Portland has more than a dozen agencies that oversee the city’s present and future needs. Portland is lauded for its forward-thinking approach to urban planning, but its many bureaus sometimes don’t communicate well to achieve its long-term goals.
Enter Smartercities stage left. Last year, Portland partnered with IBM to test run Smarter Cities, a program that allows municipal planners to see how a policy decision in one part of city government affects the whole system. According to IBM, the program allows planners to make predictions 25 years into the future. Based upon this experience, IBM is now offering the service to other cities.
As Mayor Sam Adams said in an IBM press release:
By overcoming silos in the way we think, we are able to better visualize how our city systems work together and develop policies that achieve multiple objectives to help realize the full potential of our city.”
Translation of bureaucratic wonk speak: Everybody in city government can finally speak the same language, communicate each other’s needs and alert one another if something isn’t working.
The program has already helped Portland identify concretely the positive feed-back loop equation that more walking + biking = better health and reduced carbon emissions.
I wonder if it alerts city planners about wayward tornadoes?