VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York
Abstract
The Smart City concept is continually evolving and underpinned by declarations such as improvements to livability, addressing sustainability challenges or greater social inclusion, often proposed to be achieved through greater technology adoption and data use. One of the key strategies often considered in smart city initiatives is identifying and internalizing negative externalities. In brief, this weighs the negative aspects within a city, such as the environment or pollution, economic growth or mobility, and internalizes them via adopting practices that can address these. This could be through technology interventions,, solutions, better integration, or revised governance practices. However, internalizing negative externalities can also have unintended consequences – such as enabling a greater availability of data may lead to the exclusion of a particular social class or allowing disruptive and more personalized mobility services, which leads to increased traffic congestion. Where one negative externality may be internalized, another could be unintentionally created. This study explores strategies and case studies to identify and minimize the potential for unintended consequences on livability through internalizing negative externalities. With a more people-centered approach, we explore techniques for understanding the broader context of technology interventions in society and how to identify and mitigate the potential for related adverse outcomes.
Andrew Bevan has 25 years experience providing advisory, project management, and engineering services across a range of technology-driven and large-scale infrastructure projects. He leads digital advisory services for Parsons across the Middle East and is part of an integrated multi-disciplinary team serving clients on digital and smart city initiatives. He is Parsons’ subject matter expert on advanced mobility with a focus on connected, autonomous, and electric vehicle initiatives and projects.
Hamid Iravani is a Transportation Planning Director at Parsons. He has 34 years of experience in international large-scale transportation planning projects. In peer-reviewed journals, Hamid has authored numerous publications on autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, New Urbanism, intersection operation, public transit, and the linkage between land use and transportation. His article “The Effect of New Urbanism on Public Health” was published in the book, “Urban Design and Human Flourishing, Creating Places that Enable People to Live Healthy and Fulfilling Lives.” Hamid’s recent accomplishment is a tool to optimize the locations of Electric Vehicle charging stations and a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis program.
Dr. Max Clark is Senior Vice President at Parsons. He has more than 24 years of experience, which spans academia, and private and public organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Middle East. Dr. Max’s technical experience is associated with infrastructure design, supervision, civil asset operation, and maintenance phases. Dr. Max has been the author of several technical journal papers in the field of Asset Management and presented over 60 papers at International Conferences around the world. Dr. Max is an accredited Project Controls manager and Planner, providing him with a full appreciation of all Project Management aspects.
10:00 am - 11:30 am
Thursday 15th June, 2023