Cities in the 4th Industrial Revolution

SUSANA FINQUELIEVICH; PATRICIO FELDMAN; ULISES GIROLIMO; MARIA BELEN ODENA

Khanty Mansysk

Congreso; International Conference Tangible and Intangible Impact of Information and Communication in the Digital Age; 2018

IFAP / UNESCO

This paper focuses on the impacts of Information and Communication on urban management, particularly in the present Fourth Industrial Revolution. Schwab (2018) states that previous industrial revolutions released humankind from animal power, made mass production possible and conveyed digital capabilities to billions of people. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is, nonetheless, fundamentally different. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are blending the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.Cities are not foreign to the tangible and intangible impacts of information and communication, and certainly they are not alien to the transformations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These processes pose new needs and challenges for urban studies and urban public policies in the short and medium term: the extension of human life requires planning for a larger and older population; new forms of mobility, possible lack of car ownership in the near future, need innovative spatial and social conceptions. Artificial intelligence and robotics have significant impacts on the reduction and / or loss of jobs, which are to be replaced by increasingly complex activities, requiring higher levels of education. Surveillance of citizens, arguably for the sake of security, is omnipresent.The chances that millions of people are connected through their mobile devices, with unprecedented power in history to generate, process, disseminate, and store data, are almost limitless. These potentials are multiplied by new discoveries and developments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, new materials, quantum computing and storage Energy.Are these changes opportunities or menaces? Based on the authors´ previous research, the paper explores these possibilities, describes the problems and advantages linked to information and communication technologies (ICT), and their impacts on cities, and advises possible solutions. It also suggests policies and strategies for cities to adapt to the present transformations, to sail the oceans of the new technological revolution without sinking.