#ISSS2017 Vienna

ECO-SYSTEMS DAY

Systemic approaches aim to create flourishing ecosystems. The conference will showcase examples of innovative approaches to smart city strategies to tackle emission objectives, like urban mobility, with an outlook on autonomous systems and their social and ethical consequences.

We will explore further smart and connected systems as a future perspective of urban developments and citizenship living in interconnected cities, not only as consumers but also producers of resources. Our rural ecosystems will be influenced by climate-smart agriculture and sustainable agriculture. The increasing demand for food security and food logistics, in industrialized agriculture, as well as community farming, and their systemic impacts on social and environmental systems widens the scope of the conference in an additional dialogue of scientists and practitioners.

Smart City Wien is a long-term initiative by the city of Vienna that looks at a cross-section of the city, covering all areas of life, work and leisure activities in equal measure, and includes everything from infrastructure, energy and mobility to all aspects of urban development.

Smart City Wien defines the development of a city that assigns priority to, and interlinks, the issues of energy, mobility, buildings and infrastructure. In this, the following premises apply: radical resource preservation, development and productive use of innovations/new technologies and high and socially balanced quality of life

Vienna’s Smart City strategy is characterised by both an internal effect to render existing plans even more ambitious and to inspire new ideas. At the same time, its external effect is to create an international frame of reference for what is happening here and to generate publicity for Vienna’s aims.

The time horizon of the framework strategy extends to 2050, since the necessary and often fundamental changes in the fields of energy, mobility or construction cannot happen overnight. The thematic arc stretches from the future of Vienna as a hub of research and business to the preservation of all-important social achievements. Concrete methods of application must still be developed in many areas – but the direction is clear: Vienna wants to pursue an integrated goal for its Smart City where everyone can benefit from synergy effects and continually team play.

It is the key goal of Smart City Wien for 2050 to offer optimum quality of life for all citizens - combined with the highest possible resource preservation. This can be achieved through a holistic approach, which is the beating heart of our city and also the reason, why the Smart City Wien is an important systemic solution in a systemic world where everything is connected.

"Smart" seems to be the buzzword of these years, following on "sustainable" and "resilient". Everything is smart, or should become smart, including our cities ("smart cities) and our workplaces (e.g., "smart work centers"). But what does a city or a workplace need to be "smart"?

Along with a certain commodization of the word "smart", its meaning has opened to include more than only technological solutions. A network of sensors and some computer intelligence alone won't make a city smart. Instead, e.g., "smart city" is now a catch-all term for a city that is being developed in an integrated way, combining aspects of technical infrastructure with administrative innovation, new approaches to leverage local economic and cultural developments, as well as esthetic and spatial design aspects.

Systems tools and methods can enable such integrated develoments of places on various scales – buildings, campuses and neighborhoods, urban quarters, entire cities and regions. A systems view may help to avoid misled developments and open the minds of decision-makers for future-proof strategies.

Many of our cities are at the crossroad now. Decision makers need to navigate a multitude of good-practice examples and fashions. Do we want to optimize our cities for tourists flying in for a weekend, contributing to the "eventization" of our cities? Are we going to insist on further extending the 20th-century model of public urban mass transportation using buses and tramways, while ignoring that the youth is dreaming of individualized (public) transportation and several companies are working on small flying vehicles? Are we going to leverage on the sharing economy or try to ban it (Uber, AirBnB)? Shall we help people to better interconnect in cities – or continue to put up hurdles to traffic flows and fostering slow modes of transportation such as cycling? And how do we account for moving the aging population – on bicycles? Will we allow for private space or are we going to foster endless "co-"ization – shared common spaces in residential buildings, all together in public mass transportation, all together in co-working spaces?

What do our systems approaches suggest? What is viable? – Are we stuck with the mechanical city of the 20th century (to which belongs, imho any purely technical sensor-computer optimized city), or are we finally going to make the leap to the "systems" city?