As Patrick Russell says in his article,

“We need design-thinkers to sit down with engineer-thinkers to explore how innovations for a particular room in a residence might scale up to the city, and how advanced interventions in the infrastructure of a smart city might scale down to the residence. We need dreamers, reformers, iconoclasts. We need to see things that have not yet been seen. We need to dare to imagine new human relations to each other and the [built] environment.”

These players, combined with the enabling technology, and engaged citizens, and hackers & coders, and government agencies, and corporate vendors, and small business providers … these are the people who must be part of the co-creation ‘team’ that build the effective smart, connected cities of the future.

A truly smart, connected city will be smart beyond the tech … it will be smart because of how it’s harnessed all members of the city’s ecosystem in a truly collaborative effort. That’s the most exciting element of digital for me … that we now have the tools to communicate, collaborate and co-create at scale.