Last week our very own Richard Butter joined a large delegation of Dutch officials visiting the Smart Cities 2018 conference in New York including the mayor of Rotterdam; Ahmed Aboutaleb. Across the three day event multiple workshops and seminars were organized by the delegation from Holland with the goal to exchange and transfer knowledge concerning topics like smart cities and green mobility between the USA, international municipalities and governments.
The conference concluded with multiple key learnings (in random order):
- In The Netherlands/Europe, several stakeholders like governments, businesses and research agencies work together to improve mobility.
- In comparison, companies in the USA are very individualistic sticking to their own disciplines (train, metro, citybike, UBER, Lyft, taxi, car).
- In The Netherlands you only have to use one card for all public transportation.
- The USA stimulates technological improvements on a large scale. The core strength of Europe however is joint ventures and making new technologies applicable.
- Sustainability, accessibility and livability are high on the agenda in Europe. These subjects are currently not within the scope of the USA.
- The interpretation of the definition smart cities is quite different between Europe and the USA. The latter use it as a tool for politics and progression. In Europe however, it’s an overarching definition including many disciplines like safety & security, healthy living, mobility, resiliency and circularity.
- Cyber security is a huge issue in the USA.
For more information on the event: https://smartcitiesny.com/
