City governments can have grand ideas and dreams about changing a city and revolutionizing services, but without a clear design and focus on building a base, many ideas and innovations can fall through. Amsterdam Smart City’s Programme Director, Leonie van den Beuken, was invited to speak about how to design a city from the bottom-up at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.
Ralf Kleindiek, Chief Digital Officer and State Secretary for Digital Affairs and Administrative Modernization for the City of Berlin, and Caroline Paulick-Thiel, Executive Director for Politics of Tomorrow and the Co-Founder of nextlearning, joined her in this discussion.
Leonie highlighted that it is crucial to include residents in decision-making processes, but at the same time, we need to address how difficult the process and outcome may be. For example, if we want streets with less cars, residents need to give up their cars and find other alternatives. Key to designing the city from the bottom-up is to ask the right questions in an understandable and tangible way.
Watch the full interview and other interesting talks via the website Tomorrow. City: https://tomorrow.city/a/berlin-and-amsterdam-or-designing-the-city-from-the-bottom-up
