Connected Urban Development - last note

The conference is over and, without doubt, Cisco and its city partners have landed a wonderful result.  Four new cities have joined (Lisbon, Madrid, Hamburg and Birmingham), the link has been forged between CUD's conceptual platform and the very real and practical 'things' that are now beginning to take shape - the fabulous 'connected bus', the Personal Travel Assistant, the new approach to smart work centres.  Basically, a real proof-of-concept meeting that has unleashed what I suspect is an unstoppable momentum for Cisco's central role in the global discussion about designing, building and living in sustainable cities.  Hugely exciting.

There is a forum, like this one, where you can go and get more information and the conference presentations - www.connectedurbandevelopment.org - so go and have a look.

What really struck me about this conference was the powerful way in which it reinforced the transition of Cisco from a technology player to Cisco as a company whose technology capabilities are matched, and being clearly led, by a gathering intellectual and policy capacity.  It's that combination that is already so powerful.  The people in the room came from all points of the policy compass, so to speak - universities, city policy and technology leadership, national and regional government,  major writers and thinkers like Carlotta Perez (a barnstorming performance - the highlight of the two days for many, I'm sure) and Bill Mitchell from MIT.  All gathered together by Cisco, whose thinking and practical implementation has created a powerful, common frame of reference within which these players are working. 

In a way, I think that is CUD's most significant achievement - not so much the bus and the PTA and the cool applications (all of which are very important to give the whole thing some practical 'ballast' that real world leaders can see, touch and invest in!).  The most important thing about CUD is that it has become an idea, a common frame or platform on which a whole bunch of smart people can converge to think and act together.  The people who build that platform and then scale it are the ones who are really driving the progress in this cities debate - essentially an act of governance innovation and platform creation.  It is Cisco's natural territory and, over the two days in San Francisco, we showed its power and potential in full force. 

Very exciting, very satisfying and a wonderful result by the team - Nic Villa, Noni Allwood, Bas Boorsma, Wolfgang Wagener, Dave Evans, JD Stanley, Val Stoyanov, Jay Chung and Tony Kim, Carolyn Purcell and countless others who have chipped in over the last couple of years. 

And still so much to achieve, not the least (which is a task close to my heart) spreading the CUD 'virus' right into the heart of Asia, which will be the largest, most challenging and most exciting arena in which the ambition to create sustainable cities will be played out in the next 20 years...