A Skunkworks for A Smart City
I had the opportunity to spend much of last week in the Netherlands at the Delft University of Technology, which is a lead partner in the new Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (abbreviated as AMS below), the latest in a series of new tech-heavy urban research centers that have popped up in the last several years (like NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress and the University of Chicago’s Urban Center for Computation and Data).
I first visited Amsterdam as a grad student in 1998, and it was love at first sight. Much like in Manhattan at the time, you could see dot-coms popping up around the city. But in Amsterdam, you became aware of it through little signs with digital-sounding names hung from 17th-century canal houses. In my research on the geography of the internet, I had seen that the city was a key junction for global fiber optic networks. On top of the wonderful built environment and bicycle- and tram-based transportation scheme, Amsterdam has always been there in the back of my mind as one of just a handful of inspiring cities that shapes my aspirations for integrating traditional urban form and emerging technologies.
In the decade-and-a-half since then, Amsterdam has continued to build up a substantial reputation as a tech startup hub, most recently making Wired UK’s 2013 list of ten of “Europe’s Hottest Startup Capitals”. Last year, it ranked second among 30 global cities for “technology readiness” in an annual scorecard compiled by management consultancy PwC. A nice overview of some of the signature project in Amsterdam’s smart city portfolio highlights its leading position.
Like many other global cities, however, Amsterdam’s economy is disproportionately tiled towards financial services, and the sudden shock of the 2008 financial crisis was a wake up call that laid the seed for the formation of AMS. And following the example set by the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s competition to establish an applied science university, in April 2013 the city of Amsterdam solicited proposals to setup a new applied technology research institute with the following 5 goals:
* Attract and retain talent in the field of applied technology to the Amsterdam region (education, research or employment);
* Create sustainable connections to ensure that the AMS Institute is embedded both in the Amsterdam area as well as internationally;
* Have a positive economic impact for the Amsterdam region (besides attracting talent and creating structural connections);
* Develop and market metropolitan solutions to create economic value and improve the quality of living and working in Amsterdam;
* Contribute to innovation or fill gaps (e.g. in the field of applied technology education) while complementing existing initiatives.
A substantial amount of research went into planning the project, including a global analysis of institutional precedents (they looked closely at CUSP, for instance) and market potential by BCG, and some preliminary scanning by the city (Dutch only).
Much like the other centers, AMS is getting off the ground in temporary quarters, in this case at the Royal Tropical Institute for at least the next three years, which may say something about its technology export ambitions — the building houses the country’s international research aimed at medical care and health in developing countries. There’s been talk about a permanent location at the Amsterdam Science Park.
What’s so special about AMS?
So there isn’t much to AMS just yet. But unlike the applied science university competition in New York, with its confidential proposals hidden from public view, TU-Delft published its winning proposal which lays out in detail its vision and approach.
The AMS program is ambitious and unique in a number of ways:
- An outcomes-based mission — “our mission is to engineer talent and create metropolitan solutions”. Succinct and clear value proposition. Nothing about theory, research, or changing the world — just training people to fix cities.
- A focus on engineering — CUSP’s original focus during and after the NYCEDC applied science university competition was much more engineering focused, but when Steve Koonin took the help he made a strategic turn towards basic research and informatics. UCCD has a strong engineering component, but it is focused on informatics and computer science as well. AMS plans to take on tough civil, mechanical, and biological engineering challenges in urban food, water, waste, transportation and energy systems.
- An educational program focusing on urban systems, the MSc in Metropolitan Solutions, which it defines as “an interdisciplinary field that resides around improving the quality and sustainability of living in the city and its surroundings”, reaching 200–250 students at full capacity. One could argue that CUSP’s MSc in applied urban science and informatics is also a new field, but AMS — rather than narrowing and specializing its degree — seems to want to focus on systems thinking and cross-cutting knowledge and skills.
- A research staff of 100–150 at full build out — this appears to be substantially larger than any other urban science center.
- A substantial financial commitment from the city — the city of Amsterdam will provide €150m (about $175m) over ten years — “mainly used for accommodation in Amsterdam” — the city is basically underwriting the AMS facility. After the first ten years, AMS is expected to be self-funding.
- A clear rationale for industry and NGO partnerships — “They contribute data, technologies, knowledge (including co-creation methodologies) and resources to the consortium, guide the research towards where it matters most for the economy and society, and strengthen the consortiums’s capacity to turn societal needs into research into solutions and implement them in real life.” There is a clarity to what’s expected both from AMS and the partners here that I’ve found lacking in other urban science centers. It will go a long way to making these partnerships effective where they have not been elsewhere.
- Development of a network of partner cities —the city of Boston, Massachusetts, whose Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics I wrote about at length in SMART CITIES has agreed to work with AMS to exchange knowledge. The proposal highlights Barcelona, Singapore and Copenhagen as other possible collaborators. This is the first instance I’ve seen of one of these new urban science centers working officially with a city other than the one in which it is located.
- A blended physical/digital pedagogical model— AMS plans on “blending on-site learning, distance education and MOOCs to deliver individualized education at the scale necessary for a world full of talent on the one side and metropolitan challenges at the other.” Specifically, graduate students will have the option of doing their first year remotely via distance education — and the entire course catalog will be made available as a free public MOOC (though without the 1-on-1 tutoring students enrolled in the degree program will have).
- Citizens integrated as part of the strategy— “AMS will not just study cities and their citizens; it will mobilize them.” This is by far the strongest language I’ve seen come out of any of these new urban science centers about the role of citizens. The proposal highlights the so-called “quadruple helix” model of innovation—a recently dubbed successor to the more conventional “triple helix” model of collaborative university/industry/government R&D first described by Henry Etzkowitz (of Stanford University) and Loet Leydesdorff (of the University of Amsterdam!). “In this integrated approach,” the proposal argues, “citizens are active actors, not passive receivers of ‘innovations’.”
Anything as big and ambitious as AMS is going to take time to launch. The proposal calls for four stages of development (paraphrasing here):
- Year 1: kick-start and design.
- Year 2–5: Growth, development of three operation areas (education, research, living lab), establishment in Amsterdam.
- Year 6–9: Evolution towards autonomy.
- Year 10: Full-scale, self-funding institute.
So far, TU-Delft has fielded an impressive array of mid-career researchers who are obviously looking to make their mark through AMS, including Andy van den Dobbelsteen who who works on city-scale energy systems and chairs the architectural engineering and technology department, Geert-Jan Houben who chairs the university’s data science group, and Arjan Van Timmeren who chairs the environmental technology & design department.
The city’s point person, Ger Baron, seems like exactly the kind of energetic, engaged person needed to build strong ties between AMS and government. In 2014, Baron became Amsterdam’s first Chief Technology Officer after a 7 year stint running the city’s Amsterdam Innovation Motor and Amsterdam Smart City organizations.
Baron has a people-centric approach to cities and technology, as he told one blogger:
A Smart City is a city that is based on information that is accessible to people using the city. Meaning based on the information, you make things and processes smarter and more efficient and so on. But in the end it’s about giving information to citizens for making decisions.
The network is taking longer to build, and CUSP’s recent experiences with the University of Toronto show what a delicate and difficult balancing act this can be. So far, only the two Dutch universities have contracts in place with the city. But network building takes time, and as AMS ramps up, the value proposition for potential partners will become clearer.
There really are few precedents for something like this — an engineering skunkworks for a city. Most cities have policy think tanks, some have urban research centers that directly support government (I’m thinking here of the Seoul Development Institute where I spent my Fulbright in 2004). I’ve never seen anything like this.
