To achieve the real promise of smart cities -that is to create the conditions of continuous learning and innovation that has led many cities in the world, to keep pace with economic change-we need to understand what is below the surface of smart and connected places, global solutions exist and some of them are presented in the book “Beyond Smart Cities – How Cities Network, Learn and Innovate”, written by Tim Campbell, PhD.

The book examines the mechanisms that enable open institutions like cities to learn and make the best use of technology to innovate and thrive. 

 

City learning is a blind spot in policy on urban development and city innovation.  Few cities and even fewer national institutions give much attention to the civil mechanisms behind innovation.  Collective learning is one of them, but it is not only what is learned; a key factor is how learning takes place in cities.  This book examines these mechanisms at many levels.  Some of the findings:

 

• City leaders know that they operate a platform where the fortunes of nations are decided in a globally competitive environment.  The book gives evidence that thousands of cities around the world are on the prowl, often visiting each other for knowledge about best policy and latest practice.  Their visits reach into the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, each year. The accompanying figure illustrates a snapshot of exchanges among survey respondents.

• At the city level, learning is achieved in many ways.  Beyond Smart Cities provides a typology of learning channels-individuals, binary exchanges, clusters of cities, casual grazing on websites, to name a few. 

 

• Innovative cities are deliberate learners.  Nine case studies show that they engage in proactive, systematic, and repeated acquisition of knowledge.  Although they use distinct styles, they employ multiple learning channels. 

• Innovative cities separate themselves from the pack by creating “clouds of trust,” consisting of interconnected networks of confidence among public, private, and civic leaders, not just mayors and city officials, who learn and process ideas together.  See illustration of clouds in two cities.  The clouds become a critical part of the processing power and floating, but semi-permanent, memory of innovative cities. 

• Innovative cities also create “tissue of remembering,” a suite of institutionalized places, documents, and practices that complement the memory in the clouds and conduct analysis to weigh options, set direction, and change course when needed. 

 

Cities, nations, corporate partners, and civil society all need to play a role to create the learning city.  For cities, learning must be a part of the mission of governance.  Cities must choose their own learning style, put in place agencies and practices, and invest in knowledge acquisition.  Helping institutions, including nations, NGOs, and corporate partners, can support the hardware and software needs of cities, especially in facilitating a strategy and practice of learning, including knowledge acquisition and processing.  The key factor is that the city community must create its own “ba,” a learning environment of trust and open exchange for local partners to discover, process, and absorb knowledge together.   

 

Beyond Smart Cities raises as many questions as it answers.  Some of the most important for future work involve a deeper analysis of networks of learning elites, the elements in efficiency of learning, how a market of exchange might be organized and regulated, and longitudinal and cross-city experience of learning outcomes.