Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host Tamlin Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE Smart Cities.
[00:00:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: EU so net zero targets, as I think everyone is aware, are ambitious, challenging and very quickly approaching. So this episode that we're diving into is looking at this roadblock facing all of us working in climate which is around you had complex behavioral changes and psychological barriers that hindered the acceptance of climate change and the communication strategies needed to effectively apply climate strategies with and together with the citizens. So with me today I have two exciting guests for you. The first is Ilaria de Altin. She is the project coordinator for freiburg Walgreis Hundertpur, so voting district 100% and the former climate protection manager at the city of Freiburg in Germany. Welcome Ilaria.
[00:01:32] Ilaria de Altin: Hello everybody and thank you for having me.
[00:01:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: Our pleasure. I'm finally really glad since our first conversation over a year ago that we're making this happen. So welcome and with you today you brought a lovely guest also. Her name is Josephine Yilan Liu, the co founder of Urban Future Global Conference. Welcome Josephine.
[00:01:52] Josephine Yilan Liu: Hi. Hello. Thanks for inviting me, Larry. And thanks for having me here.
[00:01:58] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yay. Wonderful to have you. I'm really excited to dig into this topic with you. I know it's a topic that is really stressing a lot of people out in our field. I would say so. But before we get into the main interview part, I would love to warm up with a little teaser. And the teaser I have for you today is what's the most unusual method of climate communication you've ever come across?
[00:02:24] Ilaria de Altin: Hilaria Well, I can tell you what was the most unusual picture I used while communicating about climate change. I used actually a series of pictures of big pasta plates, you know, spaghetti with a lot of sauce. I got the idea from a book from Philippe Laloux, organized brain venting organizations. And he said complexity is like a big plate of pasta. As soon as you try to put order into it, you don't know what happens. And in order to motivate people to go and start with something, I show them pictures I took with the Hands of my daughter going into a big plate of pasta. And I tell you, it was very, very well perceived from people. Lots of people came afterwards and said, whenever I eat spaghetti, I'm going to try and figure out what can I do more about climate protection.
[00:03:24] Tamlyn Shimizu: That's a really good example. I love that. Hilaria. Now to you, Josephine. What's the most unusual method of climate communication you've ever come across?
[00:03:33] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, there's a very interesting kind of installation called the Pollution Pulse done by artist Michael Pinsky. What he did was he created five so called cells that simulate the air quality in five cities such as London, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Beijing.
It starts from a coastal city in Norway. The visitor goes through increasingly polluted areas from this dry, cold, fresh air of Norway to very hot, humid and heavily polluted air in New Delhi.
And this is such a powerful and sensory way to convey the reality of air pollution and its impact on health and well being.
And so this was kind of a very interesting, kind of a project interaction between art and installation art installation and climate change communication.
[00:04:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I love it when this art play comes into the climate communications. I think it's a really, really interesting way to communicate. So thank you for sharing that. Now I would love to learn a little bit more about you as people before we get into really the meat of the interview.
Maybe starting with you, Josephine. Could you tell me a little bit more about yourself? What's your background and what's your relationship to this topic?
[00:05:06] Josephine Yilan Liu: Of course, since I was a child, I've always had a deep curiosity about how the world around us shape how we feel, who we are and how we behave.
Growing up in Beijing, China, I witnessed this massive urban transformation in which basically the population surged from 6 million to 25 million.
I saw firsthand the huge impact of urbanization.
This gives me a deep rooted desire to create better cities, which then led me to co found the Urban Future Global conference.
On the other hand, as I was doing architecture and environmental design, trying to improve people's lives through it, cognitive science became a natural extension because it digs into the why behind our actions, why we choose one thing over another, why we feel how we feel and do what we do.
And understanding these mechanisms is crucial to making spaces that can make us better, happier, healthier human beings. So this intersection of cognitive science and urban design is what drives me today. And my personal vision is to push beyond just sustainability. Actually I see urban projects as opportunities to drive meaningful societal change as through shaping our everyday environment, everyday physical surroundings, we can create the frameworks for how we behave we are and how what we value and believe.
[00:07:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Collection of your experiences that's led to you here today and your perspective on that. So thank you Ilari, I would love to learn a little bit more about you as well. What's your journey been like? Tell us all.
[00:07:17] Ilaria de Altin: I studied political science and international relations with the goal to detect how I could use my energy and my abilities to improve the world we all live in. I've been working then for more than 22 years for climate protection.
First I was working with ICLEI, local governments for sustainability, which is a worldwide network of local authorities working on sustainable development projects on a local and regional level.
And after some years there I decided I wanted to be actually working, be in a local authority working there where projects are developed. I wanted to touch the change and I had the opportunity to work for the environmental department of the city of Freiburg, where I am now. And I was working as climate protection manager there, here. And it was a great opportunity as Freiburg is a middle sized city in the southwest of Germany. But it are very ambitious cities with lot of good examples and great plans for environmental protection and climate protection.
Nevertheless, during this journey I realized that very often there is a lot of energy put into technical solutions. So we hope to have technical solutions that help us to decrease climate change and protect the climate.
[00:08:51] Josephine Yilan Liu: And that's good.
[00:08:52] Ilaria de Altin: We do need these. And then on the other opposite side we have a big focus on individuals, on our individual responsibility for climate change.
But what I realize more and more is that what is awaiting us is the necessity to have deep social changes we need as society, and I hope we need as strong democracy to lead political changes which are not only technical or economic.
And so I decided to focus more on our role not only as individuals, but as political beings, as citizens and work to strengthen democracy, to allow everybody to participate. Because the crisis we're facing are so big, we need everybody in. We can only together try and find solutions and put them through. Yeah, that's why I'm working now, as you were saying, for voting district 100% trying to also lobbying, not trying to lobbying to have voting rights for everybody. At the moment, 15% of the population in Germany are not allowed to vot because they don't have the right passport.
[00:10:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. I think really important work that you're doing there, connecting the voting and democracy to our climate crisis that's happening. So also to go a little bit backwards into you were working for quite some time as climate protection manager in Freiburg, as you mentioned, can you, besides the spaghetti example, can you maybe share a few more specific strategies that you think were the most effective when communicating climate change to the citizens?
[00:10:44] Ilaria de Altin: With pleasure. I was working mainly on projects that had to do with climate protection in the daily life. So communicating with citizens and informing them on one side, but also motivating them to get into action. And the first thing that I tried to do was to link the topic to their daily life.
When we talk about citizens, of course we talk about different target groups. So depending on the target group, I was choosing a different kind of images. But the idea was not to speak about catastrophes awaiting from us, not showing woods on fire or floods, but show the connection between their daily life, what they have, what they do, and their potential, the potential of their electricity bill, their potential of their garden, and so allowing them to see, to see where they are in the big picture. And the other thing that I tried to do was to link the discussion to the values that people have and to the goals that they want to have. Now, it might sound difficult to talk about what goals people have in general, because we all have different goals, but our goal is not climate protection. We tend to present climate protection as if it should be the goal we all have. But we as people don't have the goal of climate protection. Our goal is our well being. We want to live a happy life within our family and community.
We want justice, we want security. And climate protection is offering solutions. So when I was speaking about climate protection, I was saying, here we go.
Once you see your goals, here are potential solutions that you can choose and through this, do your contribution.
[00:12:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: So just to make this a little bit more concrete, would you say more like, I guess goals would be for the average kind of family. They want to make sure that their kids have a secure future. Would that be more of a goal and value that you would connect that with or just, just to give a little bit more context to that?
[00:13:03] Ilaria de Altin: Exactly. But you know, generally when you talk about future, this is very far away and you can make it even more concrete. Also, I give you an example about an image. Forget polar bears. I used a picture of an animal in my presentations and it was a stink bug. It is a bug that was very rare in the area and that now is infesting our gardens of climate change, which has arrived already in this area of Germany. And as soon as you show these stink bugs, everybody having a gardening fiberglass like, oh God, I know what you're talking about. And then you can.
And this makes it Very, very, very clear. We're not talking about some kind of climate change disasters happening somewhere. We're talking about something that is happening here. And, and once we are in your garden, let me present the potential of your garden. And yes, the goal is healthy food, for example. So I try to make the step between something that people can touch in their garden and the big topic of food security. Big jump.
[00:14:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: I know, Yeah, I know. But these, these connections, these stories and images, real life examples are super crucial in these communication strategies. Maybe. Josephine, can you also share an instance where this approach significantly impacted public perception or behavior towards climate protection?
[00:14:38] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, I think Hilaria gave a very complete and very accurate image about how to use different strategies. I mean, if we understand how people perceive their reality, how they make decisions, you understand that they are, you need to tap into their emotions, tap into their value systems. You need to be relevant to their everyday life and you want to basically be related, be relevant. And I think, I do think there are more to add on what Hilaria just gave as examples. I think these are from her years of experiences. She really got to understand perfectly how people think and how to motivate, how to influence their behaviors by really being relevant, by really being connected to what they believe.
[00:15:43] Ilaria de Altin: Yeah.
[00:15:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: And maybe, maybe to draw these stories, we really need to understand the psychological barriers that people are facing when we're looking at how do we communicate most effectively to people. So I know your work delves a bit into the psychological barriers that hinder the acceptance of climate change. Why do you think that certain behavior change strategies fail and others succeed based on these psychological barriers?
[00:16:12] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, exactly.
These strategies, those fail are usually because they don't understand how human mind works. They don't understand how we don't make decisions based on information, how our decisions are always made by emotions, and how we cannot isolate decision making from context, from physical psychological environments. And also, for example, as contrary to the idea that we make decisions and our actions are in alignment with our decisions, beliefs and value systems, in fact, our beliefs and values and our decision making is very often informed or shaped by what we do. So as hilarious said, by offering opportunities, engagements for people to do something different, proclamation, or be it any kind of local or community based kind of movement, actions, initiatives, through being engaged in these kind of activities, they form new beliefs and new kind of value systems. And then basically people try to rationalize what they do.
So if you let them give them opportunities to do something different, they would kind of embrace this new reality and develop new ideas, new beliefs and Then this would form a virtual cycle to reinforce this new desired behaviors.
[00:18:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. Would you, would you both say that people are more logical or more emotional when, like, do you appeal to people's logical sense? Like, are you giving them data and stats and numbers, or are you appealing to them emotionally with stories and maybe things that they can relate to? Is there something to be sad for both approaches or how would you do it?
[00:18:24] Ilaria de Altin: Actually, what I realize is that the more data you give on climate change, the more difficult it is for people to become active. And I realize it because when you show catastrophic images of our future, these are so huge that people react with fear. People react feeling helpless, feeling lost, or even feel attacked, as if I was presenting them something which is exaggerated.
So mind you, we need to give information, science based information. But when I started a presentation, the last few years, presentation in workshops, or when I was presenting a new project and I said, I'm going to give you a picture of climate change, and there was an empty slide telling the people, you already have these pictures in your head.
Let's build together other pictures and let's see what can empower us and how can we cooperate together to create the pictures we want for our future. So I was actually avoiding, I was looking, I was playing these kind of games, talking about climate change without mentioning the words climate change without showing pictures, and talking about climate protection without mentioning climate protection, but only talking about things that people can relate to and where they can have the feeling they can. It's something practical they can do. And this immediately caught attention and made people feel willing and hopeful to be able to start something.
[00:20:20] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, when we present people with either too heavy data, which they cannot intuitively process, always horrifying images that trigger strong negative emotions, we basically activate the part of the brain which react to danger, to threats, which is called amygdala. When this part of the brain is activated, the logical part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, cortex gets shut down.
Not only that, they cannot be convinced by logical arguments or data. Actually, this part that receives this data gets shut down. There is no possibility to communicate anymore with this, as Hilaria concluded, is counterproductive.
So you have to use very friendly way to approach the brains that they are receptive to begin with to any argument that you may present. And the way is to present something they feel familiar with, something that is not threatening, something appears familiar, comfortable, appealing, approachable. And yeah, people feel most comfortable when they're surrounded with familiar stuff that's related to their everyday Life.
[00:22:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, that's so important. I really believe also that this was one of the main challenges, one of the main mistakes actually that we made back when climate scientists first started alerting people to the dangers of what was happening, is that scientists were not actually first consulting maybe with communication professionals and putting this out in a, in a way which can be digested by people, but rather putting it out as scientists. Right. So I think it's so crucial that the scientists are met with the communication professionals and the people working with the citizens.
So really good examples from both of you. I'm laria, I'm wondering because you've mentioned that you also tried out some more concrete solutions like DIY projects, hands on activities.
Can you discuss a little bit more about these kind of practical hands on approaches that you've used in the past?
[00:22:59] Ilaria de Altin: Hands on is one key word and another is focus on solutions so people feel empowered but not present big solutions, not the perfect huge project that nobody can replicate, but even small things that people can relate to. So for example, we want to talk about agriculture and food and then we invite people for a cooking course and why they chop vegetables. Of course, seasonal vegetables have been grown locally on organic farms. We tell them all about it, we tell them the impact that their diet has on climate change, but also we show them the potential. And it's not like, oh, stop eating this or that or feel ashamed because you have this or that habit is just proposing something positive, something that you can share with others.
And while we're all eating this food together at the end, we tell them, now you've learned something, please show off. This is not something you tell people very often in our culture, but we always say, okay, once you've learned something and you do know this is something that is practical and is showing your self efficacy as, and using your potential for climate protection to show off. Speak about it with everybody.
The same. For example, same topic. We, in the framework of another project which was called 200 Families Active for Climate, asked some groups of people to try the 50km diet which meant for a certain period of time only consume food and drinks that have been produced and processed within 50 km. By the way, this is not a new idea, it's copied by.
It was originally called the 100 miles diet and this is my invitation. Do copy stuff. There are lots of good ideas out there and people taking part in this project, they were exchanging a lot, helping each other and we were giving them the opportunity to share their experience with many others. And this was lots of people were very Curious about it. And we realized what happens with the people participating in this kind of exercises. Well, first of all, they experience self efficacy, which means that they're not only paralyzed and panicking when talking about climate protection, they want more.
They become critical towards the systems that are making it so difficult for them to live in a more climate friendly way. They become aware that it takes a detective to find out where the flour in your bread comes from. And so they do want to change other things which are not only related with their habits. And once they finish discovering the potential of their diet for climate protection, they start asking themselves, and what about the rest of it? What about my consumption? What about my mobility? So indeed I see all of these exercises not something that ends in it because it's nice. They are very nice, but they're only like steps in a path towards another level of consciousness.
[00:26:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, so you think that these practical environment, these practical exercises are really able to be scaled up because of the impact that they initially have of being that first step for people?
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. So for, for Josephine, you often are highlighting how designing physical and social environments can foster sustainable behaviors. Can you provide some examples of that?
[00:27:01] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, of course. While I focus more on theoretical frameworks, there are plenty of practical examples.
For example, community led conservation projects that tell the stories of local people, local heroes have been incredibly effective. And these narratives combined with real world data create a compelling case for actions that people can relate to.
And for example, one compelling example is a project I started in Copenhagen where the city implemented interactive digital billboards that showed the real time data on air pollution levels.
These weren't just numbers on screen, they were paired with stories and images of local residents who are directly affected by poor air quality. These billboards were placed in busy areas where thousands of people could see them daily.
This approach made the invisible visible and they created a strong emotional connection to the data. It's not just about information, it's about making people feel the impact in their everyday lives. And this project leads led to noticeable increase in public support to the city's Cleanline initiatives.
[00:28:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really interesting examples. Thanks for sharing.
So we briefly mentioned previously about individual actions. So a lot of times when we're communicating, maybe to citizens, they will say my actions. But what about the. The corporations? They're the ones that are really to blame for everything.
And then the corporations oftentimes their techniques is to try to put the, put the action back in the individual's hands. So we have this kind of parallel back and forth on whose Fault is it anyways?
Some critics might argue that individual actions are insignificant in the face of large scale industrial pollution.
How do you, Hilaria, respond to that? Whose fault is it anyways?
[00:29:17] Ilaria de Altin: You have just described the spaghetti plate. Do you remember the image? It's so complex. What can I do? If the Chinese, the Indians, or the big corporations, or the politicians who should start? So first of all, this is part of the communication. Start, do start. And I see the individual action as the first step of becoming conscious about something. And I was very happy to hear what Josephine was telling about the way the brain works, because this is exactly what I was asking myself while working, while on the field, realizing that the majority of the people want to be the good ones, they want to do the right thing within their family and community.
And still we don't act enough because we are paralyzed by this complexity. And yes, by the way, if the single action or activity of the individual is only used so that this individual feels, oh, I've done what I had to do, now I am vegan, I've sold my car, there's nothing else that I can do. It is not enough.
But if we don't see individuals as consumers, this is, by the way, one of the provocative questions I was always asking the people at the beginning of an event. Hello, are you here as consumers or are you here as citizens? Because if you're here as consumers, your power only stays in your pocket. So if your pocket is huge, maybe, but if your pocket is normal.
But if you're here as a citizen, you do have political power. So once you've been able to understand what is the impact and the potential of your daily life. So what is your role? What is your responsibility? To try and slow down climate change and do the best for the future.
Then the next step is to act and engage all of your energy as a political being, as a citizen, not only voting, but really do whatever you can within your sport, club, church, at work, with the local politicians, with the national politicians, and change those systems, systems that need to be changed.
[00:31:57] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, Josephine, how do you see this kind of dilemma between the personal responsibility and the big corporations? And then of course also the political responsibility?
[00:32:09] Josephine Yilan Liu: I think this type of thinking is valid, as a valid concern, but it misses the bigger picture because individual actions are crucial because together they can create larger cultural shifts.
For example, if people see their peers engaging in certain practices, it normalizes this behavior and they start building up a pressure to build public support for larger policy changes, even as consumers. For example, a good case is the shift towards plant based diet just because it used to be a kind of a personal choice, personal preference.
But as more and more people, consumers demand more sustainable products, business and governments are forced to respond and which end up having like become a major kind of shift in the food industry and even government policies. So I think it's not about choosing between individual and systemic change. They're interconnected.
You know, the social norms, the culture and everything gets shift when there are enough momentum built up from individual acts. And we can never ignore or underestimate such individual behaviors as they end up into big shifts and causing large societal shifts and systemic changes.
[00:33:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very well said to both of you. Thanks for clearing that up. That's something I hear over and over and over again. So it's nice to hear from both of you kind of a consensus on that as well. Now we can move right into our fun segment that we have. This segment that I've chosen for you today is called Flip the Script.
[00:34:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: Flip the Script.
You are the one asking the questions and I'll be the one answering them.
[00:34:25] Tamlyn Shimizu: When I'm alone with a guest, they get to ask me a question. But luckily when I have two guests, you get to ask each other a question.
So I'm wondering, Hilaria, do you have a question that you would. You're dying to ask. Josephine.
[00:34:42] Ilaria de Altin: I am fascinated with her research. As I was saying before, because like what she was saying before about the fact that we actually take decisions guided more by emotions than knowledge or information.
I ask myself, how do I move people to act more like citizens?
We have been convinced in the last few decades that we are consumers and we, yes, we are in a democracy. We go and vote those who can, and then we can only make play the part of the game, have an influence through our consumer behavior. Whereas I'd like people to take their political role more seriously and ask to participate more also in decision making. What kind of image or what kind of communication strategies can I use for that?
[00:35:47] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, as you already said, you have to tap into people's emotions, values and sense of agency. So you want to. Exactly. As you land out, you want to connect personal values to political action.
You want to make them understand that their individual action steps do make a difference.
To emphasize how political decisions directly impact the issue they care about, be it their personal future or their children's future or anything else that they care about. And you create opportunities for kind of a low barrier engagement to start putting them on the right track to have them convinced by their own actions.
Also, you use Storytelling and use real life examples that feel closely related to them, to the local culture, to the local communities.
And yeah, you foster a sense of community and kind of a collective power.
And also you want to address the kind of critical, cynical voices and distrust among your audience which could be problematic if it gets disseminated basically by showing how their actions do make a difference.
And yeah, by also by fostering transparency and accountability and so on.
And they also want to leverage social proof and peer influence and, and also through the workshops, through these low barrier engagements you do, you help them to build skills in this new direction and you also basically encourage kind of a personal empowerment. So by this little community based, interesting small activities and by aligning to their value, their goals, I think this is the way to do it.
[00:38:11] Ilaria de Altin: Thank you. I've been taking notes.
[00:38:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. Josephine, I'm wondering if you have a question for Hilaria.
[00:38:20] Josephine Yilan Liu: Yeah, sure.
Hilaria, I'm curious about your perspective on how this kind of a small scale community led projects can be scaled up in that.
Do you think these kind of grassroots initiatives have the potential to drive broader urban transformations, to drive meaningful societal changes?
[00:38:44] Ilaria de Altin: I've been asking my question all the time above when we were carrying out projects on a neighborhood, asking myself, what's the next step? Step, should we replicate on the city level or should we just go to other neighborhoods?
And I came to. I see two big potentials in scaling up small grassroots projects. One is not to be replicable the way they are because it's very rare that you can take an example and just do copy and paste another place.
But what you can do is analyze what are the criteria of success and then spread these criteria of success as broad as possible because they have the potential to inspire and motivate other small groups to say, oh, if they made it, let's go for it.
So replicability is for me very important almost more than scaling up at a bigger level. And then the other potential, which is a kind of replicability is what I was saying before.
Taking part in small community projects enhances the political consciousness of the participants. And so what I hope, what I see as one of the very valuable results of this project is not only the local successes, successes that they have practically there, but the fact that some, at least some of the participants come out with a critical view of the systems which are not allowing them to live an easy climate friendly life and which is stopping on hindering change and transform them. So scaling up their political size, let's say, and make them aware that they need to act at another political level. So what you were saying before, the big and the small have to go hand in hand. And I see more potential in replicating and enhancing political consciousness from small projects than thinking, okay, this project work, let's scale it up. It's so difficult, but that's very interesting.
[00:41:18] Josephine Yilan Liu: You're basically building the sense of agency and empowered community, empowered citizens for which is more ready for change, which is even urging to change. Well, I think that's exactly the kind of people we need to scale up.
[00:41:37] Ilaria de Altin: Exactly. So you're building the people and what you were mentioning before, people have to see the action, Their actions make a difference. But once they've seen that their small action make a difference in the small community, they have to fight to have a system like a citizen assembly in their city where they are involved directly in the decision making about, you know, parking spaces or green areas in their city and be present and be active at another level, even if they don't replicate what they've been successful with in their community. But it's not enough for them and they want to go to another level. And this would be a great game.
[00:42:22] Josephine Yilan Liu: Absolutely. It becomes their personal goal. They take pride out of this ongoing change. I think that's fantastic.
[00:42:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: Absolutely. So with that, we're done with our segment, we can move right into our last question. It's a question that we ask every single guest that comes onto the podcast. We haven't mentioned smart cities very much.
[00:42:44] Ilaria de Altin: We've been talking really about, you know.
[00:42:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: Climate and all of that. But it is of course intertwined into a lot of the different things we talk about here on the podcast. My question to you first, Josephine, is to you, what is a smart city?
[00:43:03] Josephine Yilan Liu: For me, a smart city is one that not only makes life more convenient, but actively encourages healthier, social, sustainable behaviors by creating environments where these choices are easier to make. You know, sometimes what we want, like a piece of chocolate cake, might not be what we actually need for long term well being like in this case would be fitness and health.
And very often what we need is the hardest thing to do.
So a smart city does not only provide those healthier or better choices, but they also make them the easier, more rewarding choices things to do. So moreover, I think smart cities shouldn't be about top down planning and control. They should be more like a garden that provides the right conditions for positive behaviors to grow and flourish. This means that urban projects at all levels and all skills, from small community gardens to large infrastructure developments, they should be treated as opportunities to Learn to adapt and to refine approaches based on real world outcomes.
By encouraging such experimentation and learning through trial and error, these urban projects can evolve and improve continuously so that cities not only meets the current needs of its inhabitants, but also can anticipate and adapt to future challenges.
So whether it's a small park in a neighborhood or a citywide transit system, every project can become a catalyst for broader change. And this flexibility and adaptability are what truly makes the city smart.
[00:45:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you for that. Yeah, I definitely agree. I love the perspective of a smart city making the best choices for the citizens easier to make. So I really love that perspective. Ilaria, do you have something to add to that definition? What does smart city mean to you?
[00:45:23] Ilaria de Altin: A smart city is one that has a permanent citizens assembly involving citizens in the decision making about the topics that are burning in their area.
There are lots of examples of citizens assemblies that give recommendations and sometimes that's the end of it. But in Paris in July, the permanent Citizens assembly not only gave recommendations, but together with the politicians and with the administration, wrote a city bill. It was about homelessness, a topic that is important in that city. And what about the next one? What about a permanent citizens assembly that is tackling one topic after the other, giving the power de facto not only to the politicians, but also to the citizens to take responsibility and make decisions that will become laws and are validated by a broad amount of people?
[00:46:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very good as well. Yeah, really interesting perspective. I love asking that question because you get so many different answers. So with that, I have to say a really heartfelt thank you to both of you for coming on, sharing your expertise, sharing your experiences with us. This is how we can really build upon each other's lived experiences and create a better future for all. So thank you so much for coming on.
[00:47:00] Ilaria de Altin: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[00:47:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: See you next time. And to all of our listeners, thank you as well. And don't forget, you can always create a free Account on BABLE, SmartCities, EU and you can find out more about smart city projects, initiatives, solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
