RE: From Smart Cities to Intelligent Communities
I look forward to your next installment, @kiligirl.
I agree with everything. In principle. To preface what I is coming, some context; we moved here from Cape Town about 7 years ago, and in the 80's I lived in Joburg and worked with street kids; I only recently retired as a trustee of an organisation that supported young people from training and into the workplace.
In the village where we live, our entire community is between 6,000 and 10,000 which includes folk on the surrounding farms. You can easily walk the village from one side to the other, and from top to bottom at any time of the day. Even in the informal settlement and in the new low cost housing development. The upper village, you can walk day or night. Not so in the informal settlement or the low cost housing development - and that's not just me. It's the folk who live there, too. The level of crime there is higher than in the rest of the village and "the rest of the village" are largely oblivious to it, and resentful of the amount of time that is spent by SAPS members there. Well, that's where the "real" issues are and where the resources shoud be being used.
Ok, so I'm having a rant. The "real" issues I'm talking about are unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, domestic and gender violence, alcohol and drug abuse - in 2017 there were 3 murders - all a result of these. And with the alcohol goes the number of children with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (and they have particular problems with knock-on effects in the community); with the drugs (tik), gangsterisem. I kid you not.
The women in the family who have worked and still work in our home and on projects we do in the village, lock their own bedroom doors - not just at night, but when they are at work. About four years ago, there was a nasty incident: gangsters from Worcester (a known gangster hub) "invaded" because money was owed. Shots were fired and kids nearly caught in the crossfire; the primary school and creche (we don't have a high school) were closed. A few months after that, the entire village, and I mean the entire village held a silent march around what we call the "ou dorp". The route was selected because it would take us past the homes of known dealers. One house was subsequently burnt down. No-one ever knew how that happened. The problem diminished for a while but remains a scourge and a worry. Back to "our" family. Three generations of women have and do work for me from time to time. The granny has a daughter who is still caught up in this. The daughter, who's sister this is, works for me and her elder daughter (21) has managed to extricate herself; she is engaged to the now employed father of her two children and is now part of may peripatetic team, seems to have settled.
So back to intellingent cities, ICTs and the fourth industrial revolution. We can escape none of these and I do think that they have benefits, and big data can help. However, the issues that I've mentioned need more than these: they need people (caring and patient people) and resources to help with problems that are intergenerational. All the women I have mentioned, have education - some of it post school, but are relegated to largely domestic work, because there's nothing else. But they have work. And they do it with pride. And feed and clothe their families. And save (better than I do!)
What I've described just touches the surface, but I think I've made my point.
What has happened, in my opinion is that the value of work other than in an office, on a computer or via a smart phone has become de-valued. I indicated that I am passionate about TVET which does make use of technology - increasingly so, but at the end of the day, a lot of it is about working with one's hands, from growing food, to the infrastructure for removing excrement (literally), not to mention cutting and styling (and colouring) one's hair. Not an exhausive list, but you get my drift.
In your first post you eloquently list the elements that cannot be ignored in smart and intelligent cities and you do note that ICTs and the fourth industrial revolution present opportunities, but I worry about sight being lost of humanity, and creating communities that are safe because they are in a bubble does not help to resolve those real problems, particularly youth unemployment and the lack of status associated with manual and semi-skilled labour. The challenge, I think, is how, from the safety and security of those communities, that sight is not lost of the millions who cannot retreat into a bubble and how the intelligent city (and government - all three spheres) can use the tools at its disposal to work on the social ills that make it necessary to establish those enclaves that enable them to retreat from the outside world.
I'd be interested in your thoughts about this.
Wow, you could have easily written this as a couple of posts (still could :-)). What an insightful set of comments.
One of the reasons I brought the SDGs into the discussion (yesterday's post) is that they're about creating a better society and world for everyone, not just those in the bubbles. From what I've read so far, Intelligent Communities have a goal of inclusiveness and creating opportunities within the knowledge economy so that, for instance, the women you're talking about might have the chance to exercise their (educated) minds more because they're participating in the knowledge economy and get greater economic opportunity as a result. Nifty example I heard about recently was tackling the subject of "Artificial Intelligence being a threat to people trying to get work in the developing world" - it turned that thesis on its head. In a slum in Nairobi (I think Kibera, but will have to check), slum residents who had basically nothing, not even hope, got involved in an AI project for fashion, of all things. Machines are good at recognising things they can recognise, if you know what I mean, and they need to be taught to recognise things like sleeves, collars, cuffs, hemlines...whatever. The slum dwellers were so successful at it that they moved out of the slums, started living in decent, safe housing, sent their kids to quality schools, had access to good medical care, bought cars - basically transformed their lives, all because they were able to teach machines something of value to the fashion industry. I won't be looking at the fashion industry in the same way again!
Where Intelligent Communities take themselves will have a lot to do with ethical leadership which actually wants to create a better, more inclusive and fair life for all residents...and by inclusive, I mean that not just bubble people should live there. All should have an opportunity to live safe and healthy lives, free from the scourge of crime and disease which affects the poor so much worse than those who can afford security and decent health care.
Hope that goes some way towards responding to your insights....
It does, and some of that is happening in Khayalitsha. Cape Cookies is a case in point. My point is: what happens in rural villages where 1. there is no broadband and, 2, they are miles from a any real market. Where we live, we have limited cell reception (non in and around our house) and even more limited access to broadband with only two free WiFi hotspots in the village which, as I noted has a very small population. The so-called afluent part of the population is made up of pensioners - fixed and limited incomes - and farmers who, contrary to legend, are not rich - they struggle - especially with the drought. The National Development Plan, and the Western Cape Provincial Government have all committed to making it - broadband - happen in the rural areas, but, as usual, haven't met their own deadlines.
Back to Coreen who works for me: she already has two business going - in addition to domestic work. She sells cleaning products and she caters. She does not let the grass grow under her feet. And I'd like to grow her into my embryonic business, but that also presumes that the business will grow. That, however, is a topic for another time.
As you may have gathered, I'm all for the underdog, and that said, I don't approve of the tall poppy syndrome, either, but I do worry about those who don't succeed and get left behind because they, for whatever reason, don't have confidence or drive of a person like Coreen, or the women in your case study.
All of that said, and what I do know, is that one also has to make peace with few the success stories that emerge from the morass. They provide others with both inspiration and something towards which they can aspire.
This is fascinating and I will continue to follow this with interest.
Thanks for engaging!