day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up this morning, the editor in chief for overturned part of the voting rights act courts across the country have struck down a number of state laws, saying they discriminate against specific groups of voters. saturday night, voting rights and the impact on the 2016 election. we will feature part of the 2013 supreme court oral argument in shelby versus holder.

plus, a discussion on whether the voting rights act is necessary. here's what the presidential candidates have to say. >> all this voter id, a lot of places aren't going to have voter id. what does that mean? you just keep walking in and voting? >> what is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and young people, from one end of our country to the other. >> watch our issues spotlight on voting rights saturday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. >> now, the use of technology in city planning. topics include how cities attract people, work with the private sector, and develop infrastructure to support technology.

>> all right. good afternoon and thank you for joining us for the event, local economies of the future, how cities thrive in the digital age. i'm the vice president of global information policy here at the information technology and here at the information technology and innovation platform and i will be your moderator. expected that cities will account for 90% of global population growth in this

century. fortunately, the advents of many new technologies including mobile telephony and broadband internets, the internet of things, automation technologies, big data techniques and many others are opening up transformative possibilities to reimagine how cities deliver public services and utilities manage transportation networks, educate their citizens and improve quality of life and standards of living. and as we'll hear today the world's leading cities are thinking deeply about their future readiness so they can remain vibrant in an increasingly competitive global economy. and speaking of highly competitive, we have a world-class panel with us here today to discuss how cities can thrive in the digital age. first, we'll hear from mr. mita who was president of the asia pacific pan region for dell and he'll introduce work on future ready cities and economies. their mita officers as the chairman of dell's global

emerging markets group and has been with dell for 19 years holding leadership positions previously in china where he was president of dell's china region and while there won the magnolia gold award and was conferred honorary chinese citizenship the highest recognizing that can go to a foreigner. after that, we will hear from christy mcfarland who serves as research director for the national league of cities where she leads the nlc's efforts to transform city-level data into information that strengthens the capacity of city lead ers and raises their awareness of challenges, trends and successes in other cities throughout the world. christy also launched nlc's finance and economic development program and pursuing a ph.d. in urban planning and economics development from virginia tech university. after christy, we'll hear from michael hendricks who is the director for emerging issues at

the u.s. chamber of commerce foundation where he leads the foundation's public policy research and outreach. michael also served as project director for the foundation's partnership with the start-up incubator 1776 coproducing the seminal report "noovgz that matters, the city of inner city economies. and last but certainly not least from the global perspective, we will hear from megabuchannan who is the team lead for competitive cities and lead author for world's bank flagship report and competitive cities for job and growth. megaworks on issues of competitiveness and urban developments for the world bank. megateaches on economics and development at the school of advanced international studies here in washington and at columbia university in new york and megaholds a ph.d. from the london school of economics. in the interest of space today, we will not present the

presentations up front. they'll be to your side and you should have received handout copies at the back. raise your hand if you didn't see one. look for the presentations there. with that, let me turn it over to emit. the floor is yours. >> good afternoon. it's an honor to be among such distinguished panel and such a great audience. i arrived freshly this morning at 2:00 a.m., so i'm just ready for this session before i crash and burn. i have my double espresso cap chino ready to go. before you can ask the question, i'll answer the question. that's my motto. i live in asia. i am what you would call a practitioner. i am on the field, talking to customers, media, every day, every week. and i spend # 50 days on the road. basically, that's what i do so you will have me bring you a lot

of perspective from what i'm seeing in asia but also a lot of what i'm seeing from the corporate scenario. so let's get started. first and foremost, i don't think there should be any surprise to you that -- let me see if i am getting the slides clicked forward okay. we just have to get -- there you go. okay. so i don't think there is any surprise to anyone here in the room that if we want to take living standards up, technology and innovation play a huge role. and that has been the case for last several centuries. and i will make the argument that we are in the middle of fourth industrial revolution, and if you think about this, first industrial revolution talked about steam water and mechanical direction that somewhere in 1784 second one, 1870, which was the division of labor and advancement of

electricity and mass production. third industrial revolution was really around when our company was born, dell, which was the electronics electronics, i. t.and auto mated production and where we are today and where we're headed the next several decades is really an advancement in cyber technical systems. and all of these things are unleashing a new quality of living and new advancements. so first thing that happens is every time we talk about this sort of progress, innovation driven by technology, actualiptypically, the room goes into, i would say we are headed into a terminator world or something more positive positive. so the point would be tech no versus it becomes a very quick one. so it's important for us to make a company that we as a company have always believed and consistently said that technology is in the service of

human. it helps us achieve the full potential that human race have. so human progress is very critical part of our purpose and we believe technology has to further the human progress. and i think that's very, very important, because if that view is not well established, technology could go, definitely could go in a different direction. now, i would say that it's also clear that, to all of you here, that our world is changing: how we live, how we interact, how we work. there are more than 3 billion smart phones today and we're headed for several hundred trillion -- several hundred billion censors that will auto mate things that will personalize things and will create new outcomes. if you look at storage cost, if you think about when i started my career, hard drives used to be 5 megabytes or 10 megabytes. and today, a gigabyte of storage

is 5 cents. and while you may not have the perspective, in the last four years, 100 billion times faster processors are available. so it's a very exponential rise that semiconductor industry is having, and that is creating a huge power to create new outcomes for the society. 100 billion times faster is what we have done in the last 40 years. if you look at one of the pieces that is having an impact on our society, it is also creating a lot of changes. in 1920, if a company had an average lifespan of 67 years, today, it is about 15. so you can see there's a lot more changes happening and companies are consolidating. companies are aligning, or just companies are getting out of business and that's kind of because the technology is creating a lot more changes and

a lot more expectations from a customer perspective. if you look at the next slide, this talks about if you could imagine a word where 200 billion devices that are connected where you can replicate a human brain which is likely by 2060 in less than $1,000, where you could be living 120 years plus, and where the seamless and pervasive customer experience is there and new outcomes will be possible. clean energy, you know, given the advancement in the semiconductor, and that's -- the energy resources will create a tremendous amount of opportunity, and the connectivity that is second to none. all of these things are really around us. it is happening as we speak. and this is what we believe is going to create a new society, which will further human progress. but to do this, as we talked about, the cities have an

important role to play. but before the cities, let me tell you, the digital disruption is not large-company driven. the driven from a lot of intrurn entrepreneurs, a lot of innovation happening from thousands and thousands of companies. if you think about the old disruption it used to be a few disruptors who have a lot of cash who could create new outcomes and now there's a lot more innovators, almost 10 times more, which have a cost structure which is 1/10 of previous disruptors, creating a disruptive power of almost 100x. so it's a pretty disruptive world. and no matter which company and what state you are in you have to continue to innovate and you have to continue to adopt technology. it is not possible for us to continue to imagine the size or the previous history is going to protect you in the future. so everyone has to innovate and

everyone has to differentiate. and so that's the thesis. and this is what leads us to when we say everyone has to become future-ready. and becoming future-ready is not just a company responsibility. it is also individual responsibility. it is also city responsibility. the also country responsibility that if all these changes are happening around us and they are not some sort of pie in the sky, they're going to be here in five, 10 years from now. so how would we get ourselves ready, individuals ready, societies ready, and the countries ready? and clearly cities ready, to deal with the changes and thrive in the state of hyperchanges that are upon us? so that's the framework of today's talk. so to do that, first thing i would tell you is that, you know for cities to become future-ready, there are three

pieces that become very important. first is the human capital. and second is the infrastructure and the third is the ecosystem. and the human means, of course attracting and venturing human capital to attract and develop skills needed to drive the meaningful and social and economical changes. infrastructure, of course, we understand the collaboration part is going to become a lot more important from an infrastructure perspective -- which is probably not as well thought out. and that's why i think as you see later, the trade plays a huge role that collaboration is important and trade plays a big role. and finally, the ecosystem, the technology, the telecom and the physical infrastructure, all of these have to create sustainable opportunities for years to come. now, let me give you some examples. so we partnered -- dell partnered with ihs economics, an industry-leading economics firm to build an economic model for

evaluating future cities, this is across the world. we put all the cities in a global ranking and we had to create a model by which we can compare. where does the cities stand against each other? and hopefully we will continue to track this so we can see which city is progressing and which is not. our future ready economy's model measures the performance of leading metro areas against three pillars: human capital, commerce and infrastructure. so the idea is to allow public and private sector community leaders to compare their own strengths to those of other future economies. that was our framework and what we did. i will give you a few examples here. so the number one city in the future-ready that came in was san jose. it's not a surprise to you but clearly if i give you some examples from the san jose perspective, it's innovation and investment perspective. it is number one.

and they've also increased the senior housing 96 low-income housing units, and they are ranked second in the labor force. and generally, hourly wages are 62% higher than the national average. if i bring closer to where i live, which is in asia, number three globally is singapore, and that's the work leader in public/private collaboration and labor force engagement. top three in culture, lifestyle and data transparency. singapore's infrastructure, including world-class airport, also helped boost its rating. and i will give you one more example of new dheli, and that was number 44. digital india is the huge drive and the successful implementation that we see. india is on the path to embrace the digital technologies and

reaping the benefits associated with it. there will be broadband expansion, electronics manufacturing in governments and we believe that the public/private partnership we also see very prominently in the space of digital india. so innovation, engineering entrepreneurship is very much thriving and we believe that $266 billion will be invested in indian startups in the course of last five years. there are examples from europe. there are examples from many other cities here. and washington d.c. was ranked number 5 in the same future-ready. if you wanted to know i'm sure there's lots of examples here we can talk about as well, including the electronics corridor. but i wanted to switch gears from cities to what's the role

of governments like? and from my perspective governments have a huge role to play especially in the time of change, especially in the time of change. and if the changes are exhilarating governments have a role to play, not only changing themselves but also helping change society and helping change the infrastructure. so the government's role in our minds become, one, foster the innovation by supporting entrepreneurship and the data economy, even the data becomes so critical to future of connected health or connected economies or living standards, and that itself is a huge topic of debate in many governments. so that's, i think, innovation and fostering innovation is a critical part. second one is the preserving trust in the technology tools that drive advancement. and that's going to happen through many compliance, appropriate governance, as well

as policy. the third one is enabling social responsibility and it has to be built into the country framework as well as city framework. and last but not least which is pretty critical from our perspective, which is maintaining open markets. so a combination of these four things will help government create more future-ready cities, create more future-ready societies, and create clearly more future-ready individuals. technology creates a lot of winners, and certainly it doesn't have to be win ers and nonwinners, and this is their government's role in taking the population and the folks who can be developed to thrive in the new economies and the future-ready states is going to be more and more critical in the coming days. so in summary, the claims that i'm making today is one, that

changes are happening faster and faster. changes are exponential. changes are here. they are not too far away in the future. they are here in the next five years, seven years ten years and beyond. and these changes require a new approach both by individuals governments, societies and cities and what we call future-ready. we have also shown you a future-ready economies model by which -- using which we have compared multiple cities across the world and we believe that sort of framework is going to be important for us to continue to see which cities are making progress or not and finally, governments play a huge role if innovation, from trust, from social responsibility and from the open market perspective. thank you. [applause] steven: thank you.

christy: great, thank you. that was a wonderful research and wonderful sort of introduction i think to a wide array of future-ready cities and what we mean when we talk about that. i'll focus a little bit more specifically on a specific area you touched on, which is future-ready city government, so how can governments help further and leverage some of the activities already going on in the private sector and how can they become more entrepreneurial and be more future-ready themselves as an entity. so first, just a little bit about national cities and my center which is city solutions and applied research. we work with city governments across the country, work on behalf of those governments, help raise up their issues on a national profile. we also conduct research and best practices and work with them directly through technical assistance on a wide variety of issues to help city lead ers and their staff do their jobs better on a daily basis.

so it's wide-ranging in terms of the issues that we cover and the ways we engage with the cities but it's all directly driven towards how to we help cities do their jobs better. i want to talk about innovation first from at least my perspective on what innovation means, particularly when we're talking about local governments. this is a quote from former mayor ron littlefield. he's a mayor in chattanooga, tennessee. and he says: it's not glamorous but it's innovative in a nitty nitty-gritty, we're going to roll up our sleeves, get it work and solve this problem sort of way. i think city governments have been focused on solving problems and how do we fuse data and technology, very neutral for some cities, to help them do that job better, to help them pin point and solve problems. and specifically the mayor was talking specifically about a new program in detroit that was leveraging data to help better understand how low-income populations can better be

connected to social services in the city. so, again, it's all about problem-solving, but it's about doing that in new ways. and we know, too that cities across the country are leveraging data and technology in different types of ways but there are some common characteristics and that's what i'll talk about today. so cities that are embracing being future-ready, we noticed that they're data-driven and specific to internal operations. they're open and engaged. we'll talk a little bit about open data. that's much more expansive than just open data, and they're customer-service driven. so i think that is particularly how they engage with the business community and other folks outside of local government who may not have the time or resources to get bogged down in all the processes that can sometimes happen. so thinking specifically about data-driven, one of the ways that cities are evolving to become data-driven is through performance management, and i'll

talk a little bit more about that. but i think what we're noticing too is performance management is one type of process. we're also seeing things like innovation delivery teams and chief data officers and chief technology officers. i think these can all be under the umbrella of data-driven, although i think we would certainly argue that they all have various functions that are differentiated. but generally speaking it's a way of infusing data-driven innovation throughout city hall. performance management, specifically, is a process of consistently reviewing performance data to inform decision making. it's the collection of data analyzing data understanding how outcomes, particularly service delivery outcomes of city governments, stack up against the stated goals that cities have and it's using metrics to really pin point how that's happening. and then it's using this information. it's not just saying, okay, that's great put it on a dashboard but it's using information to really drive decisions to adapt programs to

redirect policy and budget at the city level. some cities are advancing the use of data and technology, information through the performance management system, to also begin to use predictive analytics, which if you're in this space you've probably heard a lot about, and i think we sort of think of it as sort of the gold standard of performance management, other data efforts. how can cities use data and information they have now to help predict where the next pot hole is going to be where the next crime spree is going to happen. that's amazing, right? but i think we're going to see there are a lot of challenges that get in the way of making that a reality but it is happening in some places and i think we need to learn from those places, like the city of boston for example, is using crime data to better understand where the vacant property challenges are going to be and addressing some of the crime problems happening in those parts of neighborhoods.

so we are seeing the performance management systems looked at 10 cities in particular, identified what was happening in these cities, and i think what you'll notice, if you can see the slide, that the function of performance management sometimes it's an innovation officer, sometimes it's its own office and sometimes in the mayor's office and we'll talk a little bit about structure in a minute. but when we talk about what that function is, as an example nlos angeles, for example it's quite a few different processes in one city department. but one of their sort of hall mark successes is really reforming their 311 system. when someone calls with a complaint, are they getting a response in an adequate amount of time? by analyzing data with call volumes and city staffing levels the city was able to

drop the wait times from 311 calls from six minutes down to less than one minute in a year. so those are the types of success i think we're talking about when we think about performance management. and what does this have are to do with the sort of broader innovation economy? in order to attract talent to a city in order to attract businesses, people want to know that their city government is functioning in a way that is going to be conducive and not get in the way of them succeeding in the place. i had talked about a little bit of structure before. in some cities, the function is centralized as an independent department with staff dedicated to all of those things that are involved with performance management from collecting the data, analyzing it and reporting out. we see this in atlanta, boston, dallas, kansas city, las vegas and st. paul. then there are also systems that are more decentralized where there's performance management

and staff providing advice and guidance but the real function happens with the front line staff and within each of the city departments and we can see that in denver and fort lauderdale. interestingly, in denver because they know they're putting that responsibility and additional responsibility onto the front line staff. their particular -- it's called peak academy a training program that really helps city staff empower them really and train them to identify and understand how to make efficiencies within their everyday job and operations. and they were seeing some sort of a hybrid model where the functions are a little bit more fluid and we saw that in d.c. and l.a.. so again, that's internal to city hall, right. and i think that's very interesting and for those of us in the city space, we understand why that matters. but what we want to think about more broadly how city government interacts and helps facilitate a future-ready local economy, we think more about a city that's open and engaged. so a city that opens its data,

for example, to help -- to provide that information and that date to businesses who want to then help the cities solve problems. specifically, thinking about how the local government is engaging on pope data. and the internet. which i think we're at a pinnacle there. we see chicago partnering with argon national labs to sensors throughout. they work with start-ups and other entities in the city to start developing a proof of concept projects to help deal with challenges around transportation air quality.

we also see very interesting ways that cities are engageing with entrepreneurs to bring them into city hall to help them solve problems. the city of san francisco, for example, has what they are calling start up in residents where they recruit start-ups from outside of city hall to come in and solve a civic problem. port was having a problem with blind customers understanding how to get around the airport. the city of san francisco brought in a start-up who spent 16 weeks really understanding the problem and developed a technology solution to help the customers navigate the airports in a more efficient way. it's interesting, because due to some of the complicated prophecies that exist within city hall around procurement the city was not able -- needs to be able to make this an opportunity where the start ups come in and they're not charged for their services.

but it's a win-win because the start ups are actually being able to develop new products and test new products with the city so the city is really serving in a way that as a customer and really allows the start-up to test their product in a way they may not have been able to do otherwise. we know that cities are also employing future ready operation operationing their own operations but also facilitating the use of technology throughout the community. i know we'll probably talk a little bit more about kansas city where there is google fiber. we know there's also access widely speaking in philadelphia too. but there's obviously a digital gap there for some communities particularly small businesses and entrepreneurs who are lower income communities. philadelphia has the philly tech ambassadors program where tech savvy and community-minded students partner with neighborhood small businesses to

help them get online and use computer programs and similar in kansas city, missouri, as well. in addition to helping to leverage and facilitate information and ideas throughout the community, cities can also think about their capacity to create physical spaces for innovation to happen and the flow of ideas and information. we're seeing this through maker spaces. obviously, manufacturing economy is changing. and a lot of manufacturing is smaller scale. it's more high-tech. it's more based on entrepreneurship and new ideas and how can cities actually support that particularly when their economies are changing so much. many cities, including chattanooga, for example, are investing public dollars in the maker movement. for example, doing simple things like turning the fourth floor of their library into a maker space and bringing in 3d print ers and

sewing machines and allowing people in the community to expand their capacity in that way. a very easily accessible way to innovate. and because that was so successful that is sevrng as an anger to a broader innovation district where the city of chattanooga is leveraging their municipal fiber. their university partnerships, their nonprofits, their cultural assets, their environmental assets, bringing them all together to help promote innovation in that way. lastly, i'll just talk quickly because i'm sure i'm out of time, about customer service. so again, this is a very specific way that cities are engaging with the community, the business community, entrepreneurs, and start-ups and

small businesses, in particular. we know that local governments sometimes has a permit ingting process, a regulatory process that can be very burdensome for businesses, particularly businesses small businesses and start ups and small businesses, who are just starting out and who don't have whole separate department within their business dedicated it dealing with local governments, which i know many businesses do because it can get that hairy. so reforming the process is critically important. and also making the process the businesses need to go through to start and open their doors and to launch new products. all needs to be regulate and did go through local governments but local governments can make that easier and through start ups and open their doors to launch new products, and helping american cities do that. it really is about how can cities stream line business development, stream line the business permitting process, put that online. use a tool that actually helps them put that online so businesses can see what steps they need to follow in order to open a business. in some cases like with the city of los angeles we're calling

them our dream big western they're creating a process that actually takes businesses online through the process to get their business license and permits. and that seems obvious, but check out your city web site. it may not be. so we are hosting a community of cities to share ideas about how they're actually working through the process of bringing their regulatory environment online, up-to-date into the 21st century and easy for businesses to navigate. just a bit about challenges. obviously, data quality is going to be a concern. the data culture often city staff are not used to operating in an environment where they're asked to collect data and to use new technology, and that can be a big impediment to if you want to understand outcomes and you want to use metrics, you also need to have a quality data set. you need to have an engaged staff. you need to have internal

collaboration between departments. and all this is new. some of it may sound obvious but all of this is relatively new to cities who often are using pen and paper for orders or things like that. obviously, privacy concerns are a big issue because we're talking about open data. we're talking about sensitive information that identifies particular individuals. there are a lot of concerns about how we think about where we send information and data, which obviously would be to the benefit of entrepreneurs and to the benefit of the city. but they're obviously concerned there. and then planning for a political cycle. oftentimes what we're seeing in those cities that are leading the charge that they have a strong mayor who is dedicated to using data and technology to further their city operations. i think this is fantastic and this is needed particularly as they're beginning down this path. and because of that, what we've seen to be most successful is that these people from

management and data and other operations are actually held within the mayor's office and that seems to be critically important at least at the beginning. then you say hmm, the mayor may not be in office in the next four years. what's going to happen then? and then what we've been seeing is that although at the beginning of the process and when cities are taking on sort of data technology as a strategy is that it's important to have in the mayor's office where you have that political power, you have the authority. you have the access. you have the budget to do the things that needed to be done. but that over the long haul, there is a goal, and this is specifically stated through the city of los angeles. that the ultimate goal is for each department to manage his own data performance operations. so that it's sustained and that's just part of how the city operates on its own. it's not a new thing, it's a mayor's project. so i think that's sort of the next evolution in data and

technology and innovation into the operations. so with that i will pass it back to steve. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, stephen. i believe that the question every city leader should be asking is: is my city prepared for the future? so i believe as others do here, i think, that we are on the dawn of an incredible revolution and this revolution is bringing changes far bigger than the ones we've faced before in the valley that the pc revolution, the dot comboom, the social networking opportunity that we have today are just the beginning. those are just the first wave.

and we've only begun to scratch the surface of how advances in software and hardware will impact where we riv, how we live, where we work, spend travel, learn, even eat. to how your city not get disrupted. i'm here today to answer -- i'm going to argue that the answer is found in its people. and what i mean by that is both radically simple and incredibly complex. i think that stronger communities will help cities transition to the next digital age and after stripping away all the cool open plan office buildings and the big investment funds, what you find is that smart people imbedded in dense, social networks, loss of social capital, are at the center of economy prepared for whatever the future may bring.

the chamber in 1776 d.c.'s own global incubator teamed up to discover how start up communities are helping cities navigate the digital age. first, i want to show you a number of findings from the innovation that matters report and then i want to discuss what they mean and what city leaders can do with them. over the past two years, we've visited 16 cities, compiled a database in 25 metros and spoken with nearly 500 local leaders. and when we talked to them, we wanted to look at not only the judicial factors of innovation, the city of your capital and industry specification, but also things like density, connectivity your culture. and also frankly we wanted to get us out of the beltway and learn from actual practitioners on the ground. and when we linked cities, we did so based on the underlying theme that we've heard time and

time again. the traditional indicators, such as dollars invested, jobs created, patents filed, were necessary but incomplete measures. the openness and density of social networks as well as the key attributes of global culture mattered much if not more than driving these sort of ecosystems that in turn are making cities future-ready. when we looked at these indicators together, talent, capital, specialization, connectivity culture. the biggest surprise in our rankings was that san francisco in the bay area was not number 1. boston was. let's be clear. forgives is an credible leader in the number of startups created. it has deep pools of talent. boston entrepreneurs reported better connections to their community and to what boston offers such as top-notch

universities. just beyond the bay area were more surprises like raleigh durham and denver and san diego in fifth place. and beyond the top five cities such as baltimore and pittsburgh also faired well on the index. 18th and 14th respectively, given their successes of bringing everyone together from governments, to corporate to entrepreneurs and bringing them together to open and exchange ideas and collaborate. and new york city and l.a. clearly attracted a lot of start-up creation, there were also aspects of community that lagged behind. opportunities, you could also say for them to continue to grow. cities like baltimore and pittsburgh and new orleans, they're not major drivers of the digital economy just yet, but they are trammel crowing educated young people. they are building collaborative communities of innovation and they are creating the right cultural foundations. so that's a bit of a data and some of the rankings.

what does it all mean? to answer that we started listening to entrepreneurs, and the city leaders, and we went out and visited them. we just came back from visiting eight of these cities. and we heard things like when big partners in kansas city described the city's startup community as a network, where each node in that network had a mission. or christine at the local chamber called it a big small town where everybody is six degrees removed from one another, like the kevin bacon of cities. those are her words. pretty good. we also heard the same thing in boston and salt lake city, how easy it was to grab coffee and meet up with a local founder or funder. and how even as a newcomer, you could find open doors and you could build trust. and this is why we believe open, dense, social networks flush with social capital are

essential ingredients to start-up formation. community, in other words. but i'm going to step way back for just a second so bear with me. i believe urban economies are like building blocks of human knowledge and know-how that, like, legos can be connected in different ways to generate innovation. and these essential bits of information flow through open dense social networks with talented people at the center. these bits of information are in ideas, they're assembled and put together like those blocks within networks of individuals and networks of friends. that's the ecosystem. the more these networks grow in size and strength and in complexity, the more a city's productive and innovative capacity grows. so the more that these ideas that then can translate into something valuable like snapchat. i like snapchat.

so then how do these networks grow and how do they maintain their size? through social capital and social values such as trust and openness and empathy those lower the transaction costs of sharing all this knowledge. embracing new ideas and the people thinking them up not only helps the economies stay ahead of the game, but they suggest a presence of trust and empathy in the community. trust kind of acts like the glue of these social networks holding them together while empathy allows for people in firms to produce what customers and partners want. okay so thank you. enough with the theory. but when you think about tthese social networks are really how we find jobs and how we find places to live. how we build really complex product when is we're sitting in the room together producing these things and we can also express this in terms of community when we're thinking about cities. and that's how local leaders explained it to us. that this was their startups

start up success founded in a community building. as one denver area government official said, you know, when i started working with startups i never thought i would become a community builder. and my boss probably still wouldn't be happy to hear me the term because it doesn't sound very concrete, but "at its core" that's what this work is. and what we found as we went from city to city sthaukis that you can have all the talent and capital and capacity in the world and still not generate sustained innovation or activity, or at least not as much as you could. a city could have small amounts of these things and stand toe to toe with the big boys if they have a healthy community. the advances of software and hardware enable us to work better faster and smarter.

the gains of having talented people cluster together have never been higher. over the last five years, the american population has increased by 3.1% but the population of our 50 richest cities has jumped by 9.2%. and the residents are 34% more productive than the rest of the country. meanwhile, they spend 1% of all zip codes in this country attracts more than 60% of all venture capital in this country. and yet in every city in america, we do not have a shortage of ideas. and we do have the seeds of community. we need people to bring other people their ideas together and to scale them and in so doing prepare cities for the future. so what does all of this mean for city leaders? for one thing, it's important them to understand the trajectory of the digital economy. so it's good to become more xhodified. software and digital services will grow in importance. even today, it's not the smartphone chip that matters but how you use it.

say for accessing digital health records on the go or telling a drone where to fly. respond to these changes by recognizing your existing strengths. every city has asked us to leverage an activity that's already going on. strong healthcare systems in universities. industries where the city is a leader. particular areas of expertise are even things that make the city extraordinarily livable. the key is identifying those assets and being purposeful in unlocking the potential for the future. the same is true for community. start-up success is about community building and community building needs community organizers. they act as intermediaries in the network and connect the dots between people. and these roles can exist anywhere from start up support systems to government, to corporates to other institutions. they already need to see what's going on and help fill in the gaps. one key connection to make in the next wave is helping connect start ups and corporates and other institutions together.

to start ups, that means being able to plug into existing specializations and knowledge. corporations, it means getting a tab tap into an innovation pipeline. there's no end of what can happen if you connect these communities together. prioritizing this means suggesting a policy of people over place. growing start ups means enhancing connectivity, reducing barriers to people getting ahead, establishing applicable rules of the road and empowering leaders in the community. such an evolutionary policy stance i believe will set the stage for revolutionary exchange. in the past 3-5 years as we've seen first-hand, i've seen explosive start-up growth in so many states and usually resulted by seeds planted over 20 years ago in the community. and not only to make start up communities sustainable but also to prepare cities for the future. thank you. [applause]

[speaking away from microphone] >> so i'm >> how cities are making themselves competitive. >> all my clients want to be ready and have suffixes like 2020 2030. we just worked with the city of shanghai and they came up with a growth strategy that the world bank would work with them and when we started we were thinking how in the world can you think into the future to find a strategy around it? what we found is what matters enormously is the city has to be ready. readiness matters for the future which is why i think this report and the data that's behind it is really interesting

from an international point of view. we have a long issue of working with cities in the world bank group. what we're finding more and more is that a lot of cities are taking on economic development as some of their main responsibilities. and as they're doing that, they're beginning to ask a lot of questions and they want to know how other cities are doing it and want to know what other successful cities have done, who is getting things done and then how things are being done by these people. that's basically the framework for the competitive city's report we launched at the world bank group. what, who and how and that's essentially how i'm going to frame the points i have for this discussion. under what the cities actually do the competitive city dos? let me revert to rwanda. in 1990 the landlocked city, no natural resources and recovering from civil war. fast forward about a decade and

a half and now you find gleamingly clean city streets booming services economy within the city, g.d.p. growth of 11% between 2002-2012. job growth of 4.5% over and above the national average. what did the city do without natural resources? first they looked at what they had available. and they had guerrillas. so they decided to build a public-private coalition and decided to look at the constraints for developing tourism. this is east africa which is a booming tourism sector in the region but they decided they'd go after high end tourism. the city of keygali found that those coming for the guerrillas in rwanda wanted cleanliness and safety in the city. these were the same values and the same things that conference

tourism -- mattered to conference tourism so they came up with a strategy where they went after my sector which is the meetings conferences and events and were attractive and made investments in human capital and made sure their work force had training in french and english to go ahead. i don't know it's true in a lot of policy circles but definitely the ones in d.c. and the world bank group has a busy debate whether city or policymakers should be choosing between economy wide or horizontal intervention or a targeted sector or intervention. and cities really do both. those are the successful cities and manage to do both, either in terms of sequencing or doing them together and what matters in terms of success. ok. so who does these things? when we talk to some of our clients, and a lot of our clients happen to be mayors of cities or governors of states or provinces or districts or some international economic

advisor. the policy space available to them is quite limited. they can't control trade or customs at a lot of the national level issues that might matter to their citizens. at the world bank we encourage them to be a lot more opportunistic about the leaders available to these cities and call it the city wedge. it's an idea that's about three things. a, it's about the mayor's wedge and falls within the administrative agreement of the mayor himself or herself. and it involves neighboring districts and national government. third, it's growth coalitions, bringing in your stakeholder in your private sector and other actors in the community to build a growth coalition around a shared strategy or a shared vision. let me give you an example closer to home -- i'm sorry, i don't have any american examples whatsoever for the time being but clearly there is more research we can borrow from for our clients.

an example in south america in the city in columbia. the city had an economy mainly dominated by low tech manufacturing, poultry production, footwear clothing, that sort of thing. fast forward a couple years and find now their manufacturing is more high-tech and precision manufacturing and r&d investment and i.t. and so on and so forth. what they did do is that they had a regional oil industry and instead of -- they made sure the oil industry was developing and commercializing in innovative technologies for the city of bacaramunga instead of drilling and finding petroleum. what matters to us and what we find from a lot of our case studies, it doesn't matter who does it but what matters is it gets done. and in the city it wasn't the city of bacarumunga that got things done but the city and

they had a strong and cohesive chamber of commerce and was a leader in bringing together the private sector and the city government the state government and the national government. for example they made sure that investments were made in developing not just technical but also managerial capital within the city and now bacaramunga has the capital skills. and made sure national government incentives were targeted and used for industries within the city itself. this is an example of where growth coalitions or public-private partnerships are important in getting things done. the third which is the trickiest is how do you get things done? i don't really have -- i don't always speak among a lot of american policy-based audience so let me ask you a question, do you come across a lot of city strategies where what's happening on the ground is very different from what you see in

the strategy documents? ok. well, we see that a lot among our clients where you have these amazing strategy documents that have been designed by consultants and when you actually look at what's happening on the ground it's very different from the strategy documents. i think this is something that's really important thousand. we want to under how do you actually get things done on the ground? so let me take you to another part of the world, to chungshaw, a secondary city in hunan province in china. the municipal leaders decided they wanted to make investments in human capital and was going to be the future for making sure the city would be successful and they had two strategies to go about doing it. a, they were going to identify and recruit the right individuals to come to the city whether from china or the rgs of the world and b, they would invest in the talent pool from the city itself and would vocational training programs and try and match the skill sets of the people in the city

with the companies and industries they were trying to develop. now, none of this is really new and none of this is really interesting. a lot of cities in a lot of states try these kind of strategies. why was chunsaw so successful in what they did and what did they do differently? they were able to avoid the bureaucratic pitfalls other city leaders have. for example, they were able to avoid things like silos or coordination issues across agencies. they put in place a mechanism called leading groups and the leading groups mechanism was a way to clarify the rules and responsibilities across different functional levels of government and administrative tiers of government as well. it is two things. a, it made sure the targets and rewards and all the incentives were perfectly aligned across the functional and administrative levels and in the city and industrial zones and the city and so on and made sure the management meetings

taking place, only the problems were escalated to the higher level and not decisions were escalated to the higher levels and something that worked really well. you have a lot of examples from the u.s. -- from cities across the u.s. that have done this and are examples from the national transformation plan in malaysia which worked really well and a city in brazil and a couple other examples of how implementation in management is what really matters in terms of getting things done. it's not about -- it is but it's not just data and documents and analysis that matters to the city when they talk about why they're having problems at least among our clients, it's really implementation is a big problem for them. i want to end by saying first, the cities that turned out in the competitive cities work, and this is quite surprising, the cities we defined as successful, competitive cities and cities that had accelerated economic growth and transformational job growth and increased incomes in productivity management before

and direct investment. the cities we came across were not your capital cities and not household names and were not global centers of commerce. they were secondary cities very often in lagging regions of their countries that managed to become competitive and is the big message we want to leave with our audiences is that we don't have to be a city well known to build on competitiveness and you can have examples of very many unknown cities that are able to be competitive over time. i went in by end by saying thank you very much for inviting me to this it. it's a very interesting panel and discussion and very nice to leave the world bankhead quarters and see other parts of d.c. and i just want to say that this topic is really important. it's an urgent topic, how are you going to get ready for the future, how are you going to be more competitive in the future? there's a lot the stake here. we find that cities are only to become -- reach the same level

of competitiveness in the top quarter of their regions, you can create $19 million additional jobs per anan and we are talking big stakes and how cities will become competitive and future ready will be important for the global economy. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you very much, megan. there's a lot on the tampa bays from the u.s. and global perspective so i don't think we should have a problem at all soliciting questions from our audience. if you would, state your name and organization you're with and keep the question tight and succinct. yes? >> thank you. [inaudible]

>> something used and is suggested is the -- [inaudible] >> why do you need government to enable that? from my perspective it should come from the private sector and what's your point about that? >> sure. so ok. all right. so the key points i was making at that time was governments have to work on a public-private partnership to foster innovation. they also have a responsibility to changing society's mindsets

for changes and technology because if that's -- if politicians could take it in the wrong way and this thing can turn out very, very different. we also talked about trade, open barriers, no barriers is important. we talked about trust and finally, the social response. so to me, when you are going through changes, you want the whole society to support, and that's why social responsibility it could be embedded as a policy that the corporations have to fulfill or it could be government could take a policy themselves as a responsibility. it could be done both ways but the whole society has to progress. you can't take a future ready city and without taking care of education and the entire population coming with you. that was the whole point but i do think the government plays a very, very critical role given the changes are accelerating.

[inaudible] >> regarding innovation, for example, amazon moved their drone program from the u.s. to canada because they were too slow in creating a regulatory system and there was a "wall street journal" article about they were home making insulin pumps because they hadn't approved in them and then said they didn't want to invest in health care because the system is overly complex. and with paul romer and his work on charter cities and chief economist of the world bank, is there a possibility or role for the cities to take a greater role in the regulatory process? obviously it requires some work on a national level too, but

for example, seattle wants to say to the f.a.a., look, we can create a regulatory system to allow amazon to keep their drone program here while they experiment with it and is it a positive policy direction and what are your thoughts on that? thank you. >> i can take a stab. but i think there are particular aspects of the regulatory environment that are specifically within the purview of local government and there are some aspects of that that are not within the control of cities that are either at the state level or when you're talking about interstate commerce, obviously that's a federal issue, right? and i think sort of another key aspect that we advocate for it in the cities is greater local control and there's an understanding that if we are charging cities with being our leaders of innovation, both local governments themselves as well as cities as sort of test

ground for innovation that we need to empower cities to do that. and there are many constraints particularly on local governments to help them facilitate to facilitate additional innovation in the economy. so it's certainly a challenge and one that we recognize. i think it's also one that probably doesn't get enough attention currently because, again, we put a lot of pressure and expectation, particularly at the federal and state level where there may be the assumption that local governments or cities are handling it or it's their responsibility. so yeah, again, and there's also sort of the issue of health and safety and that's always going to be part of how cities or any government balances a regulatory environment. some of it may lead to the affect of having -- businesses

have more regulations than they would like. but on some level there needs to be a balance as well. >> i'll take a stab to that question as well. >> it's a really good question and don't want to speak about job security because i don't want to lose my job but it's part of our research and you can expand the administrative agreement available for cities only if you have capacity that goes with it. and we have research in china that shows when you divulge a lot more power to the cities, will only city that lets economic growth on the ground and increases jobs are cities that had the capacity to implement that power and you find in a lot of countries especially in east africa you had very quick evolution but you have cities that can take on that level of responsibility because they don't have the human capital or the technical ability and it actually is perverse outcomes on the ground. thank you. sorry to interrupt.

>> i will say there's an opportunity for cities to experiment in approaches in how they manage their airspace, for instance. there's an opportunity for cities to be able to model to the rest of the country how they interact with innovators. whether they are innovators in the drone space or whether they're innovators in ride sharing, for instance. there's an opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the country in how you manage technology well, not only for the city, for every citizen which leads to one other point. i think it's important to look at how a city treats its smallest businesses and its poorest communities and entrepreneurs there. look at how they interact with them to then see how they can provide an opportunity for all businesses large or small. i think this is where nationally the cities work on one stop permitting shops and so important to lowering

barriers to people getting ahead. it's not just reducing regulations for regulation sake but reducing barriers to entrepreneurs, being able to innovate, not just tech entrepreneurs but a recent immigrant trying to set up a food truck. our chamber work on the regulatory climate in cities has shown there's a tremendous opportunity for cities all across it country to work proactively in reducing the regulatory burden in their cities not only for the smallest companies but also for tech entrepreneurs, too. >> and i would say cities don't have to do everything. i would tell you seoul didn't try to say what should their airspace policy be? they just increased the speed of their broadband. and now you can see the amount of data band width available to a citizen is what is call causing the g.d.p. and productivity to rise and there are things cities can do. another example i can give you

is shanghai who is creating a national health information management system by working with other cities and not really necessarily saying somebody from the nation is going to define it. there are things like drone policy that that cities won't own, that's ok. but where can they really do make a difference? i think that's where they should focus. >> and my colleague has learned about the policy towards drones impacted the competitive of u.s. industry. >> i have a question. so what do you guys see in terms of regulatory -- you mentioned in terms of migration and making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs when you have for example, google and others create bid foreigners so it's not like food trucks or immigrants creating smaller

sized companies. what you see as a role and what has been done right now in u.s. cities. and, you know, is there active things that are happening right now? i remember seeing recently an article in i think it was bloomberg "newsweek" where it says there are entrepreneurs coming from england, for example, just flying back and forth because they're in a great area. they create a company here in the u.s. but they can work in the company so they are founders and fly back and forth every 90 days or something like that. i think there's a big space there. >> i think especially the tech space talent is global. and, you know, our point of view is the quality of talent, given the right conditions and capital can really make a huge difference. and, you know there has been certainly policies that have been under the discussions but

one piece i'll tell you, the u.s. is the best place to start a company. all the folks that i talked to, entrepreneurs in banglor or shingin and as long as i want to an global player, i have to move my company back to the u.s. i think the u.s. doing great things. while there are other debates happening at least from an asian perspective, if you want your company to be global, credible and be the unicorn, you have to be here. and it doesn't mean they're giving up the base wherever they started. it only means that they need to be here or need to be present. there's a big ecosystem where they have to interact. it is a political side of this as well but from a business side i see very, very positive direction for the u.s. to be the engine for innovation and growth. >> yeah, i think just a couple of other insights from our work on foreign and direct

investment which i think there are some analogous strategies there, thinking about the extent to which maybe there are entrepreneurs interested in maintaining those global connections, how can cities tap their foreign trade zones or within city hall, is there an ambassador program for companies and entrepreneurs coming from outside the u.s., helping them navigate not only from the local permitting regulations but also state and federal. so there are things that i think cities can do to be more open, be transparent and be helpful and have the customer service oriented approach, and that's just specifically within the local government. but again, i think it gets to supporting the broader ecosystem, ensuring that entrepreneurs are connected within the community as well. >> the chamber has a long track record of working on immigration reform and i'll leave that aside for the time being and really focus on one

little aspect we have for innovation matters report. one indicator we look at on talent was not only the degrees and the skill sets in a particular city but how people came and went from the city. the population flux, something that kaufmann has pointed to as a decent indicator of the degree to which your city is open to new people and new ideas and the degree to which that can help drive innovation. the fascinating thing was the cities with the highest population flux internationally were big start dwrup leaders silicon valley and new york city. they were incredible and off the charts. and then the high domestic population flux, denver and austin, were also very very innovative cities. the degree to which you're open to people coming and going, people from all corners of the globe and america is a great indicator of how innovative you're going to be going forward. i saw this firsthand when we were in silicon valley and we heard how if you're an indian

entrepreneur and coming into silicon valley, there's a support structure, a network that will automatically get you plugged in and introduce you to the right people and to founders and funders to help start up your business. that's a city that is open to newcomers that have the community and welcomes people in and gets them plugged in so they can start businesses like that. >> mr. jacobs who runs boston's center for new urban mechanics recently was talking about the difficulties with risk and experimentation and city government and he pointed out some segments of the public, the media and elected legislators do not think experimentation is a valid use of taxpayer dollars and it countried to me if we had the same attitude in the corporate world and said it's not an appropriate use of shareholder dollars for dell or apple or g.e. to experiment, that would be ridiculous and shareholders understand companies need to

innovate and take risk and create the next generation of products and services. how do we overcome this barrier in public life and this attitude that experimentation is not an appropriate expenditure of taxpayer dollars. what are you saying out there? >> just from our perspective i think i can understand how that sentiment would make sense if you're thinking about sort of a traditional local government. that may not necessarily have the resources or have the persona of being adaptive and nimble and data driven and welcoming of new technologies. so in that case, if you let folks take risks you're not really sure what that's going to look like, right? but i think as we're seeing cities again have the infusion of performance management, of innovation offices of innovation delivery teams, of technology officers, there's a more structured risk-taking.

it's a little bit more calculated. people have the tools and potentially the skills like with the denver peak academy. they can take risks in an informed way. and i think if people see that their local government is transitioning and they under and they see the good work that cities can do with data and technology, taxpayers at large would be more willing to allow their civil servants to go down that path. >> i think the question you ask, if i put this in the corporate setting, it's unthinkable for us to go into a uncertain future and not run experiments. and not accept the favors that come along the way but clearly in a public setting, that's a difficult thing to do. and that's why we believe having a public-private partnership helps you manage that risk and still get the benefits and advantages. so i think that's one way to do it.

but then, you know, that there will be more dynamic leaders who are willing to take risk and what comes with it as well. so it's really up to individual situations. but i think being data-driven week christy said, and reducing the downside risk as well as having a more public-private partnership. >> hi, i'm -- [inaudible] >> i'm curious what some of the best case examples that you've seen of how cities should be investing in their technology infrastructure and specifically their broadband internet structure and how they should be working with the private sector. what are some of the best strategies going into place now particularly as we're looking into more development of smart cities and the fact that that connectivity will have to be there to accomplish the goals the cities want to accomplish?

>> so from our perspective, cities have a huge role to play. especially around the connectivity side. and you know, i'll just give you an example of singapore. singapore has very robust structure but they evaluated all their telcos and said we're not competitive so we'll invite a new telco which is the nextgen telco or connectivity should be free and should be a birthright like you have a social security number. so there are ways to push this forward and governments have to take an active step beyond the governance and compliance to what the tennant was. so today like the connectivities like i talked about semiconductor, hundred billion times faster chips in

the last 40 years, just apply the same thing to connectivity. connectivity is actually moving faster than even the semiconductor. soa new way of interacting. our global telcos being born? facebook messenger is a global telco. they may not be the area. if you look at the example of beach app, you can get all of the global -- although the local services. you can get government services. the interesting fact i will tell you is each mobile phone user has 80 plus applications downloaded but three or four use 80% of the time it takes. what is likely to come is some sort of connectivity tool is going to become the central point of your screen because

that's how you're are going to do everything that you need to do. is that a global framework or a city framework? i think the physical infrastructure is a city framework. application and software is likely to be national or global framework. this is a hugely important -- if you can now change the screen of your mobile phone you have an implication of what services you consume and when. i think cities can play a huge role in the physical infrastructure and leave the software infrastructure to other entrepreneurs. >> i have a question for the panel -- worldwide application of your discussion of cities.

last week i was at learning institute event -- rwanda internal revenue service or whatever it is tax a fee on anybody who uses a smart phone to make a withdrawal from my bank or to pay a bill -- from a bank or to pay a bill. we have seen your cell phone bill has tax upon tax upon tax. maybe in the developed countries it is not such a big deal. internet penetration and use of smart phones in developing countries i think is an issue with these add-ons. amy has a comment on that i would be interested. >> the asia perspective. i think meghaa may have a lot of examples.

today, the cost of making a call is nearly zero. less than one cent per minute no matter where you make long-distance or short distance. more importantly, 900 million phones, most of the people carry a phone, including if you are at the bottom of the brummett which is very interesting. smartphone prices are dropping below $100. if you're having a candy phone dropping close to $15. no contract, no service charges, nothing. you can go to a shop, buy a phone for $10. your monthly bill could be less than two dollars. that has liberalized agriculture , the migrant population and improved connectivity tremendously.

that's the foundation upon which new services can be billed -- built, backing or otherwise. -- banking or otherwise. i'm not sure if i'm answering your question or not. connectivity, be it mobile or physical in your homes or offices, is a critical part of digital transformation of a society. affordability of mobile plan is a critical component of that. >> i just want to say i think in east africa there is tremendous penetration of mobile telephones and they have been used in ways -- for example -- i'm not really sure what the incentive of the down regulated structure. what we have seen when we looked

at bills of companies, some of the additional items actually do add on to quite a bit but that is not the reason that keeps them from expanding connectivity. usually happens in a very remote area or if they happen to be from a poorer part of the country outside cities that keeps them from accessing the services. it's a good question. i'm not sure we have examples. we could pick up on the discussion afterwards if you like. >> the best audio and this is idf assessing the taxes and terms -- what we find is in a country like in brazil which imposes additional taxes and tariffs of 17% on products and services that it diminishes their adoption and consumption costing brazil's gdp 1% to 2%

each year. it's a big challenge. i think we are at the hour of 1:30 so i think we had best say thank you to the audience for wonderful questions and participation. join me in thanking our panelists this afternoon. [applause] >> video of this event will be online within 48 hours. thank you for coming today. >> tonight, look at technology and innovation from this year's techcrunch disrupt conference. we will hear from venture capitalists and activists 8:00 p.m. eastern. here's a preview. >> already over 250,000 list on the platforms or you can imagine the different directions they go in when you have all these different people trying something in the early days. asa akira is an adult film star.

it was extremely interesting the combination of physical stuff and emotional stuff that you go through before that. i think if you ask someone anyone in this room, could you write me a quick essay on what it was like on your way to disrupt may be like come are you serious. if they were asked could you list your thoughts on the way here comes out easy. we expected to be a little more practical. it's very personal if you list your favorite hikes you are actually saying a lot about you. that is what comes out in the margins even in the recommendation list. >> watch the techcrunch disrupt conference here on c-span. >> three years after supreme court ruling overturned part of the voting rights act courts across the country have struck down a number of state laws saying they discriminate against specific groups of voters.

saturday night, c-span's issue spotlight looks at voting rights and the impact on the 20 16th election. we will feature part of the 2016 supreme court oral argument in shelby versus hoard holder. a discussion on whether the voting rights act is necessary. here's what the presidential candidates have to say. >> all this voter id, a lot of places nowadays are not going to have voter id. what does that mean? you just keep walking in and voting? >> what is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and young people from one end of our country to the other. >> watch our issue spotlight on voting rights saturday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span and c-span.org.

>> now a discussion on global labor challenges, public policy and the economy. this event was hosted by the clinton global initiative. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen. book of your moderator, barbara dyer. welcome our panel, conquer sodas and the u.s. secretary of labor united states department of labor, see perez. -- thomas e perez. [applause] >> first, let me say that there is a big storm brewing outside and unfortunately far oj armament got caught in the storm in her flight was rerouted so we are short one of the best panelists. we have a fabulous group still.

we are going to have to fill in. i know you are all here -- >> i was. >> when we began yesterday's -- yesterday seem so long ago. when we began yesterday president clinton encouraged us to think about alternative views of the future and i came yesterday because i wanted to get a feel for this. i'd never been to a cgil that and i learned so much and i wrote a little story that is a we've of many things that i heard and then kind of my own imagination. i'm going to start taking us into the future. imagine it is somewhere 2020, 2025. here's tamika brown who works at detroit wire and steel.