Resolving complex urban challenges with gaming

[Music] all right first of all thank you very much for actually have this conversation rolling but we're really excited to come to these kind of events I have a background in gaming up I've been an investor for for many years now but we have this in a city initiative that that we're running for the last three years based in New York and actually we're doing these projects in Helsinki - and we're doing these projects in lisboa so just if you can read it and actually I made a mistake with these colors as you see but excuse me if I'm looking at the monitor because I it was very last minute and I made this presentation in the fly so just if there if you see some mistakes no you know why I play as a

managing director of safe labs in community-based we're working with a lot of startups around the world we and we connect a lot of venture capital capitals and and and we also advise a lot of investors around the world - for good initiative so if we see an initiative in Helsinki would definitely contact our guys in New York or vice-versa and we're trying to have a sort of a hop around the capital is a via Europe there's a lot of things going on I mean with the exception of the Netherlands because we're working in Amsterdam Bodine Amsterdam and Eindhoven since the startups of in in the Netherlands are usually based in Eindhoven especially at the moment just a little code saying about the capabilities of cities and what they can provide for for citizens and I have a couple of images coming up see if you can recognize please please stay engage there's not a

lot of people so it's a it's it's a very friendly so interrupt me any time any moments I don't mind do you have any idea where this place is and why what's going on here close close close call it looks like it right so it's it's basically one of those ghost towns in in China that looks like Shanghai so it's a copy of a copy because Shanghai itself is a copy the next one as well there's nobody's living nobody's living here they have nice lighting obviously so the tourism must be booming especially at night and we got this one it's my favorite it's beautiful and one of those ghost towns too so but these things happening all the time throughout history we have a lot of ghost towns we had cities that people actually left all at all at once

it is like this is built for people not to live I'd say and I categorize it this is one of those flight things so bear with me there's more reasons to have it goes down but I think we can break it down in in three subjects or three titles economically I'd say China is a good example but I think a lot of a lot of stuff is human cost so either people people feel like they're in danger they don't tell unlike the place kava if I'm not mistaken was from originally from Iran so we have a lot of people living living that country to pursue interesting startups abroad so a lot of a lot of educated people are leaving the places so I know that a student town in the middle of Iran actually reduced to 70% left to reduce

20% so that now they're only students and and and some of the guys are professors so and got government actions so we realized all over the projects of the sieve lab we realize how important it is for governments and and their policy to change the way we view cities so since we're in in Europe Nord of Europe I categorize it into four titles of what are the challenges we got lack of public spaces we got disconnections and obviously crowding and the cities are getting extremely crowded in in in many forums and and and the problem is just growing and the percentage of

people coming to the city of Helsinki or the percentage of people come assuming your based in London right in Prague so same thing going on in price is even worse I assumed and then Helsinki that people are just coming into the cities for opportunities that exist but one of the one of the conversations that we had is why other cities are not developing initiatives to to go forward and what can we help and what can we do to help them in actually growing we thought if we narrow down the challenges either on health or climate change then we can go specifically move things around and and maybe out of that that many that I wrote down in in presentation maybe we can we can touch down at least three or four of them to to help them to grow and I think the root of all of the problems that we

have is the lack of engagement and I mean it in a in a biggest possible sense I think the if you think about those development those pictures that I show those were decided by the voided government to build those stuff the developers built it without talking or engaging anyone to to come to live in the cities they never thought about infrastructure the way probably European cities are developing and I think that that's one of the problems we have so so far and and we we've noticed a lot of gaming can actually help us with the with the with the future city and we call it smarter well maybe it's not gaming but I would I would assume an application mobile application like uber didn't happen before a lot of mobile apps I think uber actually got a lot of

inspiration over like or a fedora let's say they got they got a lot of information from from what what was existing like google map digitalization and they learn a lot I mean even the the cars of uber or food or the way that you see it it's it's very much inspired by mobile games and and we saw the rise of city-builder games actually there is a lot of investment going into the city Buehler we've noticed that over the last two years forty percent of funds investment funds and in gaming is actually going to see the pillars please raise your hand or or give me a nudge if you know any of this one boy bond I mean it does anybody know Scott okay you know all of them you know so we were especially nowadays in Amsterdam we have

an initiative that we're using another break in the mall so we in in the Netherlands or cities like o country like netherlands amsterdam and i know when we don't have malls we don't have huge malls like the mall of Dubai or Mall of Sweden in Stockholm but but we were using that to help city developers in Amsterdam - to build a projects which I will mention by the end of the presentation so who knows this game I think more than okay all right so basically we are we're trying to educate a lot of our architects are urban developers - true grand theft auto so we were asking them to to play the game to see what are the challenge that they see and and they when they through the workshop that we had sponsored in New York in New York

through a workshop we asked him to tell us especially the whys what was the challenge because that Weiss is based in California so then we had that workshop and we try to fix those challenges and figure out what are the urban solutions we think the the Helsinki the we are na our infrastructure is very helpful to our to our cause a sieve lab and we are I'd say actively looking for a lot of partners for our next seminar in New York and and our community base and incubator to join join us in New York because we figured out it's funny that the city of in a short short time the guys that we are na are they made a kind of a mock-up of city of Helsinki and

there are there are some in in New York there are some in California but we thought this this is the place that they can do it better so we want to actually learn more and more so we also think there should be more initiatives you should know this events last year and I think that was I think me and my colleagues we we all thought it this is one of those good events that the talks about a are it's a are we are and whatnot and we learned since last year that there are so many of city builders as so many of opportunities to actually get involve in the city and we have another events that we work in Amsterdam called games for cities and and we're now working on five cities in the Netherlands to to actually gamify the city experience so please look it up so

this was basically the topic that I wanted to talk about but I want to talk about what are what what is our initiative and how we're gonna actually fill in the role of the games basically I'm gonna I'm gonna pass on the last slide basically I think we we believe in a small city innovation we are trying to connect every smart solution in every aspect of our life I think mostly we're doing a digital transformation and digital healthcare and we have a network of solutions that we think that they are and we are and and city builders should take a look at that and so we can facilitate those those knowledge in across across the cities and across the industries that we're working with a

little bit of our own initiative we are a bunch of entrepreneurs we're working with governments academia and I will show you a list of the places that we are trying to work with and and how to how we actually commercializing on those I the game cities games for the cities and this is this is where we start we we started already be rnd for the city of New York and the city of Amsterdam and we will be trying to get get help from the city of Helsinki and to actually build a product that is going to go forward and be presented a sort of a demo or a product in New York alright so the building part will be will be one of our actually most important job for the future because we we are in talked with a lot of venture capitalists and the money is there the

demo is there but the product we want it to be as we want it to be as realistic as possible and we don't have that yet and there are no initiative that that shows a realistic mock-up of a city or a challenge for urban developers or even real estate guys to get things rolling and and the funny part is well but this is this is between me and you whenever we talk about the city of New York we get we get so many offers so many so many good initiative coming forward in comparison to the city of Lisbon so we see the shift of gamers venture capital or guys and the governments to go toward a city a bigger city a metropolitan city with more difficulties to learn and adapt that into their own city so but what most of our jobs would be on the under building those applications for

the four years come so this is my pledge to you we are we are going forward to to build that solution but we need many help and we need help from many other cities and we need help for cities that they are they see the challenge coming in and we can fix that earlier before before the city of Helsinki or city of Prague gets overcrowded with all the traffic's this is this is the model we're working in and we put the community and citizen on one side we put the universities on the other side and government agencies on on on one side and private sector on the other side so why we say community and citizen maybe and this format we're talking about gamers we want people to gain more we want them to gain to play take play seriously we want

citizens to actually have a chance and let's say have a say in building their own cities and and talk about it and and just like the workshop we had last year to tell us what's needed what and and join so basically that's why and and once we made that happen and then we can connect it to other cities that's that's basically the plan and obviously we can't even go further than that and I wish add my gaming guys to help me with with some sort of animation to make that a little bit bubbly but but that's that's what we think it's there is a lot of initiatives what our initiative is going forward to find solution for cities with gaming we have a case study in New York and that's that's basically the result of our workshops and three

years of seminars and and what that this is pretty much what we share in vision and we want to create more jobs and we want to make the the the city basically smarter in every aspect this is a bunch of activities we roll it down in in in three lesser subjects and and we are we are the my team is working on the community again building and building community we have we have guaranteed 100 partners from venture capitalists to government agencies and I think that that would help the program go even further than that we have two tracks this is our track the my track and and then we have track 2 that is working with with the incubators and

accelerators in the major cities in Europe well some of our partners in in terms of venture capitalist we find two to Vancouver beginning of November to make sure that the city bank is investing in this in this plan too they already said yes so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do at Toronto workshop in a bank over to workshop I actually have more to to say there's there's a couple of slides left but I was wondering if there anybody has any question in on this table I know I know the time is right I have a couple of things going on on the screen so I know what's going on yeah you probably have a red light and blinking no I mean yes yes it's happening it's happening so if you

guys in well if you have no question let's say if you're in any business that we could partner up and discuss about this I'll be more than happy to talk to you after this thank you I will be also in in London so just just for a no go anywhere [Music]