The Smart Cities Week Conference took place from October 2th through October 4th in Washington, DC. There they gathered 1000 smart city leaders from both public and private sectors to discuss how to leverage technology to create cities that would be better suited to meet the future needs and lifestyles of their citizens. The following article provides a recap of the conference and some of the participants’ takeaways.
On the first day, a group of attendees gathered to play Ernst and Young’s Future Cities simulation, a case study for the fictional city of “Futopolis,” where participants make decisions that impact quality of life and force them to grapple with the friction and trade-offs associated with any smart city transformation.
While no simulation can truly capture the intricacies of the work done by leaders in cities, which have as many stakeholders as there are citizens, the game instilled the necessity for collaboration—a key takeaway from the conference.
