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A well-balanced future city is one that can optimally use its resources and infrastructure to serve the needs of its citizens and businesses. Major trends in urbanization and demographics can create massive and complex problems for governments. A new report proposes a new holistic approach to address these challenges.
This report is the outcome of a research partnership between Tata Consultancy Services and Singapore Management University ‘“ SMU- TCS iCity Lab. The new approach, named City Process Management (CPM), will help cities move from a technology-centric (smart) level to an intelligent (people-centric) level, thereby improving the Quality of Life (QoL).
This paper discusses in detail the mega trends, new ways of thinking, how the citizens can participate, CPM as a framework for the future, disease management, using CPM approach to manage continuous education and many more. We have also introduced the key concepts of ‘avatar’, and lifelong themes which are fundamental to understanding this approach.
The report identifies five key trends that are influencing the way future cities will evolve. Each of these trends is complex and will impact the way we live and the way the future cities develop. Some of this impact is the result of the evolution of modern society, while some of it is adaptation to meet the challenges of these mega trends. The key trends are:
- Rapid Urbanization
- Aging Population and Related Problem of Chronic Diseases
- Ever-changing Needs for Skills and Competencies
- Employability
- Pervasiveness of Information Technology
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a potential tool that can be used to meet these challenges.
Any holistic approach to address mega problems should be based on three basic principles:
- The information provided to the urban dweller:
- Where the city strives to keep the person informed, provides knowledge through lifelong education, and equipsthem through activities and training
- The beliefs and value systems of each urban dweller, so that:
- The city strives to coax and influence the population to make choices based on citizenship, and societal and community good (value system of population and individual)
- Each person can exercise their rights to decide and choose
- The skills and capabilities of a person and the resources of a city to provide lifelong education, including:
- Training and skill development to upgrade each citizen. These upgrading programs can be used to improve the type of employment that the citizen is engaged in or can be oriented to development of life-skills such as coping with disability
- Capabilities and talent management. Each person has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. By helping each citizen identify their strengths, cities can choose to develop the citizen’s capabilities through training and courses
- A holistic approach which ensures a framework that enables a citizen to match their needs, preferences, skills, and capabilities, with the needs and constraints of the city
The City Process Management framework, takes a citizen-centric approach to better manage city operations through outcomes, and leverages IT to transform today’ s city to a future, intelligent city. It also addresses the competing needs and choices among people, government, and limited city resources. The CPM framework takes into consideration the challenges, mega trends, and new thinking that we have identified so far, and it:
- Integrates the services of a city in a horizontal manner to deliver an end-to-end experience for citizens
- Captures and measures the effectiveness and efficiencies of these services
- Manages services as processes and uses IT to integrate these processes across different stakeholders and citizens, throughout their lifetime
- Promotes participation and collaboration
The proposed citizen-centric approach makes people more intelligent in a holistic manner and helps leverage IT to automate and provide management in this layer of ‘˜citizen to city interactions. Next Figure illustrates this concept.
