On this episode, the municipal equation is all coming from a good place. I think the main problem is when technology becomes overly centered in the overall discussion. So a lot of what we talk about in a sort of wise cities perspective is actually decentering technology.

Vegas. The annual mega gathering of the tech world, which starts in Las Vegas on Tuesday, was once a parade of TV screens, smartphones, and other personal electronics. But CES's dazzling displays have increasingly focused on cities themselves and the profit potential they present to technology companies. The question, as always, is where that leaves people who live in them.

Okay.

All right. Let's go. My name is Daniel LaTore and I'm the founder of a consulting practice called the Wise City. And I am also cofounder of the Digital Placemaking Institute and a senior fellow for digital placemaking at Project for Public Spaces, which is a nonprofit dedicated to the practice of placemaking.

Well, you know, this is that question, you know, about is also what is smart and what is wise. And, you know, one of the things I think just to acknowledge here, sort of to drop some knowledge bombs, is that that's a general dilemma in our, you know, planet as a whole is, you know, the difference between smart and and and and wise. So, we've lost touch with wisdom. You know, it's been critiqued, you know, within philosophy and politics because historically, there's been lots of corruption about sort of blind following of elders or leaders. But, we live in a different age now. There's much transparency in all new forms of governance that can allow checks and balances. So we haven't yet picked up the question again of, so what is, like, twenty first century wisdom? And I think the question that more and more people are starting to have right now is maybe the way we've been defining smart actually isn't smart, and there's a growing concern. So this past week, there was this big controversy where Elon Musk referred to sustainable transportation policies and essentially one of the leading voices of it as an idiot, and that created a huge storm in social media. And now, pretty much every urban planning or city sustainability focused voice and blog is is talking about this. So that's just a setup as a way to kind of talk about just where are we right now at the 2017. So the short answer is on on, wisdom, is that it's about compassion, you know, and that's a very different thing than knowledge, which is what I think SMART generally revolves around is information or knowledge. Right? So we have information technology. We are in a knowledge economy, as some people say. But wisdom is would say, well, what about what does a compassionate economy look like, or what does a compassionate city look like?

Well, so my background's in technology. So I I came up with the web. I, sort of joined the Internet circus back in the mid nineties and worked at some of the very first digital consulting firms, in New York. So you remember Altavista and Oh, yeah. Before Altavista. Bulletin board system way back when. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as a kid, you know, I started off with, like, a big 20 on, you know, writing my own video games in basic, you know, from, like, the magazines and things like this, and recording saving my my data on a cassette deck, you know, external drive. I remember this. Yeah. So before floppy disks were invented. So I'm dating myself here, to to that gives you a picture of where I was when I was around, I don't know, 10 to 12 years old or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And my uncle, at that you know, was a programmer at the time, you know, and and so I had some contact with sort of that generation. And then another uncle through marriage, was also in programming and IT management and, was there involved in networking at the very, you know, pre and at the beginning of the internet. Mhmm. Sorry, of the of the web. Right. So I had some of those sort of, people in my life. Anyways, so twenty years in technology in digital consulting, branding, marketing, and then, some start up activity, mobile games, platform video games. I worked at Rockstar Video Games on, the, basically, the production design, the sort of Okay. Kinda created a position for myself on the cultural layer that Rockstar Games is so,

people might know? Yeah. The main one was, in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Yeah. Yeah. So I worked on a lot of the, production design stuff for that and kind of, we had a small team that we kind of built out there. And, so I've the point is I've I've had, you know, I've my hands in a bunch of these different contemporary technologies Yeah. Mobile, web, interactive TV, which comes and goes. And we survived all the hype of early VR hype around VRML back in the late 90s, which that keeps coming and going as well, the VR immersive stuff. And we're now right in the middle of another bubble around VR. So, you know, and when I was younger in my 20s and early 30s, I was like technology is the future and everything's great, right? And there was in those early days since it was all new, there was so much naive awareness because it was novel. You know? It was just new stuff, uncharted territory seemingly. And, but then, you know, the bubble crashed, right, in 2000. And so that's when a lot of, of course, everyone said, well, wait a minute. What's going on here? What about the economic factors involved in this and the speculation? And, you know, as it became more successful, it also became more corporate. And, that then introduced other motives. You know, so once a company went public, all of a sudden, the consulting firm, Razorfish, that I was working at, basically only wanted to work for Fortune 500 companies. Right? And but before that, we had the latitude and there was a desire to work with all sorts of innovative and creative companies and with an eye more towards innovative, sort of world changing sorts of projects. But once you sort of, go public, you're all of a sudden you're sort of beholden to, you know, other concerns. Yeah. So, that gave me pause. And then nineeleven happened. And on the night of nineeleven after that, so I'm in my apartment in New York, and where basically the smoke was nonstop for a month. You know? So all of us, as we'd leave your apartment, we had to, like, tape our windows Wow. To keep the smoke out of the apartment. And it was toxic or who knows what was in that smoke. Right? It was, everything below Fourteenth Street was a sort of military national guard slash police controlled area for like two weeks. Right. So you had to show your ID if you wanted if you show that you lived in that area in order to get below it. So, that woke me up in general and just said like, Hey, I'm here on this planet to do something good. Like a friend of mine who, Robert DeRaney, who passed, he was at breakfast at Windows on the World, early that morning. Early achiever, millionaire by 35. You know? So all of the sort of standard definitions of success, plus he was a really nice Lebanese American guy Yeah. Who who had no chance of escape. Right? And he was a great guy, and everyone knew that he was a really great guy to his friends and family. And so that kind of what went through my head was, well, what if I was having breakfast with him as I'd been wanting to catch up with him? Yeah. And what would people say about me? And all my digital consulting work is innovative as it was for financial companies and beauty companies and entertainment companies. I'm like, does that really matter? You know? So I had this kind of, like, not that there's anything wrong with it, but just for me. We all have to come up with our own answer, you know, of what are you here for? What's your purpose? And there are a million answers as there are, you know, people. So for me, I was just like I need to make sure that I leave the planet better than I found it in a fairly concrete or demonstrable way. And all of the technology hype that I've been involved in was something that I started to question because there was so much unquestioning and unthinking, sort of blind, you know, just following along with that energy in the technology space that I knew there has to be a better way. So I started to think about how can I apply all of these technology skills that I have towards the environmental, movement or towards education? So that that's that's kind of was the moment of change. And then finally, when all the bike lanes were added into New York City, so it was just you know, thermoplast paint on the street. And that changed. I loved bicycling since a kid, since I was a child. Right. And being able to basically safely bike in the city by just a simple change of the paint on the street, I had this sort of moment where all of a sudden I pause on my bike. And I said, wait a minute. This is interface change. So my day job or my you know, the work that I was doing is all about changing how screens on, you know, laptops and and desktops were back then, because it was before the smartphone, affected people's behavior. And then, all of a sudden, here it was, my whole life, my whole sense of being was made safer, And the city, all of a sudden, felt more enjoyable and and relatable, because of this human scale shift to creating space for biking. And then I was like, I want to get involved in this. That was my moment. It was like, so then I immersed myself in essentially urban design and urban planning and, and then there's there's a sort of pivot in my career from that moment on that bike lane.

So, firstly, I I just wanna say that it's there's there is no time out button. Mhmm. And and a lot of people confuse being reflective with slowing down. And for those people, so if you're in a conversation and you're wanting to have a more considered investigation of a policy decision or financial decision with a city, what I would say you should ask those people who want to rush, rush, rush is to ask them this, which is if it's really important that we get the question right, so we get the answer right and the question right, then it doesn't necessarily matter how fast we go about it because the consequences and the importance of getting it right really matter. Another way to put it is to ask the question of what direction we're going in. So there is so much well intentioned desire to improve things, but if you're going in the wrong direction, speeding up is the worst thing to do. At bottom of it, it's all coming from a good place. I think the main problem is when technology becomes overly centered in the overall discussion. So a lot of what we talk about in a wise city's perspective is actually de centering technology, in the same way that you wouldn't want it to be completely dominated by fiscal concerns, right? Because there are public health and social and education and safety concerns that aren't necessarily determined by financial factors. Right. And conversely, you wouldn't want everything to be centered around crime and safety because there's a lot of other aspects of city life that are not just police concerns. So the the wiser approach is to say, hey, there's all these different contributions that all sort of sectors of society can contribute. And technology is a very powerful, if anything, dangerously over powerful thing that we need to use very judiciously because it's so powerful. We should be wary of the sort of over excitement about good intentions because if they're not examined deeply and wisely and with enough people at the table, you're probably gonna make a mistake. You know? You're probably gonna sink a lot of money, time,

one of the things that I think is is a good way to to think about it is there are areas of efficiency that are sort of the low hanging fruit. Mhmm. Right? So there are aspects of your city government or region that are widely known to be good services and benefits. Start there. Start with what you have. Appreciate the good things that you're doing, and look for ways to make that more efficient or more transparent and more visible, especially things that can build trust. So one of the, a lot of people will answer this question I think maybe in a similar way, talking about the value of of, open government and open data and transparency. Mhmm. And I gotta say, I've actually and I've I've been a supporter of that, and I remain so. But the one thing that has become clear is that it's been so narrowly defined that it's, I think, becoming a problem because the issues in our cities are so much more than just, about a lack of openness, which inherently positions everything as a in a sort of punitive manner. Right? Like, there's a giant myth, you know, that government is a problem. Right? Right. And this has been going on and being talked about for decades. But the bigger question is, and I would say the wiser question is, how do we build trust between each other? How do we all live together? Right? And that's a deeper question. So that If you think about that as your one of your starting points or one of your input questions, then you're going to make different technology decisions. You're going to think about different aspects of your city budget and services of where to go and expend any of the sort of tech magic Right. Or so called tech magic on it. Now so, you know, so that's that there's a sort of stack. Right? Like, there's these sort of very basic services that are easier to think about as making more efficient as being unquestionable good. But there's one caution to consider in that, which is even if it's something like, say, water quality monitoring, right? Which is humans need water. It's pretty hard to have humanity without water. But then this comes up with a question of, well, if you're gonna be adding in technology solutions into the water delivery and water monitoring, the question goes back to the proprietariness, right? So if you're going to be doing that, how much are you getting in bed into contracts that are binding you to a specific company Right. Right? To Siemens or Cisco or Microsoft or IBM or whoever it is or Google. And what are the terms? And who's setting those terms? And do you have the right legal advice and, you know, looking in on this and all the ethical concerns with who has oversight and access to that data. So one cautionary tale, about that is the city of Sydney in Australia. So I was just doing hanging out in Australia for nine months. And the city of Sydney launched a deal to have their transit system switched to tap and go payment cards when you enter the metro and the bus. And in the initial deal that they stroke with this private company was the private company kept all the ridership data. So when the transportation officials went to say, let's look at all this great origin and destination information. They couldn't because they didn't own and have access to the data. So it's like, What's it worth to you now? Yeah. So now luckily, that issue was seen as such an oversight Mhmm. That they renegotiated the deal saying, Hey, we didn't really mean that and that was never our intention. And so, they basically redefined the terms of the contract and they got the data. But you know, there were legal fees involved and time and political capital that was lost, and, there were a number of different costs that happened as a result of that. So the question is, don't do what

Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of those, actually. You know? You have all these planned cities. There's so many examples on the large scale from the greenfield development of building cities, planned communities, idealistic communities from a technology perspective Mhmm. Or a business perspective or what have you. But the one thing they have in common is they all were very narrowly defined and had very few people involved in the decision making. Right. It was very top down, and that just sets you up for failure. You know? So that's one, I would say, general pattern to think about. So if you're in some very ambitious project and the people around most the tables making all these decisions do not look like the community Mhmm. Who you're serving, you're probably you have a higher chance of failure. If just it's only a handful of people, you know, and one company, and you don't have good legal representation, you're probably setting yourself up for some major problems or being taken advantage of. So, it goes back to that, which is this question of sort of pluralism or just cities are so are are one of the most magical, complex things that humans do. And you need everybody, you know, sort of as Jane Jacobs talked about it, you need everybody involved in the making of it, in order to make it, you know, suitable for everybody. Right. And that that there's a, it sounds really simple, but as a principle, if you think about that, that can help steer away from a lot of problems.

And this is kind of, you know, kind of become becoming increasingly, apparent in this question of technology and in the growing new movement around civil rights between the issues that people who are facing with black lives, the Black Lives Matters movement, and the Me Too or the, you know, the new movement against sexual violence Right. And discrimination and sexism, and the tremendous energy that's going around that. One of the things that it connects to this whole smart city dimension and the technology question is a lot of these technology deals are involving terms and conditions that are really nonconsensual. Mhmm. You know? So if you think about your Facebook and your social media and the things that are being done with your data, right? Now, yes, technically, you hit agree and you sign to those terms and conditions. Sure. But if you read every term and condition, yeah. But they aren't really being presented to you as an option. You can't revoke those. You can't opt out. It's kind of all or nothing in most cases. Right. So in general, especially in The United States, it brings up this big question of consent. And so there's a sort of, I think, another case where having bringing in the question of wisdom of how do we wisely make sure that we're increasing consent. Consent as a general governing principle is I think what the Me too movement you know, that's been ten years in the making now, but really kind of has just exploded this year, is offering to the sort of raising this larger question about consent in general, not just between, relating to sexual violence and harassment Yeah. But relating to the body and the skin of the city. You know, how do we create a consensual city where everyone's rights are respected? You know, there's been a lot of heady, you know, conversation. Right? We were talking about all these big picture ideas, and Mhmm. And that's part of part of wisdom is having an enlarged sense of your connection to everything. Mhmm. That's part of, I think, where, one of the aspects of compassion is it's not just about me, you know? It's about you and everyone else. Everything. And not just humans, but all of life on this planet. Right? So that's big. Right? That's heady and that's also abstract. So a lot of people may be saying, you know, who cares about, you know, this idealistic talk. Right. Now that's, of course, where policy comes from. Right? This is the sort of frameworks. So just to bring it down home, policy is that broker, you know, that puts in practical terms these big principles and actually makes them possible to come down to be turned into laws and regulations and ethical conduct, social codes, and things like this. So what I what I think would what I would wanna do is say, like, I here's some there's some questions that you could ask right now about the projects, that you're considering or you're working on or maybe, you know, from a post mortem standpoint Yeah. You know, a project that maybe you just did. So So so a city manager or a planner or somebody like that, these are things that they could run through. Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's let's let's kinda do something. It's like wherever you are right now listening to this, you can, think about a project that you're that you're doing or about to do or have done. So let's go through these questions and just think, you know, first thought, best thought, whatever comes to mind. And, of course, you can think about these longer. But even just right now in the course of this, let's go through a handful of questions. So question number one. Mhmm. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution? So right there, that that could, you know, that could take you could take your team and spend an hour with that question. Absolutely. Question number two, whose problem is it? K? Mhmm. Question number three, which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technology solution? I mean, right there, you know, is again, this is the thing is sometimes you you solve one thing in in one place, but then all of a sudden it creates another problem. Right. These are what we call, you know, secondary effects. And there's a lot of research on this. And actually, there's a lot of research in media studies and communication studies and anthropology and science and technology studies and sociology and anthropology on the impacts of technology. The unintend quote unquote unintended but very well researched and quite well documented existing known effects of different types of societal changes or technologies and or even potentially ways to help you detect things that are truly unknown. But you could at least get hunches to say, well, we expect that it's gonna this disruption here is gonna create a new problematic disruption over there. Right. Now I could ask for an example, but I mean, I think any of us could just fill in the blank with 20 things right now, you know? Yeah. I mean, my my my head is short circuiting right now with different examples of of this. You know, you think about well, here's a positive example. Sure. Right? So the smartphone in many ways has revived radio. So the reason why we're doing a podcast and people are listening to it and a lot of people, especially those of us that are Gen X and millennial, we probably haven't listened to broadcast radio

you know, there's a shrinkage. Like, in in journalism across the board, there's been a contraction. But when when it comes to audio, the smartphone has been what has driven this complete renaissance that we're seeing now in basically sort of this sort of campfire, like, huddling around the fire and having conversations that are what I find about what I like about podcasts is you end up having much deeper information sharing than on broadcast television or or your typical, you know, news radio. Question number five. What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of a technological change? So that's that's related. Yeah. You know, kind of bringing more specific focusing to the to the matter. Again, these five questions right here, you can take a lot of time thinking about them. Question six. What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies and what is being gained and lost by such changes? So initially, you may say, well, what does that have to do with, you know, that's a language. How significant can that be? You know, in a lot of the sort of, positives, you know, social good, technology conversations, you know, you hear people talking about us living. We're now in a data centric society. Well, if you say that our current society is data centric, then that means there are other things that are not at the center that are that you're pushing away. So you're pushing one thing into the center of focus with to the exclusion of other things. Question seven. So with this project that you have in mind or that you've done, is it contextual to the place? So think about the people, the neighborhood, the location of it, if it if it's spatial, or the general benefit of of who it's serving. How relatable is it to the people that you're trying to help? Gotcha. This is that's this is one of the biggest missteps that so many projects take is they take a generic solution or maybe a solution that worked elsewhere, and they don't adapt it or really make it relevant to the local

helps bridge a lot of political divide because pretty much, you know, you get a lot of support for being more local. You know, regardless of which political, position you have. Mhmm. And and there are benefits, to that across the spectrum. And and this is the one thing that we see in place making is that, you know, when you make it more connected to the place and people, it becomes more meaningful. And then that is also what then attracts more attachment and that means cultural value and economic value Mhmm. To why should I go visit your town? Why should I pull off, you know, and make a trip or take a spontaneous pause to go into this town or that town? Yeah. Or even making it become a destination where that's my goal of my trip is to come and visit this place or that place for any conversely, for you to come where I live. Right. Right? If if we all kind of supply, provide these generic solutions, and And this is the trapping. A lot of technology is very generic. You know, a lot of these technology solutions are designed to be as mass usable as possible. So they're almost not thinking about local adaptation and local customization.

So that's a big, sort of, yeah, sticking point with a lot of the sort of techno, centered, kind of techno blind, thinking. Question number eight, are local people collaborating in making and using it? So if you think about your project, you know, to what degree did you involve local people in the creation of it, or to what degree are they actually using it? Now that one, I think, to some degree, a lot of people think about whenever a new thing is launched in a city, you wanna say, hey. Are people using it? Do they like it? Are they valuing it? So most politicians and elected officials and their appointees, are often thinking about that a lot. I would say that here's the twist is if you involve more people in the conception of it or in the making of it or in the envisioning of it, then you'll get more people using it. Right. Because it'll be course corrected and and then you also have a higher chance of making it more local. Question nine, does it support a human scale relationship or interaction? So if you think about your project, you know, what we mean by human scale is that sense of, encouraging, you know, more face to face interaction with people. So one of the things that, you know, that I recommend is that, let's say, you are evaluating proposals from your local innovation hub or, you know, eager beaver, you know, do gooders. Yeah. And they have a solution, but no one's involved in really collaborating. And it's just the two guys who are recommending it. Right. And, whatever that solution does, is something that, only very few people can access. Or let's say the solution is on a mobile phone. So it's a new app for your city. Okay. Well, a mobile phone inherently is a a personal individualistic experience. It's you looking down at your screen. And sure, you can chat or message, but there's something very different than, let's say, if you added an urban screen or like a large, you know, projection screen in a in a community plaza or in the central park of your town. Mhmm. And then you had something that was a shared experience, you know? That is a human scale. That's increasing the human scale relationship. Mhmm. So this is a thing where sometimes, you know, a lot of people say, well, everything should just be on a mobile phone. It's so efficient. Well, but that isn't always the only outcome or the only, you know, variable that you should be concerned with. So that's that's a that's that one there, you can again, the human scale relationship thing is another trap that a lot of people have, they they ignore or they don't pay attention to. Right. And they miss out on a lot of benefit. So sometimes that means with the same budget and the same duration that you spend on a project, if you think about increasing the human scale relationship outcomes of that project, you can often, depending on what it is, get a much bigger return on your time and investment. Question 10, does it increase face to face interaction? Question, 11 is to what degree is the project open source? Now that one's a tricky one. Yeah. And and what does open source mean to you? So open source, there's a bunch of different definitions, and there are so many other podcasts that get into the open source movement, but I would just refer people to go read up on it. But the short answer is just is it open? Is the code of your software are you using or what I mean by it here is are you contributing to or using or making your code open? Now there are many different ways to go about this. And so I'm not I don't I really don't like to be prescriptive. And that's why a lot of these questions are sort of they're more like guidelines and principles. But, you know, if you're using public money to provide a public benefit, there's a really good argument to say that you should use, and contribute to or offer open source software solutions because then other cities in your or institutions in your own city, in your region, in your state, in your country, in the planet, you know, could potentially take advantage of this, and there's some benefit to that. Now, conversely, depending on what you're doing, you know, when it comes to data Yeah. Just as a caution, is open data is not so simple. There's so many issues about privacy and, you know, again, back to this goes back to the question of consent Right. Where when it comes to the data side of things, there's a whole host of considerations you need to make for anonymizing and protecting potentially identifiable information. Right. And again, there's a lot of material online about this. So if that's if one of your projects involve the collecting or usage of a lot of, resident data, you should definitely look up that, to help you guide you in a in a wiser direction. There's a lot of open data platforms out there right now too. Yeah. I mean, there that's sort of very a matured aspect of this overall kind of, tech and, you know, civic movement. Right. That's that's kind of their their many wise voices have joined in on on course correcting what's been happening there. So quest so the next question is, is there capacity building? So in your project that you're thinking about in your head, you know, that you've just done or that you're doing, is to what degree is that project helping to demonstrate, model, or build the capacity of the people who are involved in making it or and or the people who are involved in using it? So you're helping elevate, the discussion, the inclusion, the intelligence, the wisdom, etcetera Yeah. Of it. And that so that's another way to think about it, that again, it's kind of like initially may you may think, well, you know, how does that relate? Why should I care about that? Or why should I how should I relate to that? But if you're trying to change the practices in your institution, in your department, if you're looking to help create new policies or culture in your city when it comes to things like environment or education, or public health, you do wanna think about the capacity for adopting new changes in practices. And so in one way is I would say this is one of the most important questions because in the twenty first century, you know, like we started, you know, there are so many, changes that we need to make in order to come to a sustainable, equitable life where we can all live together and figure out how to live together in a equitable, sustainable way. So, so much of that is about capacity building to transform and change. And two more questions here. So, is it connecting, to existing community goals? So again, this is part of that, like, you know, the good intentions, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Mhmm. Your your well intended excellent project that may have a great outcome may be isolated from the existing goals of the community. Sure. So this goes back to, you know, our people, who's at the table, and who's involved in collaborating and making it. So and I intentionally left this sort of in there twice because it's asking the same question from two different angles because it's really important to get that right. So if you missed out the first one, if you're like, screw it. We're not gonna have local people collaborating in it, making it, and using it. Right. Well, if you say is it connected to existing goals, which again may relate to your electoral success or your, general, you know, review and performance review assessment Right. You know, of your, responsibilities in in city governance. That's another way to kinda keep you on the right track. And then here's the last one. And and this one is I mean, these are all very important, but this last one is another gotcha that so many people drop. And then it diminishes or ends up being a big failure point, which is, again, for the so for the project that you're thinking about doing, especially if you're a next project or the one that currently is in play, is how well is ongoing iteration planned for and supported. So especially with technology, and but with a lot of other things, is you can get all excited about launching. And if you don't have the maintenance and the budget and the prioritization to say, well, we have to fix the bugs and make improvements based on feedback from the users or in the park if we need to change the seating arrangement around or in the city street grid, you know, if we need to change the signaling and what have you. You know, there's there's it's a constant living thing. You know, cities cities are people. And so, therefore, cities are always growing and changing and living and moving. And, it's not just about the launch. And so a lot of the tech hype, basically just kind of raises this silver bullet thing where people think that technology is the object. Right. It's the software or it's the hardware. It's it's not really. 90% of quote unquote technology is the practices. That's right. It's the shift of the practices within the the different ways that we govern and relate to each other and to the way that we communicate. And that's that's it's one of the most difficult things for people to understand because so many other things that we're familiar with, in the sort of pre technology sort of city governance were about objects. It was about the hardware object and that's is it is what it is. It's just that physical thing. But the nature of digital technology, and this goes into a whole other direction, that is a big part of my work, which is the sort of media studies, the communication studies, just basically bringing in and elevating and capacity building for folks in cities to get them to understand what is really the nature of digital which is inherently immaterial. It's it's a process. You know, technology is process Right. More so than the object. You know? And, that that just opens up a whole other way of looking at governance and management and responsibility and stewardship. And again, this is another area where, you know, we need more academics and the the educating institutions, need to jump in on this because it's such a different paradigm than the way economics has been standardly, you know, normally defined, and governance. Although on one on one level, I I find increasingly policy folks and governance folks are once you start explaining it to people in this way, if they aren't already on it, they get process because so much of governance from the policy making perspective is all about the process. And the software people, the really savvy user centered design, civic design folks, they also get this. So in the whole sort of innovation on service design that's going on in in The US and in other places, they all get this as well. And that's that's really, I think, right now is one of the areas of innovation is, shifting this more process and service

Yeah. But I mean, even even with that, you know, so, like, when the radio was invented, right, the the the significance of radio was not the invention of the vacuum tubes and the device. It was how people change their communication practices and their daily living in listening to and the broadcasters and journalists in learning how to communicate on radio and the way that then people got their information and socially participated by sitting around the radio or and then it evolved into in the car, you know, it changed the process and the way that we related and communicated. That's radio, you know, it isn't just about the object. Right. What we what we really value about radio is the different way it changed our relationship to each other and information.

at Dan Latore, and you can, find me there. You know, this space is changing so fast and evolving so quickly that, and and globally that Twitter pretty much, in in my observation and experience, is it's that's the best way to keep abreast of all of this. Yeah. So That's what John do. Yeah. Hashtag wise cities, placemaking, and and there's all sort of a lot of hashtags you can follow. So if you kinda jump in on the tweet streams, you can dive in and, swim along. And we so for those of you that are really, you know, wanting more of this, we need more conversation in this space, you know. So, I would want more and more people talking about this and getting in in at raising questions about this. So hit me up with any questions, and, or examples too. Those are the two things I'm looking to collect. So the organizations or the kind of the work that I'm focusing on right now is, the articulating of digital place making. Right. So this is basically place making in the twenty first century, you know. And and really, you know, we're only talking about digital this, digital that because we're in transition, you know. But, you know, in in whatever, five years or ten years, we won't be thinking about digital this or digital that. It'll just be governance. Right. It'll just be communication. Just like, you know, twenty years ago, people didn't go around and say, well, I'm gonna write a book about paper governance. You know, even though most of all the governance, the tool that was used was paper. Yeah. It was expressed on printed law books and case, you know, log studies and and newspapers and legal journals. So the technology that was used was print and on paper, but no one said I'm I'm an expert, you know, or I'm studying paper governance, you know. So it was just governance. Mhmm. So, but we're in a transition stage right now. So we're very conscious of this shift of tech of technology from paper to digital. So it's a useful term to kinda just signal that we're, we're changing and we're intentionally working on making a, what I would say is a wise transition.