Brisbane, Nashville, and Orange County have been named as the first set of Readiness Challenge winners for 2021.

The cities submitted projects in 2020 that the Smart Cities Council (SCC) judged would make a difference regionally and could be replicable by other cities, globally. These three cities have agreed to work with the council to accelerate their own plans and help other cities globally.

Scoping solutions

“Instead of four or more years of planning, we work with the city to accelerate their planning by identifying needs, recruiting stakeholders and scoping solutions – all with the goal of delivering benefits to its residents sooner with a larger range of solutions and better financing options”, said Philip Bane, managing director, Smart Cities Council.

This process includes multiple sessions of online collaborative planning (called “collaborative acceleration”) with other cities, experts and solution providers – all captured in the council’s online collaborative planning platform, the Smart Cities Activator.

Nashville intends, with the help of the SCC and its global network of experts, to continue refining its plan to mitigate the impact of urban flooding

Why the cities were chosen:

• Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: goal is to explore how innovation, technology and data can help accelerate the city’s progress towards achieving broader goals of liveability, sustainability, and prosperity. The ability to collect accurate and timely data provides the foundations for the Brisbane City Council to make informed decisions. The significant geographic spread of the Brisbane Local Government Area means the council has thousands of kilometres of land and assets to manage, which in turn requires a sophisticated data collection plan. Brisbane’s City Council is in the process of implementing several initiatives to support the collection of operational and city data.
• Nashville, Tennessee, US: according to SCC showed “immense courage” in 2020, persisting through Covid and non-Covid crises in planning to mitigate the impact of urban flooding, all while passing a massive $1.5bn transportation plan. Nashville intends, with the help of the SCC and its global network of experts, to continue refining its plan to mitigate the impact of urban flooding. It will deliver a roadmap for review by its leaders that can also be replicated by other cities.
• Orange County, Florida, US: showed its vision to integrate growth and sustainability by proposing a Smart & Healthy Building project that includes in its scope the County’s 530 buildings with plans to extend its work to the 11 other cities in the County, including Winter Park and Orlando. The County put together its plan over six months of online collaborative planning.

The Smart Cities Council is calling for applications from cities to be the next 2021 Readiness Challenge winner to work with other cities and receive more than $250,000 in expertise and solution scoping.

SCC envisions a world where digital technology and intelligent design are harnessed to create smart, sustainable cities with high-quality living and high-quality jobs. The council is comprised of partners and advisors which have generated $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and contributed to more than 11,000 smart cities projects.

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