Unlocking Community Benefits with Interoperable Smart Cities
Mark Cosyn, Director of Digital Innovation & Intelligent Real Estate
The lack of affordable housing in Vancouver has put our city at risk. The City of Vancouver’s 10-year housing strategy is to reduce the city's housing affordability gap and to provide a strong foundation for the future, stating “communities need people and people need homes.” However, we are reaching the limits of conventional thinking for development and economic subsidies.
Environmental sustainability – including energy and carbon programs – and technologies are becoming increasingly integrated between smart buildings, smart grids, and governmental organizations. However, the area of social and community benefit through interoperability between smart buildings and cities remains comparatively undeveloped.
As stated by the Tellus Institute in the Great Transition Initiative, “the conventional development paradigm assumes twenty-first century challenges can be adequately addressed through piecemeal market and policy adjustments.” Partnerships with real estate owners, investors, and developers have taken innovative steps. Alta by ollie, Long Island City development in New York, described by Dror Poleg in Rethinking Real Estate (2019), exemplifies how new real estate technologies and operating models have begun to reward firms who understand the needs of specific end users of the community, rather than those who focus on an asset alone. The Alta development finds occupants through BedVetter, a roommate matching service which successfully combines social media technology with real estate. Prioritizing the community’s needs – affordable housing – the newly invented app promotes house-share/room-share, resulting in more full-capacity units and therefore a higher rate of affordable spaces will be made available in the market to combat the housing issue.
This type of innovation is now commonplace in our economy. A few years ago, we would not have considered riding in the private vehicle of an unknown individual or staying more frequently in private residences than hotels. Airbnb, Uber and many other companies have changed the way we think and value services by others, brokering trust between individuals through technology and data to ensure safety and the desired outcome. Integrated smart building technology and intelligent services are currently being used by many for-profit companies. A classic example includes Walmart providing InHome delivery services that combines smart locks and security systems with employee background vetting to ensure a safe outcome. Including digital design and technology in the integrated design planning and charette process for real estate development, new value models for social and community benefit may be identified. This type of wider design collaboration and community benefit is being explored by initiative in other countries, such as the Centre for Digital Built Britain. Learning from these initiatives may enable Canadian communities to develop their own private and public sector digital partnerships to solve the affordable housing issue through unconventional and forward-thinking methods.
