SOURCE: Sustainable Development

CITIES AND SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION
City leaders are likely to play a
prominent role in discussions
drawing on lessons from initiatives
that have developed city-based
learning networks focused on
developing low-carbon innovation.
Innovation toward sustainability
As part of the Big Data revolution, many
companies are starting to explore the use of
open innovation competitions to source ideas
and funding from ‘the crowd’. A number
of major companies have started to utilise
crowd sourcing strategies related to the
development of more sustainable solutions
– they include big names like Unilever and
GE.
In parallel, a range of new initiatives are
starting to emerge from city governments
and civil society. These include ‘hackathons’
and ‘jams’ focused on environmental or
broader sustainability issues. Hackathons
bring together computer software coders,
programmers and other creatives in intensive
sessions. They have been established by some
cities to hack Big Data datasets to produce
apps to improve, for example, recycling. At
the leading-edge of this initiative are New
York and Singapore, for example.
Such sustainability-focused hackathons
and jams – intensive ‘open’ innovation
collaborative workshops – have also been
organised by civil society groups from the
‘bottom-up’. For example, last year the
Sensors are monitoring air pollution levels in
Barcelona - good news for the city’s cyclists
38
Futuristic metropolitan
developments, such as
Chengdu in China, set
the benchmark for the
smart cities concept
Global Sustainability Jam documented
around 80 simultaneous events worldwide in
late November 2014.
There are indications that traditional
boundaries of innovation are starting
to dissolve, with the potential means to
innovate increasing from civil society
and citizens. So are we moving into
(or have already entered) a new age of
industrialisation – ‘Industrialisation 4.0’ –
that is based on information, collaboration,
and decentralisation. The advent of this
‘new Industrial Age’ appears to be driven by
a new spirit of doing and making, increased
access to information through Internet,
increased sharing of ideas and information
through social networking technologies,
increased access to Open Source designs,
availability of new ‘making’ tools such as
additive manufacturing (or 3D printing), and
new ‘places and spaces’ to enable individuals
to ‘make, modify, and fix’.
New places and spaces
We may be starting to see the emergence of
a new Industrial Renaissance. As indicated,
these new ‘places and spaces’ are starting to
emerge in many cities where individuals are
coming together physically, face-to-face to
discuss, collaborate, experiment, and share
information and ideas to make, modify
and/or repair products – products such as
consumer goods. As indicated above, these
new ‘places and places’ are part of a process
of democratising innovation by providing
access to the knowledge and equipment for
prototype development and job production
outside of corporate research and
development laboratories and factories.
Fab Labs
Is this a threat or opportunity in relation
to the established order? At present, this
democratisation appears to be primarily
in the spirit of experimentation but there
some indications that some of these new
‘places and spaces’ may start to incubate the
development of new products and businesses.
Perhaps the most well-known example of
these new ‘places and spaces’ are the ‘Fab
Labs’ that emerged from Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 2001, by providing
organised facilities to enable individuals to
fabricate products from digital images utilising
a portfolio of manufacturing equipment
including 3D printers and laser cutters.
As of 2013, there were 125 Fab Labs in
34 countries. Alongside Fab Labs, there has
been the explosion of Makerspaces around
the world, where organised facilities are
being created or ‘opened up’ for individuals
to network, design, and make products. For
example, the RDM campus in Rotterdam in
the Netherlands has established the RDM
Makerspace where citizens can rent the
use of equipment from the technical school
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