It is hard to find a major city today that doesn’t have a ‘smart’ brand. But scratch below the surface and it is often difficult to find much more than fine words and slick marketing. ‘Aspirational’ would be the polite description of many cities’ efforts to date.
Amsterdam, alongside Barcelona, has arguably achieved more than any other European city. While it has many things going for it, including being a desirable place to live and work with an engaged, well-educated population, this alone doesn’t explain why it is so far ahead.
As Amsterdam Smart City Ambassador and having been involved for almost ten years, Frans-Anton Vermast is a good person to ask about what is needed to identify, design and deliver true innovation.
1. Be at Arm’s Length to Government
Cutting through traditional local authority bureaucracy and siloes looks key. “One of the first things we did was to tear down the walls,” he says. “It is one of the imperatives, from our perspective. It is a cultural thing, nothing to do with technology. We had people saying, we can’t share our data or we want to be the owner of the problem.”
This was a main reason for setting up Amsterdam Smart City as an arm’s length, not-for-profit entity, with only ten per cent of the funding coming from the local government. There are twelve partners paying between €30,000 and €100,000 per year but, more importantly, says Vermast, they also commit one full-time employee, to work alongside Amsterdam Smart City’s seven staff. The partners include commercial players, including a couple of energy companies, educational establishments, the Dutch post office, Amsterdam Arena and the Amsterdam Economic Board.
The partners appreciated the detachment from the local authority. “There were quite a few private partners but they got crazy because of the bureaucracy.” Another important benefit of the detachment is the ability to fail. “In the start phase, we wanted to do pilots and have the ability to fail without the political consequences.”
2. Engage with Citizens
Problems are raised by citizens, the public sector or private companies and the appropriate partners within the network are identified to work on solutions.
There are six main themes: Infrastructure and Technology; Energy, Water and Waste; Mobility; Circular City; Governance and Education; and Citizens and Living.
A ‘”bottom-up” approach and complete openness is important. “All citizens in the Amsterdam Metro Area have the opportunity to come up with problems, things they don’t like in their area,” says Vermast. In addition, citizens are polled for their opinions, such as through an exercise four years ago that engaged with 8000 people across 180 different nationalities and large and small companies for their vision of the city in 2030.
On around 50 per cent of occasions, the problem can be solved just by involving the people, he says. An example was a street in the city where residents were concerned about air pollution as a result of tourist parking. They were provided with sensors and are now able to measure air pollution levels to build the evidence for future action.
Government thinks it can do everything and this is the wrong approach, says Vermast. He also believes reliance on subsidies is flawed because as soon as the funding stops, so does the project.
There is a well-tested process to include start-ups in the projects, with a ‘Start-up in Residence’ programme, now in its third round, whereby challenges are defined, start-ups are invited to come up with solutions, and one is selected. It then works in-house for six months with access to all of the expertise within the Amsterdam Smart City network.
