Hi #smartcommunity friends! In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a great conversation with Ghazaleh Sadat Ghoreishi. Ghazaleh is currently an urban planner and PhD researcher of urban planning at the university of Tehran, Iran. Ghazaleh starts by telling us about her background in Geomatics engineering and surveying, her transition into urban planning and her current work as a PhD scholar at the University of Tehran. She then tells us what sparked her interest in the Smart Communities space, her fascination for how technology can change peoples lives, what a Smart Community is to her and we then discuss how Iran has embraced the Smart Community concept. We talk about the importance of community intelligence in Smart Communities before Ghazaleh tells us about some of the projects she has been working on recently. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of autonomous technology and how it can affect people’s lives, and the co-creation of cities by empowering citizens more. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it! 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• Ghazaleh’s background in Geomatics engineering and surveying
• Her transition to urban planning during her masters to now being a PhD scholar at the University of Tehran 
• What sparked her interest in the Smart Communities space
• Her fascination for how technology can change peoples lives
• What a Smart Community is to her
• How Iran embraces the Smart Communities concept and what things are happening in this space there
• The importance of community intelligence in Smart Communities 
• Some current projects Ghazaleh is working on
• The emerging trends of autonomous technology and how it can affect people lives, and the co creation of cities by empowering citizens more 

Quotes: 

“I did a project [during my] bachelor’s about the integration of citizen expansion with cellular automata. So, I got to the conclusion that cities expansion is beyond the force of the nature and it is the will of people and authority to live somewhere.”

“During my PhD, we had this bad experience [with a] fire in Tehran, an old commercial structure was burnt intentionally in 2017, if I remember it correctly, and 16 firefighters were killed by that. So as an urban planner, I thought, What can I do for those people? the help of technology, the internet and it’s a Smart City. And now I am doing my PhD research about the Smart City in forms of urban resilience.”

“The internet can give us something more than the usual abilities. And it can have this connection with the social context.” 

“I think a Smart City is experiencing what we have expressed about the planning itself.“

“A Smart City should not only be in the form of technology, but the real intentions of people, and [people] should be [involved in every step] to achieving a Smart City.”

“What fascinated us in that city was the people because they have this clear perspective for the city. And they know what they want for life. So we planned for them based on and their own visions.”

“We should concentrate on the self-creation of technology and the city together by the people, and the delegation of this power to the citizens as they will, some day in the future I hope, have the ability to control the machines on their own.”

Links:

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

Connect with Ghazaleh via LinkedIn or via email: gh.ghorashi@gmail.com 

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