“To ensure Australian cities are globally competitive, productive, sustainable, livable and socially inclusive and are well placed to meet future challenges and growth”.

But this objective is focussed on the present state of our cities. What about the future? What kind of city would you like to be living in by 2040?

The innovation lab, a project created by Anthony Howard of Confidere Group and Janine Cahill of Future Journeys, brought together a group of experts from diverse backgrounds to exchange insights and ideas about the future of Australian cities.

This collaborative approach aimed to foster a broad and innovative perspective on the future of our cities through in-depth discussion and the use of foresight tools. Key values, principles and ideals that are required to shape this future city were also discussed.

With the COAG objective in mind, participants conversed about their desired future states by identifying their skills and passions, and how they could be applied to co-creating city living in 2040.

Some of these visions included a focus on community, sustainable living, public spaces and industries being more interconnected, and a stronger reliance on AI technologies.

Once the group had created a vision of their ideal city, both positive and negative implications were discussed for each key trend using a wheel analysis.

Strong key trends included: an increasing emphasis on coworking; food and water crises resulting from population growth; and businesses focussing on being of service to society and the environment in addition to profits.

This wheel analysis formed the foundation for a 3D model of the future city based upon these trends. Creating a model of the city helped the group to create a tangible vision of their aspirations and identify areas which require further discussion.

To conclude the workshop, the participants constructed a timeline which highlighted the processes and changes that would be required in order to make their city a reality by 2040.

The workshop, which was held at Mirvac in Sydney, provided the participants with new ways of thinking about the future of our cities in a collaborative and creative environment.

I’m Gemma and every week I’ll be keeping you abreast of all things climate change.

I have just finished a Bachelor of Science in Biology at Macquarie University. My interests include conservation, zoology, ecology and climate change. During my degree, I also developed a passion for science writing, especially for an audience with no scientific background. This dual love for both science and writing soon led to an internship at Cosmos, an Australian science magazine. Here I learned how to translate complex, jargon dense scientific material into entertaining and informative articles that could be enjoyed by a mainstream audience. I believe that this skill is becoming an essential step to bridging the chasm between science and the general public, which is imperative at this time of global change. I intend to continue developing this skill to help inspire people into action.

I look forward to contributing to the Future Journeys blog!

Australia is on the cutting edge of efforts to shift to a low carbon economy. Creating climate wealth is our opportunity to “balance the earth books”. Through leadership and transformational change, businesses will create partnerships with passionate innovators, leading to a blueprint for success for generations to come.

Australia is at the forefront of innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit is good – the potential is here for a small group of innovators to lead the way in achieving significant carbon offsets in conjunction with the Carbon War Room.

One of the top working tracks is Agriculture, Food and Carbon (AFC) and some people are predicting that 50% of our produce will come from urban agriculture by 2050. The following is a summary of the AFC working track outcomes for the Creating Climate Wealth conference held in Sydney on 7th – 8th July 2011.

Agriculture, Food and Carbon (AFC) Working Track Outcomes

With a common objective of “a practical, integrated, robust resilient roadmap to get to the future efficiently, collaboratively and within agreed timeframes”, the AFC working group identified a shared vision as follows:

AFC can achieve gigaton scale in 2020 by:

• Widespread adoption of community sustainability practises that regenerate the land
• A large scale research project to improve soil condition
• Communicating the impact if we don’t change
• Giving farmers carbon for looking after soil
• To use existing farm infrastructure (farmers, graziers, crops, grasses and livestock) to improve farm productivity and sequest carbon at a gigaton scale in the near term future
• Create partnerships with farmers including all stakeholders
• Having an impact in 2 to 3 years
• Selling commercial opportunities for new income streams
• Change management practices

The AFC working group mapped the current industry, by looking at:

• System components i.e. system supply chain, scientists, universities, farmers (Corporate etc), Government, Industry associations, Entrepreneurs
• Key Players, Relationships, Challenges, Barriers, Bottlenecks, Issues
• Gaps, leverage points, opportunities, enablers

The mapping process identified three main gaps to success:

• Soil condition
• Energy balance and agriculture
• Attitudinal change

The overall approach identified by the working group identified the need for:

• A commercial enterprise generating agricultural and environmental benefits
• The Carbon For Food (C4F) campaign to engage and celebrate with stakeholders
• A high profile road show to mobilise capital

The working group established a Roadmap to Success, summarised as follows:

• Plan: Develop scalable investment plan, engage high profile C4F suppliers, prepare roadshow
• Sow: On the ground resources, marketing movement underway: hit the road
• Harvest: ROI social capital, knowledge, smart policy and international rollout

And key activities and timeframes were determined:

• 3 months: Business, Sponsors and Stake holders , Plans, Launch event
• 12 months: Audit, road show, rollout
• 3 years: social capital, carbon trading , yield, business model proven etc

Geoff Edwards, Leadership Coach

www.geoffedwards.net

President of the global Earth Day Network Kathleen Rogers is in Sydney to spread the movement’s inspiring work which includes the ‘Billion Acts of Green‘ and ‘Women and the Green Economy‘ campaigns.

The name of this School is Kikarwali School (located about 32 miles on the main road from Sri  Ganga Nagar to Raisingh Nagar or 8 miles from Raisingh Nagar). There are 19 students in the 6th grade and 29 students in the 7th grade. They need 55 laptops including for the teachers and server plus solar panels. OLPC India is providing 40 laptops. Some of these are funded by TiE Sydney, some by Aastha Foundation and the rest by Satish Jha. OLPC India needs to raise the remaining funds to make it a successful project.

OLPC means One Laptop Per Child and is an initiative to provide the poorest children in the world with education. The project provides some of the most technologically advanced laptops with free open source software and teacher training for schools at the cheapest price – $300. It’s hard to believe that this includes training, rollout and the laptop, but it is true and successful. So far 2 million laptops have rolled out across South America, Asia and indigenous communities in Australia.

Now, someone might argue that we should be giving the poorest children food as they need it more than education. Of course we should give them the basic needs to survive. Nevertheless OLPC is a great initiative to give access to education which will ultimately help as those kids can use their education to improve life in their communities. OLPC therefore is a help to self help. Research shows the laptops increase attendance at school and kids stay in class longer. Educational outcomes are something like skills in 6 months is equivalent of 5 years of traditional schooling and kids love them! What a great way for the developing world to catch up on education, don’t you think?

OLPC India ran a fundraiser in December 2009 in Sydney in order to be able to provide this support in Indian schools. Satish Jha, head of OLPC India was speaking at the event and OLPC Australia provided some of the laptops to play with. The event was appropriately themed Bollywood, so it was a great evening with good food, good entertainment and inspiring speeches. There was also a lot of support from the Sydney community to donate prizes for a silent auction, for example Kim McGuiness from Network Central donated tickets for breakfast events and Ilka Brookes from Marziplanner generously donated her award-winning wedding planner software. The event raised A$10.000 which equals about 30 laptops that can now be provided to the Kikarwali School in India.

In March the OLPC India team will visit the school and report back on the outcomes.

It was a successful year which established the FISH@6 workshops as a platform across all Future Journeys programs and therefore as a link between different industries, ages and business genres where there are opportunities for collaboration which creates a space for innovation.

For 2010 FISH@6 workshops will run every 2nd Wednesday of the month throughout the year. With the support of the Department of Industry and Investment we are able to stay in the same venue on level 47 in the MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney CBD.
The monthly Innovation Workshop will feature some interesting topics again this year. Have a look at the FISH@6 section for more details.

FISH@6 is a complimentary continuous innovation program supplementing Future Journeys’ Corporate Programs with an ongoing opportunity to get access to innovation tools, and to give  a platform to collaborate with a broader audience with the purpose to bring innovation in Australia forward.

The format of the workshops will remain the same as in 2009 having some great speakers presenting around the topic which then opens up discussions on the application of the presented ideas.The last part of the session remains dedicated to the Innovation Challenge where creative tools, foresight methods and sustainability principles are used to gain new insights and new ideas for new products, services or ways of interaction.

Also in 2010 FISH@6 aspires to create a more innovative and sustainable future.

Every Second Wednesday of the month
6pm – 8pm
at Department of Industry and Investment
(formerly Department of State and Regional Development)
Level 47, MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney CBD