Published Wednesday, 17th November 2010

What does it take to build a smarter, more sustainable city? Not surprisingly, the answer depends on the specialty of the organisation you ask.

Ask information technology giant IBM, and the answer you’ll get: more and better IT products and services … LOTS of them, to gain intelligence into how we use everything and where the best efficiency improvements can be made. Pose the same question to the people behind the Transition Network and Transition Towns, on the other hand, and they’ll say the solution has to be largely people-based and local, with each community deciding for itself how it wants to address its energy, transport and resource management challenges.

Go back to another big business, one like Siemens with a wide range of specialties — from lighting to building automation, transport to alternative energy — and you’ll hear that it’ll take a wide range of strategies to build a sustainable future. And a fast-growing relative youngster with grand ambitions like Better Place will  tell you electric cars hold the key to making the most of clean energy and keeping our economy humming.

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