we need data about bike behavior.

00:22:48: How do people really bike? What kind of routes do they take?

00:22:52: You can crowdsource and then they get something for free. I don't know what it is.

00:22:56: So we did it also, but I wouldn't say in our context,

00:23:00: it's that disruptive that it is when you think about Uber or Airbnb because

00:23:06: people want to know where the data goes and we always have to make it very transparent.

00:23:16: How we use the data and also we always

00:23:19: explain people also the limits of data so that's

00:23:22: maybe also another answer to your bias question it's very

00:23:26: important that for example we speak about

00:23:28: spaces we have a lot of problem a lot of

00:23:31: like topics that deal with spaces and then

00:23:34: we have like 30 different criteria on spaces

00:23:37: now who owns the space how big is it is

00:23:40: it what about climate topics and so there's a lot of space

00:23:44: related information that you can get on spaces and then

00:23:47: people come and work with us and then they really want to know what kind of

00:23:50: criteria is there on the space and we really have to make it transparent it's

00:23:54: like 30 criteria and then they start working with us and one answer also in

00:23:59: Hamburg we have a transparency law since already like I think 12 12 years.

00:24:05: And this law forces people to give their data into the data platform of Hamburg.

00:24:12: This is the reason why the Hamburg data platform is the biggest in Germany,

00:24:15: because we have this law.

00:24:17: But this is also a way of like making transparent what kind of data is in that urban data platform.

00:24:23: So when we work with those data, people who come here, I can always say,

00:24:27: look, you have access yourself. You can check about the data. You can evaluate.

00:24:31: We don't try to manipulate data and this

00:24:33: is completely different when you work with a company when we work with

00:24:36: google for example there is no transparency um

00:24:40: ethics behind it of course they say that it is like that but of course the data

00:24:45: is it's it's much more close so um that's my answer to your question it would

00:24:52: be nice if we yeah it's yeah we we are a bit it's it's it's i think it's a bit

00:24:57: a different different way of.

00:25:00: Of using this um i'm a

00:25:03: bit i'm a bit familiar with the um with

00:25:07: digital mapping and the use of geodata and

00:25:10: the and the role cities also have

00:25:13: in providing companies even

00:25:16: like google maps apple maps all the other mapping

00:25:19: companies with very very important information

00:25:22: about like road infrastructure about public

00:25:26: transport and um i think

00:25:29: there's an an ongoing regulation on

00:25:32: in the eu level to govern how

00:25:37: platforms like google maps like

00:25:40: apple maps cannot just use data

00:25:44: but also have to give something back when they

00:25:47: add value to the data for

00:25:50: example collecting data about

00:25:53: road infrastructure from a city from some kind of

00:25:56: i think the german word is katastar basically like

00:26:01: where are all the roads um and then something

00:26:03: changes and if if google notices.

00:26:07: Because they have huge amounts of data

00:26:10: coming in that there is a change and there is

00:26:13: an update to give this back to the city

00:26:16: right so if it's also something that you when you build this data platform um

00:26:21: in Hamburg or looking at the particular other one in Hamburg to think about

00:26:27: how to govern usage that it's while it is like created mostly by citizens.

00:26:34: By the city, a lot of effort that's going in.

00:26:36: And if it's then available, that you make sure that the usage,

00:26:41: be it commercially or non-commercially, but by private actors accounts also

00:26:46: for like giving something back and improving proving the value of the data set.

00:26:51: Is this something that you're familiar with?

00:26:55: Yeah, that's a big topic and one of my favorite topics because companies,

00:26:59: they use cities as testbeds.

00:27:02: They have done it already quite a long time.

00:27:05: And it's interesting because technology in this whole field of smart city technology

00:27:10: has been tested in deserts for a long time, autonomous driving and many different things.

00:27:17: But now time is here that they have to test it in the city. So they need a real

00:27:22: city to test autonomous vehicles, for example.

00:27:25: And this is why a lot of companies come to cities and use the city,

00:27:29: use the infrastructure, like you said, the roads or whatever it is,

00:27:34: to test their technology and see if this is really ready for the market.

00:27:37: And then I think, or I know that it's very important for cities to create good

00:27:44: contracts with those companies so that it's a back and forth with the data.

00:27:48: Because what big companies, of course, want to do is that they get a lot of

00:27:51: data out of the city, use it for optimizing their use cases,

00:27:55: their business cases, but not giving back so much.

00:27:58: So it's very important that cities have good lawyers and have good awareness

00:28:01: of this and make good contracts so that data also comes back.

00:28:05: And I give you an example. For example, we just did a project here with Google.

00:28:08: Google has a headquarter here in Hamburg, and this project was AirView.

00:28:14: Google collected air quality data with a Google Maps car. You know how it looks like.

00:28:19: There is this camera on top of the car, but they also have sensors on the windows

00:28:24: of the car, and these sensors, they collect air quality data.

00:28:28: And this car drove through the city of Hamburg for almost a year.

00:28:32: We collected all the data. Then our lab made use cases out of it.

00:28:37: We connected the Google data to the urban platform data and tried to give some

00:28:42: advices for like planning topics.

00:28:46: You have, it has to be more green here, or we have a problem there and so on and so on.

00:28:51: And Google put all the data also to an open science platform so that the citizens

00:28:58: and also researchers and whoever wants has access to the data.

00:29:01: So that's a very good example, I think, for your question.

00:29:05: But we had to negotiate it also. It was not naturally given.

00:29:10: So there was a bit discussion. But then at the end, I think it was a great project.

00:29:13: And this data is now available for everyone and you can use it for making simulations

00:29:19: about air quality and data in Hamburg.

00:29:22: So how is the Hamburg air taking a deep breath?

00:29:30: And then I give you an answer to this question. The authority of environmental

00:29:37: protection here in Hamburg was very,

00:29:39: very reluctant to work with Google because they have very specific sensors that they work with.

00:29:46: And there are a lot of laws, European laws about this. They call it Luftreinhalteplan.

00:29:53: And they are very vulnerable. If they use other sensors and the results are

00:29:59: different, so we create hotspots because the Google car created hotspots,

00:30:03: then the authority is very, of course, cautious and say, look,

00:30:06: but this is not our way of measuring it.

00:30:08: We have European regulation laws and rules and

00:30:11: we have to follow that rules so it's highly political and

00:30:14: it's i can also understand the perspective of the authority but on

00:30:18: the other hand all those big companies especially the platform companies

00:30:21: um they come to the cities they do their projects

00:30:24: and they would have they would have done it anyway also without us and then

00:30:28: i always say look then let's do it together let's try to create an ecosystem

00:30:31: which is what i said at the beginning bringing a lot of different stakeholders

00:30:35: together and trying to yeah to figure out something together instead of like

00:30:40: creating creating two silos, there's the company,

00:30:42: there's the other authority, and they don't speak to each other.

00:30:45: So that's platform urbanism for me, bringing people together and try to create bridges.

00:30:53: Well, I mean, you're making very interesting examples.

00:30:57: And, you know, in many of the cases, you've got so many different stakeholders.

00:31:02: So you've got, in this case, you've got also private companies,

00:31:05: you've got a city, you've got a population, you've got, you know,

00:31:09: many different institutions and so on.

00:31:12: So I was wondering, given that you have experienced many of these projects in

00:31:19: different countries, and definitely in different cities in different countries,

00:31:24: what is the key in terms of competencies that a city should have in order to

00:31:33: start this virtuous cycle?

00:31:35: Cycle because i mean if i look around that i

00:31:38: know many cities in the world some of them actually are

00:31:41: very active from this point of view and some others

00:31:44: are still you know lagging a lot uh what

00:31:48: could it be so is there any kind of you know uh triggering effect something

00:31:54: that is uh enabling this uh this this processes i think it's all about people

00:32:01: if you have dedicated uh cdos or or dedicated mayors,

00:32:07: or dedicated heads of authorities,

00:32:10: then of course, people try to get it done.

00:32:16: And they bring people together, they create funding and so on and so on.

00:32:21: And it's also, another answer is also a very strong political will for democracy.

00:32:27: Our work is highly, highly political, and we very often come to countries.

00:32:33: The first thing always we have to do, especially when we work with the United

00:32:36: Nations, is that we have to align with the government.

00:32:39: And you see immediately, and I find it highly interesting to go into all that

00:32:42: meetings, you feel, I would say, in the first meeting, if someone is interested

00:32:46: in making data transparent, making it accessible, creating digital platforms,

00:32:53: making something out of it, fostering creativity.

00:32:57: And there are also a lot of people, they really don't want that.

00:33:00: They want to hide the data.

00:33:03: There is this difference between government and governance in city planning.

00:33:09: And the government is more centralized. It's the government that is organizing a country or a city.

00:33:15: Governance means that I'm trying

00:33:18: to engage as many people as

00:33:21: possible and you can feel

00:33:24: immediately how cities and also countries sometimes

00:33:28: tick in terms of do they want to make it happen or not and there is a lot of

00:33:34: people are reluctant still and also in Germany there are really big differences

00:33:43: between cities and it's not,

00:33:45: always only about the size we have a lot of also small cities

00:33:48: that are very dedicated and very open and they really want to

00:33:51: be um yeah they want to get their

00:33:54: city digitized in a good way um i would say it's about people and it's about

00:33:59: funding but funding connects to people of course we have a lot of funding programs

00:34:04: here in germany and also europe it's i think funding is not so much our topic

00:34:08: here it's more when we work in the global south we have no funding or i mean

00:34:12: there are low low resources.

00:34:14: That's not the case here in our country and in Europe.

00:34:18: We had David Eves on the

00:34:21: podcast who is working at the University College in London a lot working on

00:34:28: the topic of digital public infrastructures and David shared many examples from

00:34:35: more like developing countries implementing digital identities,

00:34:40: digital payment systems while file.

00:34:43: Developed countries were often as you said hesitant although they have the the resources,

00:34:49: now you're like very active globally in

00:34:53: the project related with the United Nations and um

00:34:56: how is it in the when it comes to like

00:35:00: citizen engagement do you also feel that maybe

00:35:03: in a as you said the quest for more democracy

00:35:07: more let's say getting one's

00:35:11: own voice heard is this all something that you

00:35:14: feel when you are working in like quote-unquote

00:35:17: more developing countries and and the people the

00:35:20: local people there like let's assume

00:35:23: the the necessary base requirements are met to initiate the project in the first

00:35:28: place yeah absolutely we just did a project in Botswana in Gaborone and we also

00:35:33: used this Deepass Deepass software that I was talking about and Gaborone did

00:35:38: a kind of like first no that's not true they have they have a strong strong,

00:35:42: democratic tradition of also assemblies.

00:35:46: So they come together and speak to each other in a very regular basis,

00:35:51: but they haven't used digital tools so far.

00:35:53: And they wanted to change a bit the system because they also have the problem

00:35:56: that young people don't come anymore.

00:35:58: It's so elderly people meet and so on.

00:36:00: And there it was very, very active and very dynamic. And they came and they contributed.

00:36:07: And they were also very critical about the tools. They wanted to know everything about the data and so on.

00:36:12: So a lot of countries in Africa and also Latin America and also Southeast Asia,

00:36:20: they have this very will for democracy and they want that and they want to use

00:36:29: the tool and they want to also learn how it works and so on and so on.

00:36:32: And we have to adapt it then, of course.

00:36:34: It's not that we just transfer a technical idea to the Global South,

00:36:37: and then they have to use it.

00:36:39: It's a very agile way of adapting also the tools.

00:36:45: Can I give you another answer, Tommaso, to your question? Sorry, I'm a bit slow.

00:36:51: Another answer would be for me, I would love to have more people with technical

00:36:56: understanding in all those groups, expert groups.

00:37:03: We see so many expert groups talking about smart cities.

00:37:07: They come from the humanities or they're politicians.

00:37:13: They're representing something, but they have no technical expertise.

00:37:18: And I would really love to have more tech people, computer scientists, in those expert groups.

00:37:24: Because so much is about open standards.

00:37:29: It's also very technical. I mean, to answer your question, when does it work?

00:37:36: It is also if you have a good technical system that is very modular on one hand

00:37:41: and you can plug in different systems and it's also a technical question.

00:37:44: And very often that is not discussed or they discuss it just at the end of the

00:37:48: process and then it's of course difficult.

00:37:51: So I was thinking about the CDs that I know and have been collaborating with.

00:37:58: And yes I was trying to map them on this list of,

00:38:03: characteristics and it's very interesting what you're saying and I think that

00:38:08: in general it's very interesting what you're saying and we could stay here for

00:38:11: hours but more or less we are at the end of our time together but,

00:38:17: we will not let you go without asking you a final question that is what's next

00:38:23: so what is the next the super cool thing that you're working on or you're thinking

00:38:29: about and you would like to share with us.

00:38:32: Can I give you two answers? Oh, yeah, at least. So in terms of technical innovation

00:38:38: is that we are at the moment setting up a co-modeling platform,

00:38:42: which means that a city has a platform.

00:38:45: And on that platform, you have access not only to data, you have access to different models.

00:38:51: So climate models, mobility models, financial models.

00:38:56: So and to connect all those models is super interesting.

00:39:01: Thing and this is quite advanced and we

00:39:04: also do it with we also do it with the authorities here

00:39:07: in Hamburg we invite them for workshops and we ask them what do

00:39:10: you think how what kind of models could we connect to each other so that we

00:39:14: create value out of it so it's highly technical and but we are very excited

00:39:18: about the employees of the city who work with us here because they understand

00:39:22: what we mean so we want to open a bit the black box of an algorithm so that's a problem for a city.

00:39:28: The city always wants to know what is it about, what are you calculating?

00:39:31: And with this co-modeling platform, we open up this black box and we make it

00:39:35: a bit more transparent how algorithms have been done.

00:39:39: Is this increasing the level of engagement of these stakeholders,

00:39:42: I guess, because they got more control or better understanding of what you're

00:39:48: doing? Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:39:50: Yeah. And it's very exciting. I was very skeptical about if do we We get people in, is it too technical?

00:39:58: I mean, it's about math at the end. So they model together, but it works well.

00:40:04: And I'm super happy about that. So we are writing, at the moment,

00:40:08: we are going to write some papers about that.

00:40:10: And my other question is, is working in the global south, so this whole topic

00:40:15: of informality is so strong in open planning.

00:40:17: We have like 30% of mankind lives in informal settlements.

00:40:21: And how can we get data from the informal settlements included to the official

00:40:27: data platforms of city governments is highly political and it's very, very interesting.

00:40:34: And I think it creates a huge impact. And it's also very fragile and very ambivalent

00:40:39: because people are very aware of surveillance and power relations have to be reflected.

00:40:45: And it's very challenging. But that's my new, or I've done it already a bit,

00:40:51: but I would like to increase in how to work in informal settlements with urban technology.

00:40:59: And it is that is extremely uh exciting thank

00:41:02: you so much for for sharing and also thank you so much for

00:41:05: your valuable time uh giza uh we

00:41:08: started with asking you what is the platform and you you showed

00:41:11: us so many like facets right you said you

00:41:14: yourself with your ability to connect

00:41:17: different stakeholders connect different people uh act

00:41:21: as a platform then you introduced us to

00:41:24: your work in building like technology building blocks

00:41:27: for cities for uh different kind of

00:41:30: user groups in a setting where you enable public institutions or actors or agencies

00:41:38: to like create new projects for example increasing citizen engagement and then

00:41:45: also the data aspect right um Working with public companies,

00:41:50: but holding them accountable through the right data governance regulation applied

00:41:58: by cities to make sure that there's no exploitation,

00:42:04: or at least a reduction in power imbalances, I would say.

00:42:10: Um so many aspects extremely insightful and and exciting conversation as said

00:42:16: thank you so much for your time i learned a lot i'm sure our audience did so too,

00:42:22: and yeah just the best for your upcoming projects and thank you thank you thank

00:42:27: you for the questions and for this nice discussion thank you to you it was a great chat thank you.