Venue: Swissnex India
Title: Big Data Informed Urban Design and Governance
The session started with Swissnex India director introducing speakers of today session and moderators.
Fabien Clavier started the session with a brief introduction of ETH Zurich and work currently carried out in smart cities at their center in Singapore. He emphasized on role of Asia, especially few of the high population density corridor in the region, ex: Java region (Indonesia), Chengdu(China), Jing Jin Ji Metro Region(China), Tokaido Corridor (Japan), Yangtze & Pearl river delta(China), and Ganges/Brahmaputra river delta(India).
Rapid urbanization, the presence of megapolis, and movement of people are making this region attractive for researchers to understand urban planning better. Urban planning is not just about data about numbers, it also includes a lot of human element into it. Fabien highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of his group with his talk specifically focused on ‘Data-informed decision-making on the micro-scale’. He highlighted scenarios like ‘Human vulnerability’, ‘Human development areas’, ‘Social sensing’ in the context of Singapore. His research group is working on the aspect of cooling Singapore and engaging with citizens in shaping the future. They have also designed tools like ‘Singapore View’ for citizens to become part in the development of their own city, and using it for Singapore.
He ended his talk with a simple question relevant to everyone across the globe, ‘What should our future cities be like?
Post his talk, Nitin Pai of Takshilla institution moderated a panel discussion about various aspects of future cities taking examples of Singapore and Bengaluru. Ashwin Mahesh shared aspects of Bengaluru in the panel. During the discussion, various aspects of a city, including administrative structure, funding to municipalities, and decision making were discussed. One of the conclusions I liked from the discussion was the creation of a framework for every city in India, to be successful in their own inspiration to reduce migration to megapolis.
Speakers:
- Fabien Clavier: Fabien Clavier is an urban planner with experience in master-planning, smart cities and urban data projects. He is currently a Project Coordinator for the Big Data-Informed Urban Design and Governance Group. Fabien is interested in big-data informed urban governance and how urban stakeholders can benefit from big data-derived methods to increase transparency, accountability, and equal voice in planning.
- Ashiwn Mahesh: Founder Mapunity & Centre for Public Problem Solving, Bengaluru
- Nitin Pai:Director, The Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru
Event details:
https://www.swissnexindia.org/event/responsive-cities-the-next-steps-for-smart-cities/
Ankit Khandelwal 