The document discusses the city of the future and what factors are needed for it to be feasible and sustainable. It argues that the city of the future must combine sustainable development, proper social and governmental institutions, and technology. Institutions must function properly to achieve economic growth without corruption. Sustainable development requires all citizens to contribute fairly and work towards long-term gains. Technology will be important to measure progress, hold officials accountable, and empower citizens so the vision of a sustainable city can become reality.

1. G) Do you think that the lifestyle of the inhabitants of your town or city reflects behavior that is in line
with the concept of sustainable development? In your opinion, what should be improved?
First of all, I live in Bogotá. It’s by far the largest city in Colombia (about 4 times the second biggest,
Medellin), and is where pretty much everything happens – A very centralistic view of the country. We
have a big governability problem: There were some leftish governments, followed by a center-right
government, which is the one in power nowadays. The issue is not their political stance, but rather that
each one had a “rear mirror” policy that changed most developments their predecessor did either good
or bad.
This is relevant because for a regular inhabitant is really hard to come up with an initiative on its own,
and make it prosper without macro-incentives that actually help this grow in a snowball effect.
Institutions (In the economic sense) matter, and Bogotá had a breakthrough years ago when a Mayor
decided to improve “Citizen culture”. It went great, until afterwards the funds were cut. Not many
months later (Yes, only took a few months), most of this developments were over. You might still notice
nowadays some people who try to do good, but is not enough.
So, the short answer to the questions is no: Bogotá isn’t in line overall with the concept of sustainable
development in neither the economic, nor the ecological, nor the social conception. There are many
reasons, but I think the most important is the lack of planning: Developing plans tend to look only 12
years into the future, which is very short, particularly for the most important city in the country. I not
saying there have not been some small initiatives that are taking many concepts from sustainable
development, coming from either their inhabitants or the Government, but they have been mostly
unarticulated from each other, and like this is really hard to make them work. What matters the most is
to coordinate efforts, avoiding the long argument and contention about what types of change to pursue
and how to pursue them; just commit to do it.
So, what should be improved: First this is an initiative that should bring to the table both private and
public sector, in order to understand the long term impacts of the city planning and where you want to
go from there. Understand that sustainable development is a complex topic, and need involvement from
a wide range of sectors, and each one need to contribute a bit in order to achieve success. And then you
need to measure how you are doing, but not with flawed and periodical studies; It has to be neutral and
in real time, to take corrective measures on time. This is where you need to check foreign examples like
Singapore, where big data is helping improve life quality, but also accountability. This way you can have
incentives for people to change their lifestyle, and help generate inclusive growth. This is why I’m
applying to your Big Data Master, to help the inhabitants understand why this is useful and how can it
improve their lives.

2. L) How do you envision the city of the future?
The city of the future must combine 3 specific factors in order to be feasible: sustainable development;
technology; proper governmental and social institutions.
These institutions come from the vision of Acemoglu and Robinson, and are related to the work of
Douglas north. They state, simplistically, that these institutions must work properly in order to achieve
economic growth: that means, not being a free-rider or reduce to minimum corruption within
Government officials. This is pretty straightforward, and it’s easy to understand why this is important:
because everyone need to contribute to, paraphrasing Renan, that “notion of shared future”. So the city
of the future should be democratic, where public interests serve the people and private interest serve
the most. Is also related to the fact that inhabitants should understand what they want, and look for
ways to achieve the kind of city they are willing to work for.
This is related with sustainable development: if everyone is doing their fair share, and look forward to
get long term gains, not short term reaps, growth will help everyone thrive for a long time. Mckinsey
actually found that most businesses are not truly environmental friendly because of short-termism. This
is also a no-brainer, since no city will prosper without taking into account the importance of make
growth last, at least to avoid the problems related with not doing it properly; e.g., inequality is one of
the most highly correlated variables with insecurity; environment-related diseases will be a burden for
public finances. So the previous and this factor work along each other, considering life improvement and
willing to work toward that goal, realizing that a “cooperative equilibrium” has a better pay-off.
But the final factor doesn’t seem so obvious, yet it might be one of the most important: Technology.
The main reason is that this vision sounds great on paper: “Yes, we can do it!”, but unfortunately is not
that easy; Public institutions suffer from State Capture, which is a Governance lackluster. This take its
toll on public participation, and accountability just gets lost. Then trust gets lost, and then nobody cares
and start to adopt a “Jusqu’ici tout va bien” attitude. That undermines previous factors and cities go
nowhere. Technology is that “glue”, that will help measure and understand where will the inhabitants
be in the road to the city they want to, will also force public officials to not go into the “dark side”, and
will help change course if something unexpected surges along the road.
Complains about how Democracy is flawed, and how politicians bring problems instead of solutions are
common. A lot of research have been done about how is the best possible city and there’s no consensus
(Since it depends on each particular case), but I’m an optimist and I consider Technology is going to
reduce the gap between what politicians say and do; it will also increase the possibility of grass-root
organizations to be heard; will also empower minorities, so growth could be more inclusive; and finally
will also force companies to truly become “Customer centric”. This is a win/win situation in aggregate
terms, and is what is going to help a positive vision of this city of the future come true.