Questions for the investment community
The federal government’s Smart City Plan, with a follow-up $75 million in grants as well as its City Deals, is stimulating a more strategic approach towards smart cities. In all, there are a dozen cities in Australia that have a solid smart strategy in place, backed up by high-level city leadership. There is a Smart City Industry Board, as well as an R&D board, both aimed at collaborating with cities to develop the right business models.
We need to move beyond the current piecemeal ‘death by pilot’ projects to proper large-scale well-funded smart city models. Following some of the developments in Europe – where pension funds are becoming interested in long-term city-based infrastructure platforms – it is important to understand the requirements of Australian investment companies, to enable entities like these to consider participating.
We are working with the three levels of government, as well as with the business and R&D community, to develop national and international collaboration models, and would be interested to hear from the investment community on how to best develop plans that would attract their attention and interest in these projects.
Paul Budde
Looking forward to your ideas, suggestions and comments: paul@paulbudde.com