L.A. Among Cities Starting to Get Smart About Technology

What will it take to make Los Angeles a “smart community”? Several California and Los Angeles political officials have recently taken up this challenge, and their ideas could shape the future of the city and the state.

The definition of “smart community” depends on whom you ask. Government officials tend to regard a so-called smart community as one where government services are offered online. Others view the idea more expansively, suggesting that a smart community is one where the Internet is integrated into nearly everything, from homes to schools to commercial buildings.

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Bob Margett (R-Arcadia) have co-sponsored a bill this year called the Smart California Act, or SB 2038. The bill would create a state interagency commission to assist communities in developing smart community strategies. It includes a funding provision, for $9.75 million, that would provide grants to cities and towns that want to deliver government services and information electronically.

Because of budget concerns, this bill didn’t make it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, but Polanco says it’s still alive in conference committee--its fate will be decided within the next few weeks.

The bill has bipartisan support and it’s been endorsed by the American Electronics Assn., library organizations and several high-tech companies.

It’s opposed by the Wilson administration, which cites other technology spending priorities, such as fixing the state’s year 2000 problems. But Polanco is cautiously optimistic that he and his supporters will convince other legislators that smart communities are a key to California’s future prosperity.

At the same time, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas have convened a Telecommunications Task Force for the city, chaired by Gary Wilson, chairman of the board of Northwest Airlines. This task force, which has met twice so far, is charged with helping the city leverage telecommunications and computer networks to improve city services and foster economic development.

Both the state Legislature and the city’s task force have been assisted by the California Institute for Smart Communities (https://www.smartcommunities.org/cal/calcore.html) at San Diego State University and, specifically, by its chairman, John M. Eger, the former head of CBS Broadcasting and the recently appointed chairman of Gov. Pete Wilson’s California Commission on Information Technology.

When the Internet began to take off as a public communications and commercial medium about four years ago, a number of pundits declared that this was the beginning of the end for cities. “Death of the City” was a common headline for op-ed articles a few years ago.

The argument was that if people could live anywhere they wanted and work in virtual space instead of being tied to a geographic location, they would most likely live anywhere but in the city, choosing to escape crowding, traffic jams, crime and social decay.

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But cities have rebounded since then, experiencing both improving economies and reduced crime. And the Internet appears to be having a nearly opposite effect from what some pundits predicted--it is revitalizing many urban centers, fostering new districts of highly skilled and talented “new media” entrepreneurs and workers. These people tend to be young, and young people gravitate to the amenities of urban life.

The new businesses are taking advantage of high-speed access to the Internet, which are available in high-density areas. And the fiercely competitive and rapidly evolving nature of Internet-based businesses mean that the old model of isolated, campus-like business complexes in suburbs is obsolete. The new model is one in which valuable employees are discovered in urban cafes, nightclubs, parties and other informal social gatherings.

These trends have produced zones such as Multimedia Gulch in San Francisco, in the formerly rundown area of China Basin, and Silicon Alley in New York City. These days, the exciting work in Seattle is found not in suburban Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft is headquartered, but downtown near Pioneer Square or Pike Street Market. In Austin, Texas, downtown Congress Avenue is experiencing a rebirth after the relocation of such hot multimedia companies as Human Code and Digital Anvil.

City planners are faced with two tasks. The first is developing policies that assist these new industries, which are typically made up of small, rapidly growing companies.

The second is to bring Internet access to low-income neighborhoods, such as those on either side of the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles. These two tasks are so different--one of meeting expanding demand and the other of generating demand--that the combination of the two poses a real challenge to planners and policymakers.

The Los Angeles task force has concentrated on the first task so far, developing a dialogue with people in the computer networking business in Los Angeles.

The city has unique assets and special problems: It has more “new media” professionals than New York City and San Francisco combined, an estimated 140,000 people, but they’re scattered throughout the metropolitan area instead of being concentrated in a single district.

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This makes it more difficult for L.A. officials to pursue targeted policies such as the ones New York City has adopted, which include assistance in the development of six “plug-and-go” buildings that provide built-in T1 lines to serve small Internet companies.

Instead, the Los Angeles task force has focused on streamlining business requirements. These include putting the business-permit filing process online and developing public-private partnerships to improve networking infrastructure.

To extend Internet access to low-income communities in Los Angeles, the city’s Information Technology Agency, headed by General Manager John Hwang, envisions a citywide network that goes to fire stations, libraries, police stations, recreation centers and schools. Hwang says that by building a network that reaches these public services, “people all over the city will begin to have some ability to reach [the Internet].”

Polanco and Hwang predict a migration of government services to computer networks, including permitting and licensing, welfare and food stamps, access to health information, “telementoring” for schoolchildren, connections for isolated senior citizens and communications with police, firefighters, social workers and city officials. Cities and towns all over the U.S. are experimenting with similar initiatives.

Behind the concept of “smart communities” is the belief that the success of cities in the digital age will depend on widespread “community competence” in the use of new information technologies. We have a long way to go before such competence is embedded in the life of cities like Los Angeles, but it’s heartening to learn that city and state officials are beginning to understand what’s required.