Re-imagining Cities

The New Cities Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to making cities across the world more inclusive, dynamic and creative. Created in 2010, it seeks to incubate, promote and scale urban innovations through collaborative partnerships between government, business, academia and civil society. Schneider Electric is a Corporate Member of the New Cities Foundation.

The Foundation’s flagship event is the New Cities Summit which in past years has been held in Paris, France (2012) and São Paolo, Brazil (2013). New Cities Summit 2014 was held last month, attracting over 800 participants from 51 countries to Dallas, Texas, USA. This year, the Summit's theme was Re-imagining Cities: Transforming the 21st Century Metropolis, and nearly 100 speakers took part (event press release).

An event E-book (pdf, 7.5 MB) provides summaries of all sessions as well as links to related videos on the New Cities Foundation YouTube page, including these:

• Highlights (4:18)
• Keynote - Future Trends in the Century of Cities (13:44) - by Parag Khanna, Managing Partner Hybrid Reality
• Panel - Beyond the Smart City: Towards a New Paradigm (1:02:19) - panelists include Laurent Vernerey, Executive Vice-President, North America Operations at Schneider Electric

Invensys Joins New Smart Cities Council as Associate Partner

Helps accelerate global shift to smart, sustainable cities

JUNE 06, 2013 / HOUSTON, TEXAS – Invensys, a focused supplier of state-of-the-art industrial software, systems and control equipment to the world’s major industries, has joined the new Smart Cities Council as an Associate Partner. The Council is comprised of leading global technology companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and others working in partnership with advising experts from the world of research, academia and advocacy.
 

Urbanization is a global trend. More than 50 percent of people today live in cities, and according to the United Nations, the number is increasing. Urbanization poses significant short-term and long-term challenges to governments and municipalities, including retrofitting aging infrastructure, relieving traffic congestion, meeting energy demand, rising energy costs and more...

 

“Invensys is proud to be a part of the growing global smart cities movement through the new Smart Cities Council,” says Steve Garbrecht, vice president of software marketing for Invensys. “Our Wonderware® software, including the world’s leading human machine interface software, InTouch®, is ideally suited for cities. It allows secure management of virtually any infrastructure system, like power, water, wastewater, transportation and other networks, from a single, integrated real-time platform. Our software lets cities use valuable information to make better, faster decisions and improve efficiency of small or city-wide applications.”...

 

For more information, see the complete Invensys news release. Recent news about the launch of the Smart Cities Council can also be found on the Council's website here.

World Urbanization Animation Using UN Data for 1960, 1980, 2011 and 2025

Click on the image for a clear, full-size animation. This was prepared using static UN Urbanization data for 1960, 1980, 2011 and 2025.

 

The increasing % of urban population is shown by increasingly dark country colors. Growth in the number and size of large cities is represented with dots: 

• Small Yellow = 1-5 Million
• Medium Orange = 5-10 Million
• Large Red = Over 10 Million