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 But since then, and particularly recently, master planned has been replaced by the idea of smart communities and newcities, architecturally inspired, energy efficient, with a comprehensive emphasis on the technology infrastructure to make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 worlds 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. Well discuss the themes Ive mentioned before, along with transportation, water, green architecture all in an effort not to just to support the worlds 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 were 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. Thats 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

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; todays technology in the hands of todays visionaries makes achieving that goal far more reachable than ever before. Seda Pumpyanskaya Vice President International Relations and Communications Skolkovo Foundation