When I was growing up, I don’t remember ever being told that I was “smart.” I was called by a few other names (censored), including Hammerhead, but not smart. (If you check the dictionary, there’s over a dozen different ways to use the word “smart.”)
One of PetalumaNet’s earlier projects promoted the use of “Smart Community” criteria for use as an assessment tool of local municipalities. John Eger of the California Institute for Smart Communities at San Diego State University had written, “A Smart Community is a community that has made a conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work within its region in significant and fundamental, rather than incremental, ways.”
John Eger, is one of California’s pioneer in the Smart Community movement that actual had its start over 15 years ago in 1990. Ten years later, 2000, he brought his California Smart Community message to the first North Bay CyberCity Roundtable Consortium Symposium, at Sonoma State University. It was during this heyday of Telecom Valley that PetalumaNet encouraged municipalities in the tri-County area of Marin, Napa and Sonoma to follow its lead and conduct local assessments to determine their status as a Smart Community. (But that’s another story for another time.)
These early memories of using smart in connection with community projects was triggered by recent newspaper articles that referred to Smart Growth Score Cards, Smart Code Zoning, and even SMART Transportation (e.g., the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit Board). The only problem with some of these SMART enterprises is that by the time a city, county, or state gets around to approving the SMART codes, standards, or plans as policy, the costs to implement or carry them out has skyrocketed. Then there is talk about, “well, we’ll need a small sales tax increase to help meet ongoing operational costs,” or even issue bonds to build it.
Quite often in our attempts to “do the greatest good for the greatest number of people” by proposing an initiative designed to be more efficient and effective, the time frame necessary to bring it about results in the original proposal becoming no longer economical. “If only we had done it sooner,” we say. But, we really weren’t as SMART back then – were we? Bottom line; the new idea doesn’t become a reality because of increased costs. Or, maybe it does get done – at several times the original estimated costs – only because the situation becomes so critical that the community doesn’t have a choice. (Like fixing the streets?) What do you think? Any suggestions?
P.S. Guess what came in today’s mail? Something called Smart Money. (I didn’t open it.)
On Our Radar Screen
Today’s newspapers (that “old” fashion printed stuff) carried stories about the possibility of traveling along “Our” Information Highway for free and “WiMax” technology that can deliver broadband faster and farther than current Wi-Fi mesh networks. Stay tuned.