Urban governance for learning cities

The ways in which cities' administrative structures are governed and implemented define the primary DNA of all living, learning urban cell structures.

This is the notion of the model presented here.

If the administration governing the city is itself a learner, then it will transmit learning beyond the administrative sphere.

If this same administration is benevolent with itself, then it will transmit benevolence in its facilitating actions. The key to a sustainable learning policy lies in the coherent management of its elected representatives and its administration. Vision, roles and role models are among the most powerful tools of collective intelligence (CI), and one of the keys to a successful learning city.

A group is a living structure, a city is a living structure. Both need answers to the essential questions of Who, Where and How. Learning is the transmission of skills, knowledge and know-how, which are a transposition of these same questions.

One of the keys to a quality learning city is to have a learning administration.

"Vision - To be the preferred resource for the sustainable development of employee skills, with the aim of improving the quality of services provided by the municipal administration.

Missions - To offer practice-oriented, forward-looking training to develop collective and individual skills.

Guarantee access to training for everyone in order to develop potential, encourage mobility and increase the equitable representation of both sexes in management positions. "*

Sources: DRH, training 2017 Ville de Genève p13

If we can do it, you should too...

The notion of a learning city is created on a daily basis in a disruptive flux. This means embracing change, mutation and innovation. How can a city administration with classic procedures become an innovative, even agile, structure? This is one of the challenges of the coming years, and one that rests on the shoulders of human resources.

How can we pass on or impose a system, ideas and services to the population if the administration behind them is disconnected from or does not adhere to what it is proposing? If it doesn't want to move when the world is moving? This is a fundamental question on which the future of learning cities, and the future of our society in general, rests.

Unfortunately, there's no magic bullet. What's needed is a great deal of support, training in transition management and a clear redefinition of the values, meaning and objectives of staff, as well as tools adapted to these changes. It's a necessity in the face of a collective urban need.

In the event of failure, the city can call on external resources, such as schools, associations or mandated companies, to help alleviate its human resources problem, but this is only a viable solution in the medium term. However, this is only a viable solution in the medium term, as these contractors, naturally learning partners, are in this situation outside the scope of their primary missions.

To have a learning city is to have a city that needs to learn, an administration that learns and a governance that has a clear vision of learning. To want a city on the move is to have a city that wants to evolve, an innovative administration and a governance that supports change. The transmission of knowledge is a challenge for everyone, and a vector for the future.

Today, the status of cities is changing. They are taking their place as autonomous cities in the global context of decentralization, of which blockchain technology, which organizes decentralized governance and management, is the most compelling example.

On the subject of blockchain: "Technology is the concrete representation of a culture, in that we build it according to it". Sources: On the ethics of decentralization Alexandre Stachtchenko - LinkedIn

At a time when New York, San Francisco, Geneva (Canton) and others are almost seceding, becoming cities of refuge in the face of societal threats or decisions they feel are unfair to their citizens.

In the United States of America: "Following in the footsteps of citizen protests, more than 200 cities across the country have decided to declare themselves "sanctuary cities"!" Source : ace à Trump, San Francisco proclaims itself a "sanctuary city"! -Axel Leclercq - : http://positivr.fr

In Geneva: "Operation Papyrus, from its code name, has so far worked in secrecy. Since 2015, it has enabled 590 undocumented migrants, including 147 families, to emerge from the shadows in Geneva." Source : Genève se lance dans la régularisation des clandestins - Laure Lugon - www.letemps.ch

In this same movement of urban self-determination, each of these countries has also decided to take the learning process in its own city into its own hands.

Knowledge is the best defense against obscurantism. If each city, through its actions, lights a light of knowledge in the night, then who knows, perhaps our era will be christened the century of enlightened cities. To be continued.