The Virtualization of Things Urban: my thoughts after the IMAGINE event in Tampere, Finland

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the IMAGINE (the Metaverse) event, organized and hosted by the City of Tampere, Finland. The presentations were high quality, the companies exhibiting were fun to engage with, starts up were pitching and a solid number of cities - from Rotterdam to L.A. - were represented. I would hope and I expect this event to be a first in an annual series of IMAGINE events to be organized by the City of Tampere. Here is why I think it matters deeply.

Tampere can be considered one of the most innovative cities within the EU and, in fact, the world. In many ways, the city has outgrown the smart city narrative. It takes leading cities to lead in addressing ‘the next frontier.’ The notion of the Metaverse and what lies underneath is one such frontier. It therefore makes sense Tampere choose to embark on this next level innovation journey.

I have been asked: ‘but why would a city want to do this? Isn’t this hype? Am I being asked to subscribe to the next chapter coming out of Big Tech?’ The Metaverse is a much hyped term, for sure. A term like Citiverse has been coined to mean the platform for citizens. And the metaverse as we currently understand it to look like (heavy and expensive headsets, special AR glasses and what have you not) is surely not the one or final iteration. But the virtualization of everything is happening. Whatever form or shape it may come, here are a number of fundamentals to be mindful of.

All industrial revolutions have started with novel technologies that got used, at first, to optimize and old world, to only so much later help craft an entirely new world, with new types of services, companies, norms, values – in other words, a system shift. The old Smart City narrative, for no matter how hyped it was as a game changer, merely produced some efficiencies. It hasn’t truly altered or done away with our old urban ways of human conduct. But AI and advanced virtualization of everything will, or already do.

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It has been said that the first chapter of digitization and digitalization was all about computation, whereas the second, current chapter is about virtualization. While such easy one-liners are rarely fully true, it does provide food for thought. The first chapter of digital was about computation indeed: from cracking Enigma to the calculation of the proper launch of a rocket. The beginning of the chapter of virtualization is difficult to mark. One may prefer the first steps in E-Commerce for example. My personal preference is Steve Jobs standing on stage, introducing the iPhone. From that point forward, the internet revolved around us, as opposed to us having to access a dinosaur PC on an attic at home. Services became ever more seamless an virtualized. And from that point we have continued to virtualize. Think of it: virtualization of money, intelligence, workplace environments: it has already been happening for a while.

Cities have forever been expressed in two dimensions: the physical (squares, parks, buildings, infrastructure) and the social economic dimension (trade, culture, education etc). The smart city agenda of the past served to optimize those two dimensions. Now, for the first time in the history of cities, they get increasing expressed in a third dimension: the digital one - an expanded effort of virtualization.

Getting the full virtualization of our cities right requires many things. It takes innovation-centric leadership. It takes a bold future-forward vision as to what urban life is to look like. It requires vision and accountability to ensure digital environments are safe and accessible to all. It requires the smartness to not repeat the mistakes we have made in the physical expressions and designs of our urban habitats as we know them - and do a better job. It requires a permanent conversation on standards, interoperability, and ethics. It requires a smart collaboration of the public and private sectors. And it requires a next level of citizen-centric approaches beyond the headline that states as much.

I salute the City of Tampere for the fact they have decided to lead on this journey. Me and my peers at Urban Innovators Global and Bable Smart Cities look forward to a lot of collaboration with the city in months & years to come. And I, for one, am already looking forward to IMAGINE 2025!
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Bas Boorsma

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