🌱 Urban Tech Hall of Fame Inducts Agriculture
Hey everybody! Happy Urban Tech Thursday, the best day of the week for folks interested in tech and cities 🙌🏻.
Considering Saturday marks precisely six months since UT's first edition, I wanted to take time in today's edition to emphasize important context that connects all the topics we cover.
Going a bit simpler with today's piece will help articulate important themes that touch all of UT's analysis.
Bonus: It will also help you better understand why we picked the name Urban Tech (if it wasn't apparent).
To explain the connections between innovation and cities in a historical context, I created a tool or "set piece" (for fellow film nerds) to emphasize how innovation and cities are closely aligned: The Urban Tech Hall of Fame.
It's a tad cheesy, but an Urban Tech Hall of Fame doesn't honestly sound like the worst hall of fame to visit on vacation, so we will go with it until we find a better idea.
After the mini-piece, I also share a couple of pieces related to cities and tech that are perfect to bookmark for the weekend.
✅ Before going too far, some upcoming UT content to plug:
Wednesday, we recorded the first conversation for the Urban Tech Podcast. 💥
I spoke with Dr.Anja Jamrozik, a cognitive scientist focused on design in physical and digital environments. I think Anja's lens for design is truly unique. Through her cognitive science expertise, she has fantastic insights into how design choices connect to how humans think. The conversation will run on Thursday in the newsletter and on the podcast feed.
Podcast Links
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music| Youtube | In Browser
Also, other exciting podcast stuff — there is new, better music:
Okay, let’s get into today’s short edition.
Over 34 editions, and tens of thousands of words, we've examined various topics in Urban Tech. If you're new, go check out the archive to get a feel for the variety of issues we analyzed in our short time so far.
In many recent conversations with newer readers, I've learned some crucial context that UT is always applying in our analysis could be getting lost along the way.
Without proper context or hearing my stump speech on UT live, I think it is incredibly easy to assume the term "urban tech" refers only to companies like Uber, Airbnb, WeWork, Bird, etc., when we use it.
But, the idea and theme of "urban tech" that led to forming Urban Tech is rooted in a much broader notion than an ecosystem of similar tech companies working to solve urban problems.
Today's edition aims to set the record straight with some of the context I'm sharing with key stakeholders over the last few weeks.
The main goals for today:
You'll understand better what the term "urban tech" means to this publication
By understanding the ideas behind that term, you'll see the day to day analysis with a different lens and get more out of our work.
Here's a bit of the "elevator pitcher" I share with potential UT partners and sources since I think it's helpful:
I like to describe the content goal for the analysis as “connecting the dots of innovation in adjacent spaces like real estate, transportation, and logistics through analysis and storytelling.”
The content goal above comes from my personal thesis that cities' long-term story is inherently tied to the arc of innovation. The agriculture example is good at showing this idea.
Let’s use an example to bring the connections to life.
Enter the Urban Tech Hall of Fame.
The Induction Begins
The Urban Tech Hall of Fame recognizes the most impactful innovations throughout urban history.
Urban Tech will return to this series down the road for future inductions. Some early contenders for consideration include:
The city bus
Euclidean zoning
Modern Plumbing
In the future, for the series, we'll also add more tech spin to the analysis. For example, we'll highlight exciting companies or innovative policy ideas adjacent to the inductee.
While this first entry is shorter than the future entires, I think the case for the choice is pretty much a layup.
Main argument: The innovation of agriculture led to civilization's birth, which is pretty crucial for cities overall!
Civilization is a term we see all the time, so it’s worth remembering the term’s full definition:
A civilization is a complex human society, usually made up of different cities, with certain characteristics of cultural and technological development. In many parts of the world, early civilizations formed when people began coming together in urban settlements. [source]
The themes in this definition pretty well overlap with all the topics we cover weekly at Urban.
Now, let’s articulate agriculture’s high-level historical context. I’m leaning on National Geographic to give us the quick, 30,000 feet historical summary for why agriculture changed everything for humans:
Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the "Neolithic Revolution." Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favor of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilizations grew, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population rocketed — from some five million people 10,000 years ago, to more than seven billion today. [source]
Slection Criteria for Induction
Urban Tech decided for the first hall of fame induction, the topic should be a classic one is easy to connect to the long-term themes of cities and urbanism.
Given the characteristics of agriculture listed above, the induction was an unanimous choice 🙌
Hopefully, this example featuring agriculture helpes connect some of the more abstract ideas we have at Urban Tech that color all of our analysis.
If anything, try to remember that we always try to prove how the story of cities is closely tied to the arc of innovation. Most of the time, we look at contemporary examples, but even historical examples in Urban Tech will have this component/theme.
A Weekend Read + 1️⃣ Listen 🎧
1. New York Magazine’s Curbed: A send-off to the many NYC places, big and small, that closed in 2020
I'm going to start the weekend reading recs with a gutting story because I think it's essential.
The team at Curbed captures the tragic impact of the pandemic on NYC's local retail landscape.
Even if you're not a New Yorker, I think reading the piece helps understand what local culture and community elements stand to be lost because of the pandemic. This phenomenon isn't isolated to New York City. It's playing out across the country in cities of all sizes.
A wake for the places that defined our lives here — that gave us community and let us try on new identities in return for our money. The bars where we came together for after-work drinks, the boxing gym where everybody thinks they’re in an action movie, the gallery that trusted you to build a cloud, the coffee shop where you were left alone to read, the restaurant with the full bar where you’d find yourself trying to eat after an all-night bender, the place that was so of its moment that it became a relic and then (deservedly) an icon. All gone. And sadly, probably, more to come before the city returns to its purpose: a place of gathering.
2. Big Technologuy Podcast: Ex-Uber Chief Business Officer Emil Michael on Autonomous Driving, Saudi Arabia, and Uber’s Culture
The second piece I'm sharing for the weekend is from Alex Kantrowitz, founder of Big Technology.
It's a recent conversation with former Uber Chief Business Officer Emil Michael on his podcast. If you're unfamiliar with the name, Michael was a crucial figure within Uber who led essential strategic initiatives, like fundraising and public policy, underneath former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Honestly, part of the reason I'm sharing it is the pure candor displayed in the conversation really jumped out at me.
Michael and Kantrowitz spoke about the most interesting pieces of the Uber story, including the big controversial parts, in a way that I found to be pretty incredible. Hope you give it a listen and get some value from it.
Here's my quick Twitter take on it:
Thanks for reading this week’s Thursday edition!
Please remember to share both the Urban Tech Newsletter and the Urban Tech Podcast with anyone you think could learn about how innovation is changing cities.
We’ll be back on Monday with our typical edition featuring the stories you need to know to kick off the week.
Thanks for reading!
✌️JT