Hello #smartcommunityfriends, it’s our podcast birthday! The Smart Community Podcast has turned 3 years old! So to celebrate we’re doing a week of bonus episodes, bringing together multiple guest answers over multiple days to the question, ‘Where to next with Smart Cities and Communities?” And this time I’m sharing with you the answers from a range of our guests this past year: 

• Hyma Vulpala from Episode 167
• Zaheer Allam from Episode 158
• Vi Le from Episode 199
• And Teresa Harding from Episode 193

Listen here:

The themes that come through in all of the guest answers are around accountability, change and that constant tension between tech-centric and people-centric approaches. The changes in technology and in our world are not slowing down, and there is a danger some people will get left behind if we are not proactive about making sure that doesn’t happen. We also need to make sure we are holding both our governments and private corporations accountable for the decisions they make and the data they are collecting. 

Several guests make important points about the need for more regulation and legislation, to make sure we are democratising technology and keeping the citizen’s needs at the heart of decisions, not the corporation or the technology. The expectations of the community are changing too, as more information about data and privacy and technology comes to light.

As Teresa says, “There’s an important link between open data and civic participation, and when citizens have more access to data…they’ll be better able to participate.”

All the guests agree that there is more work to do and more questions to ask in this Smart Community space and that we need to bring the people back to the heart of the conversation.

We’ll be back in your pod catchers tomorrow with another bonus episode. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community 

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.