Реальный шаг к реализации идей Жака Фреско: Кузница умных городов
Smart people, intelligent people, they know that the Old World has collapsed. Okay, if something we build is not sufficient anymore or collapse in many ways, but what's going to be built new in order to actually to adapt to the new reality we have? On Earth, with the new challenges we have? We have the concept "smart city" but if the model is broken, it's regardless of making it smart or not, you need to look up in the gain of this. I was interested in different experiments, different ideas, how to change the social economic development, how to make the city self-sustainable, and the idea was not only to meet Jacque Fresco Who is actually the legend, when we were discussing at that time.. To build the first pilot project, and I proposed to him to actually do it in Ukraine, that project is still in development and we'll be happy to tell more.
Hello, Andrei. We are at Smart City Expo USA. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Sure. Well, glad to be here in New York for Smart City Expo. My name is Andrei. I'm a serial tech entrepreneur and venture capital investor from 2001. So for more than two decades, I've been investing in the entrepreneurs, Ukrainian and the European ones that actually build them businesses in the US. And also, I'm a chair of the Ukrainian venture capital & private equity association for the last 10 years. And we are the association that combines the all investors
private equity association for the last 10 years. And we are the association that combines the all investors that are invested in the Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs, even now. And also, we are promoting the different projects that are related to the new cities developments here in New York. And also, the one of the initiatives that we created with a focus exactly on the new city developments in Ukraine together with international community is called Mission on Earth. Andrei, can you tell a bit about how you meet Jack Fresco and why you fly to Venus to meet him a couple of times? What's your business with him? Well, first of all, I was always driven and fascinated by the concept of the new city developments. And it was around 10 years ago, I learned about the Jacque Fresco's work.
And of course, I was always eager to meet him. And the first time I believe we met in the in the Florida in his house back in 2015, I believe that was the first one. And the idea was not only to meet and the Jacque Fresco, who is actually the legend. And it's resonates with his work that he's been promoting for many decades. And actually, when we were discussing at that time, how to use the concept and build the first pilot project for that. And I proposed to him to actually do it in Ukraine as the first pilot project for a number of reasons. And so this is how it's all started. But unfortunately,
because he passed away all of that freezed and other kind of reasons in life, but that project is still in development and I will be happy to tell to tell more. And as you know, we also done a few events, online events with the Ukraine community. That was a video bridge, right, that we've done in the Kyiv Polytechnic University in Ukraine, I believe in 2016 or 17, and many other things together. 2015, and there was 1700 people...amazing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was the biggest turnout. Yeah, I remember that one. Actually, it's one of the biggest event I ever presented at. Yeah, that was nice. How these ideas influences your work? As I said, I for last, I'll say two decades. I would be I would I was interested in different experiments
and different ideas how to change the social economic development, not the countries, per se, but actually the cities, because the cities are drives the development of the world. And I was always interested in the different forms of this. Right. Because I live the in the communist country than the socialist country. I lived in the US for many years. So I know all the different system from capitalism to communism. I live there actually. So but the question was, obviously, that's not all all of those systems, I would say, have like not a great side, but also the bad side of it. And I was always interested how to reinvent
the way we live and use the different structures or the different way to do this. So this is why the his work resonated and his ideas resonated to me to some extent, because he was always searches not only for the problem, but also how to address this problem. So I've also been always searching for solution for solutions, how to address that, and not only how to make the city smart, right? That's why we have the concept and even the name of this conference is smart city. But if the model is broken, it's regardless of making smart or not, you need to look up in the in the gain of this. And obviously, this will not suit many.. We have the I'm not going to even count all the problems we have, especially now. The security now is a big, big address, because
nobody's safe anymore, not only in Ukraine, but globally. And also we need to reinvent the security layer for the for the for the people. And also, to be honest, now we live at the times when the because of the decentralized way, the different technologies, different ideas. Now the technologies is able to implement the many ideas, or at least test them in a very quick manner. So I would say
the power of the people now more equipped with the different technologies. So this is why it's much easier to implement this project, I would say not everywhere, of course, because we have still the regulation in place. But this is the reason why we are pushing the projects in Ukraine under the Mission on Earth's umbrella as a bridge to international community, explaining to them in Ukraine that everything is now possible. Yeah, of course, you see the pictures, you see the war, this is true. But also, there are many capabilities. And the Ukraine is so big,
right, in order to invent, to use the new approaches, also for people to live, educate, work, rest, and other things under this environment. And just to sum up on this one, why Ukraine because we have 8 million people displaced. With all respect to the other projects, you know, all of them, they use the kind of up to the bottom approach, they want to build the cities for millions. But the question I always ask my international colleagues, if you build them in a desert, yeah, people come in to actually live there. - Will they stay? - Right, exactly. But to the point, in Ukraine, you already have a proven demand for the 8 million people to be displaced. But they need to have a reason to come back. They need to place to live, work, educate, also with the new security
measurements, and other things, right. So how, you're going to address the biggest opportunity. And to this point, Ukraine is not only the biggest construction site on Earth, right, in order to address this problem, but also, it's not only about the urbanism or about the architecture, it's about like how you actually build something when community is actually building the cities from scratch, design the city from scratch are part of this, rather than just like, wait for the five to 10 years when some developers will build something for you. No, we need to use this bottom to up approach in order that the citizens will actually have a power to create something they want to live in. We're going to have a tools that are going to influence the citizenship, not only on building it, but also how you're going to manage this, how you're going to manage the city inside. Of course, all concept, oh, you need the mayor? Why you need the mayor? If you have the app, and you have a service company that actually will ask you what you want to have inside the cities, or what you don't want to be there as an object, as a business operations, or...
- It's time to go forward. - Exactly. And by the way, the question is, oh, guess what? We don't want the smokers inside our cities, just go 15 minutes walk away from the cities and then designate these areas to do smoking, right? If you put the questions like this, for the people that actually want to live there, so you don't need to have this referendum because every day you can ask the citizens, and of course, there is majority of what should be applied for it. But this is what I'm talking about, the mechanism that can be used for it. Yeah. Is it really possible to build something like Jacque Fresco was talking about, like, highly automated city system that combines all technology, etc., to provide everything for people, for residents? I would say that we are at the stage that majority of the technology is already available. However, if you look at the city as a product, it's not available, right? There is no best footprint or the product, or I'm sorry, white label from scratch, right, to cover it because the city itself is very complex product, right? Because you have many different layers, how you to make the city self-sustainable, right? How to make the city not rely on, not only on the outside grid, but also on many, I would say, autonomous decisions, the technologies, the actual how to make the city self-sustainable, self-consuming, self-producing, everything the city needs for the life. I would say the many
technologies out there, but still you need to experiment with that. And the Ukraine to that point is a test bed for this. And by the way, we have many laws in place, for example, for blockchain, it's legit. So we can use, experiment with that. And many other things that you can do this in the very scalable manner. So I would say the Ukraine now is something you can build the MVP (Minimum viable product), right? But on the sizable territory, in the sizable country, because you have all the talent there. And obviously, we also welcome the international community to team up in order to actually build things from scratch, to use the best of the technologies in this very complex product, which is city itself, but to your point, to answer to your question - all technologies are there, all the ingredients are there, but you need to have the bright people to actually come over and make it happen. So that's why we are pushing this and will help under Mission on Earth
as an initiative to have many services to bridge the different bright people globally from investors to urbanist or the for the futurists to real people that can deploy products or deploy services together with the community that we have in Ukraine as well, right? So we will have many experiments, we have many projects already up and running. So we need to team up and make the best of it we could. And then I believe the best practices out of it, we can we can share to the global community, but that have to be something proven and implemented in very fast manner. This is very important now, because obviously, the many barriers are already lifted, because you need to address the problem how to how to get the eight million people displaced. Right. So this is why I would say Ukraine is the fastest path on Earth, how you can implement projects like this, in order to do not to depend on the red tape and other restrictions. - Are people open or ready for such a huge changes? Are they talking about this, maybe on this summit, maybe on other political area? Yeah, I know you was holding a Ukrainian house in Davos many years, and you were talking about these ideas behind the scenes. And what
does this collective mind, collective direction about this new opportunities? Look, the smart people, intelligent people, they know that unfortunately, the Old World have collapsed. The old everything have been built in terms of infrastructure structures, international law, there are many things have been collapsed. - We need to adapt in some way. Right, but the people are searching what what is actually going to be next for the humanity. So they search in ..while the city is a form, right? But what is going to be inside the city as a new form of the how people live, perform, the economy, how it's linked to the community, all of the things people are searching for, for the best forms of this, in order to see, okay, if the something we built are not sufficient anymore or collapse in many ways, but what's going to be built new, in order to actually to adapt to the new reality we have on Earth with the new challenges we have, but how we're going to adapt and get best of it in order actually to get to keep us going in a more creative way, to actually to address the old problems we have in the new solutions for the sake of the citizens, obviously for the sake of also the creative class, obviously, this is the biggest magnet so far to our initiatives for the people I met, they want to do things because they also, not only Jacque Fresco was talking about for the number of decades, right, but everybody wants to see like this is already been implemented in real life. So it's now it's a call for all people in globe to actually to team up because we have now all resources to actually to implement it and to have the best practice out of this, right, in order to show our other ones, okay, guess what, to do something, stop talking about what is not working, we all know about all our problems, okay, so let's stop talking about that, but the question is how are we going to address that in very complex product like city itself, okay, how to actually team up and use the best of what we built so far and the different segments or different verticals in order to actually to make the city performing for the citizens in the best way we can.
- And what about already existing Smart City projects, how they may be different or obsolete from these ideas that we are working on? Look, this the current projects, of course, they're trying to make the current cities within the current systems, I would say, they're trying to upgrade with the technology, of course, they're trying also solve the current problems that the cities have, especially the big ones, of course, this is happening, but I'm not a big believer that current cities can reinvent themselves, of course, some of them try to do this, so there are a few examples globally wise and they kind of try to do this basically from scratch, but just a few examples, so I'm a believer more greenfield and brownfield projects. - Yeah, so from the ground up you need to create a new. - Exactly, you can design everything from scratch inside outside, but what I also don't believe in the new cities building on the small islands because it's not scalable, right? I understand that the people chasing islands because you have less of the red tape in terms of legislation in order to kind of influence you, but it's still there, so this is why Ukraine is the biggest place in the Europe in terms of sizeability, access to the resources and other things and guess what, even in many parts of Ukraine is even safer than many existing cities on Earth that don't have a war. Okay, look at the crime rates of many cities,
so the Kyiv or many cities in Ukraine are much far above the 50 or hundreds even in comparison with the current crime rates, so from this standpoint. - So you can propose some solutions to this problem. Well exactly, that's what I'm trying to tell you that of course you see the war on the screens, right, but still we in comparison with other safety issues in the current cities, so it's not that dangerous to do something or build something in Ukraine, of course in the different territories a hundreds kilometers away from the war zone and some other things. So look at this from the prospects of the opportunity, access to the talent and the other things which are faster to the deployments and so this is what attracts the many bright minds globally in order to team up with us and to do the joint projects together. - Yeah great, can you elaborate a bit more about your
project Mission on Earth? As I understand this will be some tech grounds for implementing some technologies about smart city and this will be like little prototype of the future cities. Yeah, yes we have this first pilot project in the Kyiv region and the our current focus on the first object which is a convention slash showroom set of buildings. Basically the idea is to bring the best technologies, the best cases around the world from different companies, from different players, NGOs, private people to actually to put it in one place and to showcase on the constant basis the projects in Ukraine globally best practices as a sandbox when people can constantly showcase not only like in this conference just for two days and that's it. So and we have, guess what, we have many countries that had a post war experience to actually to rebuild something or the current technologies they want to use and deploy so this is why for them Ukraine is a test bed to deploy something they've never been deployed globally yet and of course the ongoing events and convention center in order to bring the the bright minds globally to actually to build the content but also have a practical side of it because if the company have an experience they want to actually implement it so everybody comes there will actually see what they done already and also ongoing project or ongoing deployments in Ukraine as well all over of the place and also the all the projects inside Ukraine and globally you can showcase there in order to have this dedicated place on ongoing basis so this is the first project first set of buildings as a part of the bigger pilot projects and also we're talking to different the stakeholders that already have the implementations of different parts of this and globally from techno parks to the some industrial parks to the educational facilities and so on and so on in order to be part of this master planning and so they can actually implement what they want as a part of the bigger projects because we we are managing the master planning and now we're looking for the partners they want to build some or implement what they want as a part of this bigger project in the Kyiv region so we're very open to talk to the to the different stakeholders different developers urbanist investors and so on and so on everybody wants to to implement something welcome to talk to us in order to our team we'll see how we can make it happen together. -Thanks. And what do you think what do you need to succeed in
these projects. We need the people we need access to resources and we need the people that are capable to implement projects i would say and this is the reason why we are here and that's the reason why we're talking to the all the community related to the city developments smart city and other relevant topics we have been discussing because it's very complex very complex job to do right because you need to have a different the skill set of the people in order to make this complex product as a city itself. - uh yeah great! And what about social experiments I see a lot of gadgets so some narrow decisions like a product to solve some small problem but what about social experiments in this city how will be different the life in new cities from what we used to. Oh, it's a very complex question. And this is what i'm referring to experimenting because of course there are different ideas from the sharing resources from the super app that not only serve the citizens.. For example in Ukraine we have the super app that 25 million ukrainians use on a daily basis and they have more than 100 services already there very different ones that that makes the life of the people easier. - Government services.
yeah different government services but also the different financial services data related services and so on so on so it's even beyond the government services right so it's related to community and so on so on so how to have the super app that actually serve the the interest of the of the citizens rather to have dozens of different apps which is not uh related to each other. It's number one. Secondly how you build another layer of the governance okay so we're not there yet right how to actually make the the community and the decision making process are transparent with actually citizens not using the intermediaries right because now the system is like you need to delegate someone to be the government da da da right so but the how about the the majority of the services or decision maker to make an actually direct in order to serve the communities and guess what the technologies are out there and also the internal laws can be implemented internal laws based on the community desire you don't need to have only the the federal parliament or country parliament to manage the country the the citizens can come up with internal constitution and the laws in order to to address the issues they want to address of course the it could be done by majority of the laws or whatever the community decide yeah imagine that the any question of the community wants to bring it up right that is possible and of course my uh for the decision making right and then and the last piece is like how you experiment with different economical engagements if community will decide guess what we want to use our uh internal fund we're going to back it up and then we're going to track the the the uh bright talents the entrepreneurs and if entrepreneurs are doing something in our lab or now facilities and by the way we also as a mentor can contribute to this and then the entrepreneur will be will make a deal but when once I going to be successful then i will give back to community right part of my wealth, part of my profits. Whatever. I'm going to contribute back to community in order to support the other other entrepreneurs. It's just like small example how the agreements between the community and entrepreneurs between the the other talents can work with a new system not only the old tax system but actually how to make this civil agreements between the different people in order how the community will attract them will help them in the very beginning of their life journey or the professional journey but also having in mind they're going to contribute back to the community in order to support the the other initiatives the community wants to support, right? You don't need to have the central government for that it's just a decision of the community and it's like civil agreement between them and with the external people and then many things are possible. To drive the communities drive the cities
and make them sustainable and many other things. -And how close we are to this step.. How close? We already started the projects - this is how close we are. And everybody is welcome to join us of course I can talk for hours what we are working on but obviously we not only put in the blueprint for you we can put in the opportunity for you and then attract people that can actually in many layers of this city as the product can actually contribute and bring their ideas, as a test bed, as an experiment and to see what is working what is not working how to make it work and some other things. So we're not just putting it like or saying we know we it all what we're saying is come to us talk to us and let's do it together let's do something good based on your experience based on your previous work background etc and try to make it together and they actually deploy it as a real projects as a real city. So that's why. So let's do it together! Let's do something good! And please reach out to us anytime it's Mission on Earth. We're building
the new cities in the Ukraine, everybody's welcome, welcome to join us, because Ukraine is going to be and the city in Ukraine are international project so everybody's welcome to join us and let's do it together. Yeah, great, Thanks Andrey. thank you so much yeah see you yeah likewise let's do something good cheers bye bye
2024-07-29 19:45
