Smart Cities Radar, July 2024
A quick run down of things that have
caught my attention recently…
In May, Vermont became the first US State to pass a law that seeks to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for the impacts of climate change, called a "Climate Superfund Act". You can read about this and similar legislative efforts at Columbia Law.
Nathan Yau at Flowing Data has visualised US Department of Labour statistics to show how a ranking of jobs by income and year, across six decades from 1970 to 2022. There's a lot to play around with here, but the most interesting thing is how little movement there has been at the tops and bottoms of the distribution.
A group of global corporations and NGOs have formed a coalition called Mission 2025 in order to pressure national governments to align their decarbonisation strategies to the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to within 1.5 degrees of pre-industrial levels. They will focus on the 20 largest economies and have committed to providing the data needed to justify the policy changes.
The city of Boston have developed a new data standard for collecting citizen information about disability.
Transport for London announced that EV owners will have to pay the full congestion charge from December 2025.
Wencheng County in Zhejiang Province, China, has launched what I think is the world's first fully autonomous low altitude tourist flights.
Glasgow's City Innovation District has launched a new Venture Studio to help founders develop new ideas, products and business models. Venture studios differ from startup accelerators in that they originate the ideas from scratch, rather than attracting existing founders and startups.
The following reports also caught my eye:
ICLEI, the global network of local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development, published their new Strategic Vision 2024-2030.
The World Economic Forum published their annual Top 10 Emerging Technologies report.
The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) published a new report on smart buildings: Building Performance Reimagined.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, along with community partners, published a (free) book called "What’s Possible: Investing Now for Prosperous Sustainable Neighborhoods", which is packed full of example initiatives.
And, the think tank Centre for Cities published a report comparing the big cities in the UK outside of London to other similar sized cities across the G7 countries, showing just how big the productivity gap is and what could be done about it: Climbing the Summit - Big cities in the UK and the G7.
