In 2008, the world passed an invisible but momentous milestone: for the first time, more than half of the human population lived in cities, with urbanization projected to intensify to more than 5 billion people by 2030. During the past handful of years, billions of dollars have been invested by governments and the private sector, from building whole new smart green cities of Songdo and Masdar to creating new services on mobile devices in New York City and Barcelona. What have we learned to date? What is on the horizon?

On June 26-27, the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) hosted a circle of experts from six countries to examine “Innovations for Smart Green City: What’s Working, What’s Not and What’s Next”. Professor William J. Perry - Chair, US Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and former US Secretary of Defense delivered the opening keynote on potential game changers on the energy landscape. Subsequent speakers from leading universities, research institutes and firms shared insights gleaned from their direct involvement in smart city projects in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Busan, Chengdu, Chicago, Chongqing, Dalian, Guangzhou, Masdar, New York City, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore and more.

Leaders from university research labs shared pioneering deployment and analysis of information technologies in sensors, from autonomous car research at Stanford to the work at MIT’s Senseable City Lab on whole city intelligent traffic monitoring in Singapore. The Roundtable closed with a look at emerging technologies, new research partnerships, and the pipeline for relevant clean-tech startups. The 1 1/2 day event ended with a keynote by Rex Northen, executive director of CleanTech Open which has been involved with finding, fostering and funding around 600 start-ups with $660 million in funds over the past six years.

Next steps include concrete actions to support the call for presenters and discussants, representing experience from architecture to IT, to better integrate research and action across disciplines, organizational boundaries and national borders. With generous support from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and others, SPRIE will continue to collaborate and work in this area.

Roundtable Videos

William J. Perry, Chairman, US Secretary of Energy Advisory Board; Former US Secretary of Defense; Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus), and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
"Energy...The Good News"

Cliff Thomas, Managing Director, Smart + Connected Communities, Cisco
"Digital Urban Transformation"

Jung-Hoon Lee, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University; SPRIE Visiting Scholar, Stanford Graduate School of Business
"Toward a Framework for Smart Cities: A Comparison of Seoul, San Francisco and Amsterdam"

Ko-Yang Wang, Chief Technology Officer, Institute for Information Industry (III)
"Smart System Services in Smart Green Cities"

James Sweeney, Director, Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford University
"Green" Cities and Energy Efficiency"

Sven Beiker, Executive Director, Center for Automotive Research (CARS), Stanford University
"New Research on Autonomous Driving"

Kung Wang, Professor, China University of Technology
"Cross-strait Partnering on Smart Energy Management and Innovation in the Post-Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement Era"