Welcome to this year's Future Cities program!

A special message from our event partner, Community Heart & Soul.

In 2016, Columbus won the first ever U.S. Smart City Challenge. Focused on leveraging emerging technologies, the ‘smart city’ model promised a new era of city planning and development. But with varying levels of success in Columbus — and across the nation — ‘smart cities’ were called into question, and amid the COVID-19 pandemic had to shift in priorities. What does the term ‘smart city’ mean today? And how should leaders work to incorporate the promise of the smart city into the cities of tomorrow?

To become a city of the future, leaders must understand the new tools and technologies coming on to the scene. More than that, they must understand how to incorporate new tools into existing frameworks to streamline operations, drive innovation and better meet the needs of their constituents. In this interactive session, Route Fifty welcomes an expert to discuss how they’ve leveraged new technologies to become more than a smart city.

Thanks for tuning in to this year’s Future Cities program!