I got a chance to watch the TED video presentation by the Mayor of Rio di Janeiro in Brazil, Eduardo Paes, about his recommendations on the City of the future. Rio di Janeiro also has won the bid to conduct the 2016 Summer Olympics, beating the top challenges from Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago.
Eduardo speaks on TED about his views on how to build city of the future. He listed four commandments as a must for the city of the future.
I have pasted the four commandments here below for easy reference (video is also provided below).
- City of the future has to be environment friendly
- City of the future has to deal with mobility and integration
- City of the future has to be socially integrated
- City of the future has to use technology to be present
A few points impressed me a lot.
Most importantly, the third point in which he talks about how to deal with the slums (or Favelas) in each city. Eduardo comes up with ideas to improve the standard of living in the slums, by bringing high quality amenities such as education, technology, health care, transportation, etc into these areas, thus helping them tightly integrate into the society over a period of time. That was the wow factor for me in this presentation.
Another interesting thing to note was the way in which he showed the working version of the fourth commandment, ie to use technology available today to manage the city. Eduardo initiated a live video call with his team in Rio and showed how the entire traffic system in Rio was monitored remotely.
Eduardo also often refers to the population (the people) as an advantage. This is a good change from having heard about over population just as a hinderance to growth. He treats them as valuable assets who will contribute to the growth of the city.
In my view, this video is a very good example of how you can structure your presentation really well to communicate your ideas in less than fifteen minutes. He used a combination of bulleted points, statistics, visuals as well as a live demo – all focusing on the core idea – City of the future. I highly encourage you to watch the video if you like to fine tune your presentation skills.