As Planners our responsibilities include Planning for the Habitat Future – with a diverse spectrum of parameters on Economics, Environment, Governance, Transportation, Social, Housing, Work, Leisure, Education, Transport, Water, Power, Waste, Recycling (circular), Digital Systems, Communication – an endless target list to plan for.

This discussion is to raise awareness and identify the roles and professionalism for such a complex task – Planning, Developing and Managing Future. The responsibilities of Planners do not end with “Plan”, as citizen expect the plans to do the ‘magic’ in their cities and regions.

The process of development, operation and management is often left to ‘non-planners’, as surrogates to make the plans successful – an inefficient scenario globally. Often the negative outcomes are passed back to planner’s desk for ‘quick-fix’. If planners take the responsibility for all outcomes, the planning profession on ‘development delivery and supply-chain’ process would need more power on education and have ‘greater role & responsibilities’ in the civic bodies of cities and regions.

Creating and using the right Technology for Planning, while dealing with mostly legacy Processes, Policies, Practices, Information-Silos and complexities are challenge for Planners.

Responsible Technology for the Future

In recent years, the technology developments have had unprecedented rapid parallel commercial developments on IT Hardware, Software and Solutions. But, since Planning and development horizons are long-term operations, a judicial use of selected technologies is advisable.

The transitions on Data Structures, Database Versions, software and UX/User Interfaces compatibilities etc. – many of these systems fast attain bottlenecks for Digital Transformation projects. The evolution of ‘Connected Cities and e-Governance’ are adding complexities to the existing legacy system frameworks.

Planning & Development – Industry Trends

With the physical development and growth, the associated supply-chain stakeholders increasingly use advanced systems and technologies to stay commercially relevant. The AEC Industry embraced the CAD, BIM, VDC, workflow automation, business-intelligence and standardisation. Those trends influenced the plan submissions and permit processes as continuous chain-operation, rather than sequential processes. The Land Use, Transportation, Urban Design, Planning and Permitting process need to entail those Development Industry Digital Transformation to facilitate agile, interventions and guidance to the sector.
Smart City – Opportunities

With any transformation programs, the impact on resources and the opportunity creation are key success factors. The Digital Transformation attempts to improve on efficiency, optimisation and create new process models. For Planners, the technology-driven Smart City trends can help remodel existing Cities/Region and create new opportunities.

The Smart City Transformation provides enormous opportunities to positively influence resource monitoring, conservation, operations, management and sustainability. When compared to manual tools and processes, the new connected and intelligent Smart Cities offer new development potentials. In the past, there was obscure ‘resource use’, but now they are transformed to real-time dashboard systems. With the Smart City Systems, the data and ‘process transparency’ would improve KPIs for mobility, energy, infrastructure, service, conservation areas.

Digital Twins & Transformations

With the IT Solutions, hardware, Analytics, Data Science trends, the Digital Transformation of cities and regional planning profession is certain – it is NOT about when, but HOW. The system architecture, frameworks and the models used for automations are more important compared to ICT capital investments.

Without suitable Digital Transformation System Architecture in civic agencies and planning institutions, the budget may be misused by frequent software, system upgrades/updates as ‘patchworks’, without positive impact for citizens.

The Digital Twin trends focus on ‘hardscape feature mimic’, using aerial/satellite and geospatial systems with visualisation and intelligence. Instead of being a ‘Digital Play Station’, it is more crucial to build those Digital Twins with professional planning and design features for planners. The Digital Twins need features like data-stream analytics, predictive simulation, decision support, scenario planning, capacity augmentation, real-time mobility-data, resilience design, population and land-use allocation, resource/energy metering, financial budgeting, urban design visualisation etc.

Smart Environmental Planning

In the context of climate change, the importance of ‘Design with Nature’ and environmental planning is increasing. There are more frequent weather extremes and natural conditions like sea-level rise, flooding, hurricane/cyclones, droughts, ecosystem degradation, wildfire etc. across regions. The environmental exercises need an adaptative Smart Environmental Plan and mitigation process with a connected ‘nature sensors’ network – a connected real-time data collection and analysis process for Adaptive Smart Environmental Sustainability. There are mature technologies on IoT, ipCamera, Edge Computing, UAV/UWV (air/water), Analytics, Dashboards etc. for ‘Smart Environmental Planning’.

Connected Future

The dynamic and evolving cities and regions, and the connected future generates high data volumes and intelligence. The development in science, technology and transparencies related to development has positive influence on resilience, liveability, sustainability of habitat. The upstream development process trails need to connect with the downstream endpoints for efficient and effective outcomes.

The Millennials and GenerationZ culture-shifts needs rapid-responses, instant-gratification, faster door2door mobility options, sustainability, comforts etc. These trends are pushing Planners to use predictive/prescriptive analytics, agile systems. The industry system architecture needs more data-stream based design features, instead of static/rested data models.

Plan and Deliver the Future

When the underlying city plans and processes are NOT ready for ‘connected smart, resilient, liveable and sustainable model, the Digital Transformation or Digital Twin would create a ‘perpetual-replica of the existing inefficiencies’, rather than resolutions or transform the Cities/regions. The stakeholders need immersive and participatory planning, development, VDC processes for ‘future-proofing development’.

Summary

Before any Digital Transformation or Digital Twin Transformation, it is very important to review and change the structures, procedures, roles and processes on underlying ‘Silo’ conditions. The data, roles, functions, IT systems, delivery, physical designs, plans, support services, supply-chain etc. usually have legacy ‘silo’ conditions. The profession needs to adopt ‘Future-Proof’ industry standards, processes, and management practices.

The downstream processes that are usually rests with non-professionals which leads to false media outcomes. The role of Technology for Planning is very important and more improvements on the Role of Planners are required for an effective and efficient development, operations and management in the Cities & Regions. With an improved planning and development supply-chain capacity, negative atmosphere at some civic bodies could be transformed to become positive Planning.