As urban populations surge, cities around the world are searching for innovative ways to address the complex mobility challenges that affect us all.
Ford Motor Company presents the City of Tomorrow Symposium, a daylong series of conversations and hands-on workshops with leaders in technology, design and the public sector. The symposium is dedicated to exploring challenges, opportunities and emerging solutions that will shape the future of our cities.
Conversations and workshops include:
Designing the future of connected mobility with Jim Hackett, president and CEO of Ford, and Alex McDowell, award-winning designer and director of USC’s World Building Institute
The fight for safer, more livable streets with Janette Sadik-Khan, one of the world’s foremost authorities on transportation and urban transformation, and principal at Bloomberg Associates
Exploring trust and humanity in the face of a changing mobility landscape, hosted by Alex Blumberg, CEO and co-founder, Gimlet Media
Hands-on workshops imagining solutions for shared streets with Ford Smart Mobility’s Greenfield Labs
As self-driving cars take to the streets around the world, it’s our cities and their residents that will first feel the profound impact of the technology. In this session, you will hear three perspectives – a technology developer, government official and pedestrian advocate – on what is needed to enable this new form of urban mobility. Then, you will have the chance to join the discussion as Rebecca Lindland, executive analyst with Kelley Blue Book, leads a conversation around what it will take to integrate autonomous vehicles into our cities.
Speakers: Rebecca Lindland, Kelley Blue Book; Karina Ricks, City of Pittsburgh; Bryan Salesky, Argo AI; Shin-pei Tsay, Gehl Institute
People aren’t the only things moving within the City of Tomorrow. Transportation and logistics guru, Dr. Anne Goodchild, guides a conversation on the innovations and inputs required to support new, reliable models for the delivery of goods in today’s urban milieu.
Speakers: Anne Goodchild, University of Washington; Daphne Carmeli, Deliv; Donald Comer, FedEx; Laura Richards, DC Department of Transportation; Kevin Vasconi, Domino's Pizza
How can we flip the paradigm of our streets from a “me first” space to a shareable place? Ford’s Greenfield Labs facilitates an intimate, interactive workshop that reinvents how we think about our streets – giving us a common framework in which to make choices and find solutions that benefit all citizens.
Note that registration for this session is now closed.
Traffic and transportation maestro Sam Schwartz and friends will explore the idea of how cities, government and the private sector can best work to together to engage with and learn from residents to identify pressing urban mobility needs and their potential solutions - connecting the dots between government, private-sector, not-for-profit organizations and the public they serve.
Speakers: Sam Schwartz, Sam Schwartz Transportation Consultants; Adam Conner, Slack; Mark de la Vergne, City of Detroit; Gillian Gillett, City of San Francisco; John Kwant, Ford
How can we flip the paradigm of our streets from a “me first” space to a shareable place? Ford’s Greenfield Labs facilitates an intimate, interactive workshop that reinvents how we think about our streets – giving us a common framework in which to make choices and find solutions that benefit all citizens.
Note that registration for this session is now closed.
From walking to riding to driving, cities are grappling with the need to seamlessly connect an increasingly complex web of transportation choices to get citizens moving. Equal parts urbanist and futurist, Greg Lindsay gathers the top minds in mobility, behavior economics and data to explore how we efficiently and effectively weave together multiple modes of transportation for the common good.
Speakers: Greg Lindsay, New Cities Foundation; Leigh Amaro, Mastercard; Kelly Peters, BEworks; Jonathan Simkin, Swiftly; Ali Vahabzadeh, Chariot
Cities around the world are making power plays to meet tomorrow’s energy demands. Stanford's James Ehrlich and others will lead a discussion rooted in the opportunities and risks involved in innovating our aging grid to share in a more powerful and sustainable future.
Speakers: James Ehrlich, Stanford; Austin Ashe, GE; Justin Calmus, HackerOne; Steve Malnight, PG&E; Matt Petersen, LA CleanTech Incubator
Self-driving vehicles could improve how we live, yet 75 percent of Americans don’t believe the technology is safe. Gimlet Media founder Alex Blumberg will lead a session on the human side of getting autonomous vehicles on the road – exploring how auto and tech companies can build trust with consumers.
Panelists will touch on why people tend to be comfortable with some forms of automation (e.g. cruise control) but not others, how to translate human cues into the functionality of autonomous vehicles, and whether getting a driver’s license will one day stop being a rite of passage.
Speakers: Alex Blumberg, Gimlet Media; Heidi Braunstein, FUTURE | FUTURE; Derek Koehler, University of Waterloo; Selina Pan, Ford Research & Innovation Center