BIG CITY, BIG IDEAS: Data Innovation and City Governance

Data Innovation and City Governance: How London (UK) and Toronto Are Responding to the Opportunities & Challenges of Digital Technologies

Worldwide, city governments are increasingly playing an active role in supporting economic growth. At the same time, they are under pressure to respond more quickly and individually to the needs of citizens. Rapid developments in digital innovation and in the availability and application of large-scale data sets create opportunities both for new economic activities and jobs, and for new and cheaper ways of delivering city services. They also hold out possibilities for new ways that governments can engage with citizens, while at the same time raising concerns about data privacy. In his talk, Mark Kleinman looked look at how these issues are being addressed in both London (UK) and Toronto, two cities with strong ‘knowledge economy’ characteristics which are also growing rapidly.

SPEAKER

Mark Kleinman is a Visiting Scholar for three months at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, on sabbatical leave from his role as Director of Economic and Business Policy for the Mayor of London (UK). Mark began his career as an academic, teaching for eleven years at the London School of Economics before becoming Professor of International Social Policy at the University of Bristol. He subsequently took a number of roles in government, including a year in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit working on migration policy, and Director of Urban Policy for the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. He is the author or co-author of four books and more than 100 published papers, and has been a consultant to the OECD, the European Commission, the UK Film Council, and many government departments and local authorities. He gave the keynote presentation at the Jane Jacobs Prize Ceremony in Toronto in 2009, as well as lectures and seminars in New York, Boston, Paris, Rome, Bologna, Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Kyoto, and Osaka. Mark is a Policy Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, at the University of Cambridge, UK.

This event was co-hosted by the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance and the Innovation Policy Lab, at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto as part of the “Big City, Big Ideas” lecture series, organized by the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, in collaboration with its BCBI Partners: The School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto; the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto; the Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs; Global Cities Institute; Martin Prosperity Institute; and Urban Strategies Inc.