Hi #smartcommunity friends! In this episode of The Smart Community Podcast, we welcome back Scott Shepard who you may remember from Episode 139 in 2019. Scott is an urban planner with Iomob – The Internet of Mobility currently based in Lisbon, Portugal and ready to talk about all things mobility. Scott first tells us about his passion for cities, places and people and how these link together with mobility and transport. As Scott is based in Portugal, he discusses the contrast and comparison in urban planning between the US and Europe, and how he looks for best practices for sustainable urbanism this way, we then go back to micromobility in 2019 and where it was at the last time Scott and I spoke.  

We then talk about digital communication and digital trust and how these have shifted, as well as the focus now on human centric action and neighbourhood focused mobility as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. We talk more about the pandemic and the impacts it has had on our urban and digital environments and how some of the temporary emergency based interventions can be implemented into society long term. Scott then talks about intermodality and the need to think beyond the silos of individual modality, before we discuss how public needs are changing, and in terms of transport how their behaviour can be influenced for better sustainable mobility outcomes. 

We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of technologies such as electric vehicles, hyperloops, air shuttles, air taxis and personal autonomy and whether these are sustainable, scalable and the real future of mobility. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, as much as we enjoyed making it! 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode 

• Scott’s background in urban planning 
• His passion for cities, places and people but mainly for mobility and transport and how these all link together 
• How being based in Portugal allows Scott to compare and contrast the difference in urban planning between the US and Europe and can look for best practices in sustainable urbanism
• The micromobility hype and scooter share and a refresher of where it was at in 2019
• Digital communication and digital trust and how these have shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic 
• The focus on human centric action and neighbourhood focused mobility due to social distancing and restrictions enforced as a result of COVID-19
• How the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the urban and digital environments, and how do societies moving forward find an equilibrium in these environments 
• How some of the temporary emergency based interventions during the pandemic can be implemented into societies long term 
• Intermodality and thinking beyond silos of individual modality
• How public needs are changing and how their behaviour can be influenced for better sustainable mobility outcomes in Smart Communities 
• The emerging trends of technologies like electric vehicles, hyperloops, air shuttles, air taxis and personal autonomy and whether these are sustainable, scalable and the real future of mobility 

Quotes:

“A bit of my personal background is kind of comparing and contrasting from a transatlantic perspective of urbanism, mobility, as well as urban planning on both sides of the Atlantic and seeing what models work, what don’t, and how we can look towards the future for best practices in terms of sustainable urbanism.”

“COVID has struck a chord in terms of finding an opportunity for changing our physical and digital environments.” 

“COVID has exposed the inequities socio economically in our society of the employment sector, and those that can utilise the attributes and benefits of a flexible digital economy can and will and have that option, but others that are in other economic sectors such as the service sector, and other heavy manufacturing construction, do not have that opportunity.” 

“I think it’s important to think about how we structure our society as well as our cities in the built environment, such that some of these temporary interventions by urbanists by policymakers and urban planners are sustained permanently in the long term.” 

“[Mobility] can’t be thought of as passenger centric and either a public authority or public agency, and no fault of the public, because I’m very much supportive of the government, viewing individuals as passengers or riders, but they have to be viewed now, as customers and customers participating in a marketplace and exchange of services in a public and private manner. And public transport is just one mode that stitches into this entire offer for a consumer that will choose to participate in a multimodal journey versus using their own automobile.” 

“More of the non tech futurism perspective for mobility is simply more human scaled, neighbourhood based active transportation, walking and cycling and fitting those modes into our multimodal journeys, and basically, boosting public transport not moving away from public transit.” 

“What are the desired outcomes, then work from there, don’t let tech drive things for tech sake.” 

“We need to think of identifying our problem sets and our desired outcomes, and the technology will flow from there and I think that is where we have gotten Smart Cities, as well as micromobility, even mobility as a service all wrong last five years and we need to flip the script very quickly now in light of COVID.” 

Links

Episode 139  with Scott Shepard 

Connect

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Scott via LinkedIn  or Twitter  

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community  

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.