{"id":3205,"date":"2012-05-18T08:15:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T08:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2012-05-18T08:15:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T08:15:41","slug":"new-cities-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/05\/new-cities-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris-hosted New Cities Summit explores technology's role in sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

The inaugural New Cities Summit<\/a>, sponsored by the \u00a0New Cities Foundation<\/a>\u00a0which was founded by Cisco, Ericsson, and GE, \u00a0was held earlier this week in La D\u00e9fense. \u00a0The purpose of the conference was to bring together leaders and practitioners across various fields to discuss the challenges posed by urbanization as well as potential solutions for addressing these challenges. \u00a0Not surprisingly, technology and the potential solutions it \"\"can offer to improve urban living was a reoccurring theme throughout the conference. \u00a0As one would expect at a conference focused first and foremost on sustainability, there were various debates around new technologies that could help improve public services such as water management and education \u00a0(you can find a good recap of the topics discussed during the conference on UrbanTimes<\/a> who did a great daily recap). \u00a0However, interestingly, the role connectivity, mobile, and apps play in improving the urban experience more generally was a key topic throughout.
\nEricsson started the discussion around this on day one with a global\u00a0study by their research group ConsumerLab<\/a>\u00a0highlighting the increasing importance of connectivity to improving urban life. \u00a0The principal takeaway from the study was that connectivity (particularly via mobile devices) is of increasing importance to city dwellers and offers a huge opportunity that has yet to be fully exploited. \u00a0They found that mobile connectivity ranks among city dwellers most vital services and that approximately 40% of people in cities use smartphones which they increasingly rely on to help them navigate daily challenges such as commuting. This supports the growing need for apps, such as those that deliver real-time traffic data or advice on faster commuting routes, to address these types of challenges.
\nApps continued to be prominently featured at the conference via an app\u00a0startup competition called AppMyCity!, whereby three finalists were chosen to do pitch their startup and compete for prize which would reward new mobile apps that improve the urban experience, connect people and make the city a more fun, fair, vibrant and sustainable place<\/em>.\u00a0Out of the three finalists selected to present, two were french: CityGardens<\/a>\u00a0an iOS app that helps urbanites\u00a0to access pertinent information about the city\u2019s parks, gardens, and squares and\u00a0Paris-ci La Sortie<\/a>\u00a0an cross-platform app that provides useful information, such as the nearest exists at metro and tram stops, to help you effectively get to where you need to go. \u00a0CityGardens ended up the victor receiving a 5k\u20ac prize to help support their continued development. \u00a0When people think of apps that improve the urban experience, they often tend to instinctively think of navigational apps. However, there are a vast range of new apps that are emerging, such as CityGardens, \u00a0ParisAvant<\/a>, or newly launched\u00a0StreetEchoes,\u00a0that focus on making city life a bit more interesting and liveable.
\nIt’s great that Paris (to be more precise La D\u00e9fense) was selected as the venue for the first New Cities Summit. \u00a0It’s even better that there was a real effort to feature and support startups and to put technology at the heart of the effort to improve urban living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The inaugural New Cities Summit, sponsored by the \u00a0New Cities Foundation\u00a0which was founded by Cisco, Ericsson, and GE, \u00a0was held earlier this week in La D\u00e9fense. \u00a0The purpose of the conference was to bring together leaders and practitioners across various fields to discuss the challenges posed by urbanization as well as potential solutions for addressing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":64792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}