TEDxLeeds2010: The City As A Platform

TEDxLeeds2009 provided a platform for iconoclastic thought leadership, challenging orthodoxies and exploring unfamiliar territory, laying the groundwork for optimism and change.

In 2010, the themes for TED and TEDGlobal have been “What the World Needs Now”; the TEDxLeeds team has chosen to build on its prior thought leadership and seek to move inspiration into motivated action.

On 10th November, TEDxLeeds2010 will be an exploration of “What Leeds Needs Now”.

The City As A Platform…
The city is at a crossroads – deep social divisions and cuts in public services, coupled with a sophisticated infrastructure, media industry and an emerging netroots class provides a thrilling backdrop for “rebooting the city”. Indeed, the notion of cities as “places” is being displaced by cities as “organisms, mindsets and platforms” for solutions in democracy, civics, climate change and sustainability.

Photo courtesy of Mark Ramsay

To paraphrase Kevin Kelly, cities are “technological artifacts – the largest technology we make; with an impact out of proportion to the number of humans living in them”. TEDxLeeds2010 will bring together local and global thought leaders to speak on “innovating a city”; an audience of technologists, politicians, civic and cultural figures, interspersed with screenings of TEDTalks focused on “cities past and future”.

Taking place during the Leeds Digital Festival at Holbeck’s newly constructed The Mint, TEDxLeeds2010 will be located at the physical and emotional fracture between old and new Leeds.

As cities are increasingly displacing nations as global power centers, demands for transparency drive open data movements across the planet and populations are increasingly digitally entangled and connected; the opportunity for innovating civic institutions and rebooting citizenship itself is too irresistible to overlook.

Leeds has to prepare itself for what Richard Florida calls The Great Reset and TEDxLeeds2010 will be a concentrated exercise in beginning this process.

Session 1: Connecting Cities…

Session 2: Cities As Platforms…

Further Reading…

Ideas for CitiesIBM’s Smarter CitiesNYC Media LabNYC Big AppsWe Will All Play Cities Together Like An Instrumental JamThe Choice Of CitiesThe City Is A Battlesuit for Surviving The FutureThe Street As A PlatformParticipatory ChinatownRedefining The NeighbourhoodThe High LineForget Shanghai, Twin Liverpool With Detroit, FutureEverything: The City ExperimentMIT’s Smart Cities and Center for Future Civic MediaCould self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?

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