CROYDON has a ‘golden opportunity’ to lead the way in the smart city revolution, according to a panel of leading experts.
A vision of a ‘radically different’ town centre, including autonomous cars, adjustable pavements and 5G network technology, was discussed at the Develop Croydon 2017 conference.
Graham Cadle, Director of Customer and Corporate Services at Croydon Council, Mick Robbins, CEO and Founder of Connected Space, Tom Redmayne, Director of Business Development at Wiredscore and Ian Mulcahey, Director of Gensler, shared their thoughts at the Croydon Park Hotel on Tuesday afternoon.
“I think you need to take a step back and think about what you mean by smart city,’ said Redmayne. “In my view, it’s somewhere that provides the best possible experience, a combination of tech and culture. People speak of the three T’s – tolerance, tech and talent.
“Croydon seems pretty tolerant, lots of ethnicities. In terms of tech and talent – it’s growing and if they can bring that new business in it will continue to get better.”
“We are a long way off and then we are not a long way off,” said Cadle, when asked how far the borough was from becoming a smart city.
“We’re in a good position, there’s a lot of investment coming in. Currently though you’re not going to see much of a smart city. But we are well set – the next six months is key.”
The panel agreed it was crucial for Croydon to try to identify a specific goal and work towards that. Mulcahey believes one area the town could lead the way was to adapt to the oncoming change in the motor industry.
“Croydon was developed with the car in mind, somewhere people tended to drive to,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to recommission that now.
“The dream of driverless car is coming and coming very fast. One way to promote Croydon and give it its own identity is to wrestle with this change of tech and Croydon has chance to embrace that. The autonomous cars are inevitable and it changes everything.”
Redmayne highlighted the need for the town’s new developers to plan for the future, specifically when it came to anticipated changes to mobile technology.
“Developers face a fundamental challenge, they build liquid assets, they’re building something that is very difficult to change and yet the needs of tenants is changing very quickly,” he said. “The Shard, for example, from planning to being built took 12 years, the technologies change drastically in that time.
“The biggest change in connectivity is going to be 5G. You might have read they are going to spend £150million in next 5-10 years rolling out 5G across the UK. If I was Croydon I would be sticking my hand up to get as much as that as possible. It will change drastically how we work across mobile and tablet.”
Robins urged Croydon to go their own way and to make sure whatever changes they made to ensure culture and their residents were at the heart of it.
“One thing I would urge is don’t try and copy others. No one has cracked it yet,” he said. “Every smart city should look different, feel different because all cities are different.
“It’s always easy talking about tech, algorithms and such things, but there’s little talk about the citizen, about how they feel.
“As we heard in the others session this morning on construction, the developers were saying you have to think about culture. The citizen has to be at heart of it.
“We heard about modular construction and how it’s changing that industry. Well, why doesn’t Croydon grab the initiative and aim to be the home of that change in technology. You could say the same for autonomous car design. There is a golden opportunity.”