Notes on the New Cities Foundation and their New Cities Summit in Paris by Seda Pumpyanskaya, Vice President International Relations and Communications, Skolkovo Foundation.

1. Notes from Skolkovo
In the United States, in the 1960s, the concept of the master planned community
took on a decidedly negative image: Homogenous, bland designs, monuments to
urban sprawl.
But since then, and particularly recently, “master planned” has been replaced by the
idea of “smart” communities and “new”cities, architecturally inspired, energy
efficient, with a comprehensive emphasis on the technology infrastructure to make
them all run smoothly. Suddenly, New Cities and Smart Communities are cool, de
rigueur -- a white hot trend that offers big-time opportunities and challenges for
urban growth experts, technology infrastructure engineers, architects, construction
workers, materials providers and hundreds of other industries. They are enormous
undertakings with giant economic, developmental and social ramifications the likes
of which the global population has never seen. But how to plan them? How to make
them efficient, thriving, sustainable, supportive and scalable?
These are massive projects with massive potential. By 2050, the world’s urban
population will double to 7 billion people. The New Cities Summit in Paris next
month will bring together 800 global decision makers, including mayors, CEOs,
academics, researchers, entrepreneurs and visionaries. We’ll discuss the themes
I’ve mentioned before, along with transportation, water, green architecture all in an
effort not to just to support the world’s peoples, but to give us all the ability to
thrive. Real issues, real opportunities that will lead to real results.
The New Cities Foundation says the scale and pace of 21st century urbanization is
simply unprecedented; that in the coming decades urban development will exceed
the urban growth of the past 200 years. Construction in India and China is
staggering. And we’re not talking about hundreds of homes here, and several office
buildings there. This is about thousands of cities being planned and built that will
house millions of people and play host to thousands of companies driving
economies all over the world. Humankind has never seen growth and expansion at
this pace; planning is critically important.
That’s where sustainability comes in: Not in an energy efficient kind of way, but
what will keep these new cities alive? What will allow for the kind of economic
expansion and opportunities that keep residents from migrating to another smart
community elsewhere?
One intriguing development already underway can be found outside Moscow. Think
of Russian planned communities from the 1950s and 1960s and you probably see
monolithic, gigantic buildings that seem like human warehouses. We can find the
same kinds of developments in the United States, and China, and communities
throughout Europe and South America. Skolkovo is anything but. On the other side
of the spectrum are those ultra-modern, ultra-urban, shiny, slick science and

2. technology parks that have sprung up in parts of China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan and
parts of the United States. Again, Skolkovo is anything but.
Instead, Skolkovo is a product learned from decades of urban planning and
development lessons against a backdrop of a new era of innovation and the huge
financial and social benefits of the IT economy. Skolkovo has even coined its own
term for the kind of community it is creating: The “Innocity,” or science and
technology park meets suburbia, blending innovation and comfort, a kind of societal
incubator that warms growth and potential. The development will become a beacon
that attracts people, companies, innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers,
governments, schools and educators. Instead of a community existing, and hoping
growth just happens, Skolkovo is being designed from the ground up (literally!) to
attract the necessary ingredients that will guarantee growth – and have the
necessary scalable smart infrastructure to accommodate it.
And not merely a theory, Skolkovo is already a city under construction, its 400
developed hectares will be home to 26,000 people and become the workplace for
31,000, and completed by 2015. The thing about Skolkovo though is that like the
technology and innovation the region hopes to incubate, the city itself will link with
other smart developments around the globe, sharing successes and failures and
lessons learned, partnering with others who are embarking on projects of their own.
If it all sounds too good to be true, understand that mankind thought the telephone
was the ultimate communications tool until the internet came along. Look what that
technology has done to shrink the world and exponentially expand commerce and
opportunity and intelligence and collaboration. New Cities and Smart Communities
will do much the same thing but on an even greater level, not in the cloud, but on the
ground, not in the ether, but face to face, home to home, office to office, park to park,
from one resident to another.
The concept of “Utopia” has certainly evolved over the ages; today’s technology in
the hands of today’s visionaries makes achieving that goal far more reachable than
ever before.
Seda Pumpyanskaya
Vice President International Relations and Communications
Skolkovo Foundation