CityLab: The Future, Today

It seems like every article I read on a major disruptive technology (for example: self driving cars, commercial drones, electronic medical records) goes along the same lines:

1.       This technology will be applied to greatly improve something (efficiency, safety, etc.)

2.       There are some hurdles to adoption such as legal issues, privacy issues, lack of standards, accommodating legacy technology, general public acceptance.

3.       Though the technology is 80% of the way there today, don't expect to see it for another 15-20 years due to these hurdles.

In other words: These breakthroughs exist in labs but will take a long time to get to towns and cities.

It got me thinking, what if there was a city that was a lab, CityLab?

Imagine a CityLab, say 5 miles square of 150k population and a mix of population density sectors in which the hurdles for technology adoption where eliminated or dramatically reduced. For example:

1)      Legacy technologies would be prohibited to give new technologies the chance to achieve critical mass.

a)       Paper money and maybe even credit cards would be prohibited and replaced with ubiquitous e-wallets on cell phones or even biometric identifiers.

b)       Self driven cars would not be allowed, only autonomous cars.

c)        Paper records prohibited for electronic

d)       While not prohibited, retail stores would be minimized and replaced by next hour delivery of products.

2)      Government red tape would be eliminated and replaced by a minimum set of web interfaces.

a)       Processing a new employee hiring should be a few clicks not 5 sets of paper work

b)       Taxes should flow automatically with each transaction - no paperwork required

3)      Every citizen of the city would have to sign a "user agreement" to share certain data and use certain technologies, (and may even waive certain rights).

a)       Share GPS coordinates to allocate an autonomous fleet of taxis

b)       Share anonymous health data to improve medical research

The CityLab would serve as a proof of concept development zone for new technologies with a citizenry of willing early adopters. Here is the basic process:

1)      First, new technologies would be prototyped (standardized when needed) and iterated through (almost) real world conditions to demonstrate maturity. For example a fleet of autonomous cars is prototyped in the field with new version of sensors and software until accident rates are 20% of a self-driving cars.

2)      Alongside technology development, policy development could also rapidly iterate to optimize the legal framework for the technologies' use. For example policies are established on transportation of teenagers, those without licenses, blind operators, inebriated operators and liability for accidents based on data collected about accident rates.

3)      The end goal would be to accelerate many of the processes that dramatically slow down the adoption of technology and provide a  path for other regions (cities, states, countries, etc.) to  adopt the technology. Eventually these technologies would retrofit into the existing world, but would greatly benefit from being incubated in the CityLab.

In addition to citizens - corporations and nations / states would greatly benefit from a CityLab.  Major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon as well as startups would get a chance to accelerate their technology within the CityLab. As such, these corporations would also transfer employees to the CityLab to work and live and would fund most of the upfront costs.  CityLab could be setup as a non-profit or a joint venture between multiple companies and governments.

Governments would benefit from (1) direct tax collections from the CityLab area (hopefully vastly simplified vs. collections from all of the members of a typical city),  (2) a test bed for public policy, and (3) accelerated technology to drive the overall economy (and increase tax revenue).  To host the CityLab, Governments (for example California, Oregon, and Mexico) would have to compete to offer the best incentive package of regulation suspension, land grants, infrastructure funds and transportation links.

What would it take to get this from a seed of an idea to reality?:

1)      Medium depth white paper (30-60 pages) outlining the value proposition and implementation details:

a)      How to achieve what companies really want (i.e. how do you maximize technological progress and industry collaborations with enough IP protection that innovators get financial returns.)

b)      Technology specific addendums on how a CityLab will accelerate different technologies (for example: self driving cars, commercial drones, electronic medical records)

c)       Planning of the basic legal structures

i)        Ownership / Non-Profit structure of CityLab

ii)       Individuals - privacy rights, property rights etc.

iii)     Companies - IP, liability etc.

iv)     Relationship to government - whose policies apply when

d)      Development of funding options (private funding, funding by tech companies, etc.)

e)      Analysis of new construction vs zoning an existing city

2)      Shop around for corporate, government and private investor interest and feedback. (Between these sources the CityLab must draw citizens, construction funding, land, and rights (or wavier of typical regulations).

3)      Incorporate feedback and sign up partners - likely large tech companies plus some gov't agencies, DoE, DARPA, etc.

4)      Refine detailed plan and have governments compete to host with packages of land and regulation abatement.

As listed above, there are many areas which would require detailed planning to realize the benefits of a CityLab. Unwinding the tangled web of inhibitors to technology adoption and maximizing efficiency would not be simple, but the promise of getting revolutionary technologies in to the mass market 10 years earlier would be well worth the effort. In fact, perhaps most interesting is not the development of the next wave of technology but how these technologies interact with each other when each are at scale and insight future waves of technology that isn’t even currently in labs. The interplay between autonomous electric vehicles, smart grids, clean energy, and massive data would be one example where you need a lot of “chickens” and “eggs” to move forward.

I'd love your feedback, please use the comments to let me know what you think. If there's significant interest in pushing this idea forward, the next step is probably to setup a wiki structured site for crowd development of the white paper. Check back here for more updates.