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NAZIV RADA:
Building the Future
Ime i prezime: Oto Novacek
Država: Slovačka
Grad: Bratislava
Kratka biografija:
My name is Oto Nováček and as an student of Architecture and Urban Design I was trained to analyse, understand and create new environment. As such, I found out that ‘’knowing is not enough, we must apply’’ (J.W. Goethe), and so in recent years I was focusing mainly on gathering of theoretical knowledge, which I have applied on different levels.
Therefore during my studies it was developed by me incentive to improve the surrounding environment. I was able to fully understand term of active citizenship and became part of it in cities such as Brussels, Hamburg or Bratislava. Furthermore I got in touch with problems of minorities on both racial and socio-economical level and I have engaged in projects such as social housing for Roma populace in Slovakia or slum upgrading in Kenya.
The vision of better live drives hundreds of thousands and put them into the move. From villages to the cities, or across continents, it is obvious that settling of Earth enters its final act. For a first time in history, urban population outrun rural population (World Urbanization Prospect – see Townsend). It is no wonder that cities, are growing faster than ever. And it is because they have ability to offer something for everyone, but only when they are created by everyone (Jacobs 1961). Cities, as Townsend describes it, accelerate time by compressing space, and let us do more with less of both (Townsend 2014:1). And this ability was even multiplied with beginning of information era. New technologies made them more valuable and effective. Smart City thus became a basic unite of today’s urbanization. But it would be wrong to perceive Smart City as a plain product of technical innovations. New markets are rising and new types of behaviour are emerging hand in hand with technological advances. This intersection of three is omnipresent in every contemporary human settlement and as such, it has the biggest impact on today’s urbanization. It makes us to re-think the opportunities and challenges of building Smart Cities.
