MPavilion  

Image by Archie Morley, Swinburne University.

How can a truly smarter city become an enduring outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic?

In 2020, we all experienced changes in our day-to-day lives. But many of those were hurried, one-size-fits-all interventions in response to short-term needs: working from home, lockdowns, and social distancing. Likewise, other responses have been superficial redesigns and re-purposing of existing services and infrastructure, without fully harnessing emerging opportunities. As we move into 2021, what will be the ongoing implications of this?

Despite the narrow vision of the stopgap changes to society’s operations in 2020, it has uncovered and emphasised a popular groundswell desire to be more sustainable, to spend more quality time with family and community, to find more meaning and connection in our work, and to have a greater work-life balance. Governments, too, are realising there must be new ways to create cities that are more resilient, accommodating, and healthful for all their citizens.

Join Swinburne University of Technology’s Smart Cities Research Institute as respected academic, government, and industry experts analyse the future of the city across themes of decision-making and participation, mobility and public transport, design of places for living, and energy and infrastructure. With facilitated audience participation, they will pull together the threads of opportunity of the COVID-19 situation to identify cooperatively better ways of urban living for a post-pandemic world.

EVENT SCHEDULE

1pm
A Citizen Jury: Striving for zero emissions in urban living

1.45pm
The Hydrogen Promise in Transport: Hope or Hype?

2.30pm
The Future of Social Spaces

3.15pm
Sounding Out the City