Question: Do we need to rebuild our cities, or retrofit existing infrastructure? 

Robert Eccles: Cities are being rebuilt all the time. I think the notion of “tearing down” existing cities and building them from scratch, clearly, you know, isn’t a practical one. But there’s a question about, I talk about this with my students, my MBAs, when I taught the case to my doctoral students, existing cities, the so-called urban retrofit market, could be an even bigger opportunity. It would be approached in the somewhat different way, but the services, the products, the technologies, the sensor technology, and in particular, a core aspect of the Living PlanIT business model is something they call the urban operating system, could be used in existing urban environments, as well as it is in new cities.

Recorded on April 19, 2010