Thinking Cities magazine #11

The 11th issue of Thinking Cities was released in November 2019 at the Polis Conference in Manchester. The issue cover, “Citizens shaping the thinking cities”, looks at how cities and regions can solve their mobility problems with a focus on citizens’ interests. We asked ourselves the question: what should cities do when the user-centric approach and the greater good seem to be in conflict?

Making a big deal out of mobility

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham on how his 2040 Transport Strategy is piloting his city-region’s journey to sustainable, smart status Greater Manchester is growing. We are creating more jo...Read more

Read more 30/08/2019

Can we talk?

Suzanne Hoadley talks to Brigitte Desveaux, Councillor and Vice-President of La Rochelle in charge of Transport and Mobility   "Economic, environmental and social impacts have to be identified....Read more

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Harbouring ambitions

Francesco Ripa interviews Angelo Del Mastro, Deputy Mayor for EU Affairs for the largest town on the Italian island of Elba, Portoferraio ”We want to know how cities with 150,000-200,000 inhabitant...Read more

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Twente unrolls the red carpet

"The Twente region, in the east of the Netherlands, is a diverse area with cities, suburbs, villages and rural parts. Regio Twente is developing a new connection for this area, the F35 bicycle highway...Read more

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Download / Unlock / Ride / Park Properly

Tommaso Bonino reports from a city that is looking beyond smart-docks and smartbikes and concluding that the best policy for bike-sharing might be smart-regulation I n recent years, bike-sharing has...Read more

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Everything is illuminated

V2X is the energy revolution electric vehicles need, according to Alan McCleave "All the evidence supports the fact that the mass adoption of EVs would place too much strain on the national grid duri...Read more

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DriveStart – a success story

Analyse, understand, research, design, implement, evaluate: bringing theory into practice, by Dan Campsall, George Ursachi, Tanya Fosdick and Steve Ferris Collisions involving young drivers aged...Read more

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Every Lille helps

Driving e-Mobility in Lille Metropole: investing in charging stations in suburban areas to improve uptake and unlock the market, by Théo Fievet As the 4th largest French metropolis1 and the most rur...Read more

Read more 31/08/2019

Post-modernism

Last-mile logistics in Amsterdam: challenges and opportunities, assessed by Marco Ferrari and Giacomo Lozzi THE CITYLAB PROJECT The principal feature of CityLab is the creation of living laborator...Read more

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Logical thinking, logistical thinking

Flanders’ Innovation Cluster for Logistics (VIL) is deploying numerous innovative city logistics projects, as Kris Neyens and Stefan Bottu report VIL is Flanders’ sole innovation spearhead cluste...Read more

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Now for Plan A

Plan A is a great step forward for sustainable transport, say Michel Arnd and Sergio Fernandez Balaguer In the past few years, Madrid has struggled with problems such as air pollution and heavy traff...Read more

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Approaching climate change and air quality in a single strategy

Paz Valiente is Deputy Councilor, responsible for Environment, Sustainability and Mobility, for Madrid City Council. Her government developed the comprehensive strategy Plan A, which will change Madri...Read more

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Analysing the past to define the future

Helsinki recently conducted a study analysing the city’s traffic patterns using TomTom’s accurate and costeffective Traffic Stats and proved that for that the first time since 2010 traffic in the...Read more

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Building excellence

Integrated mobility in the Paris Region, as told by Françoise Guaspare The project “Mobilité Intégrée pour l’Île-de-France” (or m2i – Integrated Mobility for Ile-deFrance) is an initiati...Read more

Read more 31/08/2019

Your attention, please

Ten things about automated vehicles that urban transportation planners need to know, evinced by Bern Grush "Vehicle automation will change the modal arsenal for both private choice and public governa...Read more

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Mobility: the final frontier

As the two-year smart city mobility-focused frontierCities2 Accelerator draws to its conclusion,Kevin Borras, José Papí, Claudio Caferri and Raffaele Alfonsi provide a comprehensive guide to the 18...Read more

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GREENAPES – Italy

THE SOLUTION greenApes is a digital platform, rewarding certified sustainable behaviors and active participation of citizens, customers & employees. The platform, accessible via native mobile a...Read more

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KISSMYBIKE – Italy

THE SOLUTION Kissmybike is a complex IoT product that detects theft and tracks the bicycle’s location until its successful recovery. Unlike other products, Kissmybike is invisible, chargeless and...Read more

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IDA – Italy

THE SOLUTION greenApes is a digital platform, rewarding certified sustainable behaviors and active participation of citizens, customers & employees. The platform, accessible via native mobile a...Read more

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MUV-App – Italy

THE SOLUTION Our idea is based on the concept of MaaS for public administration. We have derived the governance model of the MaaS systems to provide innovative tools for the management of the mobil...Read more

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OPENMOVE – Italy

THE SOLUTION OpenMove is a suite of software solutions for MaaS designed for users, transport agencies, inspectors and sellers. OpenMove handles ticketing from end to end and helps transport and pa...Read more

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ROSY – Germany

THE SOLUTION Traffic authorities today have to deal huge amounts of data that are no longer manageable with the Excel approach and consume a significant amount of their work capacity. Following the...Read more

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SAMMY – Greece

THE SOLUTION SaMMY is an IoT cloud-based service solution for the global yachting industry sector, which enables the marinas to efficiently manage their resources, to attract and offer services to...Read more

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SAVE-A-SPACE – UK

THE SOLUTION No technology deployed within cities and the transport sector addresses the complex problem of truly integrated end-to-end journey planning. The Save-a-Space cloud software solution al...Read more

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STOP-BUY – Belgium

THE SOLUTION Stop-buy is a smart-Parking platform addressing cities and enterprises with a turnkey IoT platform consisting of wireless sensors and management software. Stop-buy enhances mobility in...Read more

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ACOUSTICITY.IO – Switzerland

THE SOLUTION AcoustiCity.io’s suite of analytics tools and open data platform offers cities a noise monitoring solution that enables them to quickly diagnose noise pollution problem areas and val...Read more

Read more 01/09/2019

BETTAIR – Spain

THE SOLUTION Bettair® is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that permits, for the first time, to map air pollution in cities on a previously unimaginable scale based on a large deployment of outstandi...Read more

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BUSTIMIZE – Spain

THE SOLUTION Bustimize is an analytics platform that provides public urban bus companies tools to increase fleet management efficiency by scoring driving patterns. It provides a service not suppli...Read more

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CASMOB – Italy

THE SOLUTION CASMOB is a web platform and mobile app that provides customised tourist itineraries, coupling Cultural Points of Interest (CuPOIs) and Commercial Points of Interest (CoPOIs). Itinerar...Read more

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CICLOGREEN – Spain

THE SOLUTION We provide an online reward system to companies and city councils that allows them to reward their employees with gifts for using sustainable means of transport to go to work. Employee...Read more

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CIGO! FLEET – Spain

THE SOLUTION Cigo!Fleet is a smart mobility management platform offering a unique interaction between the back-end and the mobile app. It offers the best tailored optimization algorithms to reduce...Read more

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FLIWARE – Italy

THE SOLUTION FLIWARE is a mobile app addressed to smart passengers who seek to improve, enrich and simplify their “go-to/from/through-the-airport” experience, by making their journey smoother....Read more

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NOWLOG – Ireland

THE SOLUTION nowlog provide businesses with a solution to record the temperatures of their products in real time. Battery powered wireless temperature sensors are connected to the internet to track...Read more

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The journey to MaaS

Through a pilot project of a real solution for Mobility as a Service, municipalities in Business Region Aarhus, Denmark, want to investigate the possibility for creating a more efficient mobility syst...Read more

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Everybody talks about MaaS: but what does it mean in Aarhus?

Every day many underused cars are driving in our streets. Numbers from 2014 indicates that cars used for commuting carry just 1.05 persons on average. That’s a very inefficient use of vehicles. The...Read more

Read more 01/09/2019

Creating the change

The new French parking law is celebrating its first anniversary. Ivo Cré asks Lille Metropole’s Olivier Asselin to reflect On 1 January 2018, France chose a drastic alternative way for managing pa...Read more

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La Rochelle: the change in practice

Karen Mounier is the parking manager in La Rochelle, a city of 80,000 inhabitants. She and her team of 15 parking controllers manage 3000 on-street parking spaces. The city also manages 2250 off-stree...Read more

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The global think tank

FIWARE: the open source component framework of choice for smart cities, by Smart City Lab’s OlafGerd Gemein Cities have to cope with similar problems everyday (eg, ageing society and elderly people...Read more

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Family values

Like many other European cities, Leuven is making use of a number of different mobility-sharing schemes. Beyond the usual car- and bike-sharing systems, the Belgian city is promoting several projects...Read more

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Absolute zero

The benchmarking of road safety in cities has rarely been more timely says Alexandre Santacreu "What can we learn about the relative safety of each mode of transport, including the impact of one mode...Read more

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In life you must have vision: Why the most vulnerable in our cities deserve to be seen

In an effort to reduce road fatalities, the EU is discussing a legal requirement for the amount of space truck drivers can see through their windows.By Samuel Kenny “Trucks with better “direct vi...Read more

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How to outsmart the Smart City

Today’s digital world has created new ways to keep us all informed and safe while automating our daily lives. Our phones send us alerts about weather hazards, traffic issues and lost children. We tr...Read more

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Reality Czech

David Bárta reports from the Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city and undoubted Smart Governance Leader. Things could well be about to change… Brno’s smart city story started in 2014 after t...Read more

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The race for space

Francesco Ripa talks to Tim Papandreou, founder of Emerging Transport Advisors "This isn’t about the car – it’s about automation. AV technology is form factor agnostic, meaning it can be appl...Read more

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Female service provider

Kalpana Viswanath on using technology and data to build safer public spaces for women "Over 70 per cent of women interviewed had experienced some form of sexual violence in the past year" Fear and v...Read more

Read more 01/09/2019