Future of Infrastructure: How Cascais Became a Smarter City

with Miguel Pinto Luz

Miguel Pinto Luz the Deputy Mayor of Cascais joined us to share the story of how Cascais prioritizes quality of life, and how it’s putting service delivery and economic development first to achieve it.

Future of Infrastructure

Host Jeremy Goldberg, Worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure at Microsoft, is on a journey to learn more about how infrastructure is being built around the world, by talking with public servants, philanthropist, artists and place-makers who have spent their lives working in the public interest. This is a series to help us build things and plan for the future while putting people first.

How Cascais Became a Smarter City

byMicrosoft

Miguel Pinto Luz, the Deputy Mayor of Cascais, Portugal, joined us to share how Cascais prioritizes quality of life, and how it’s putting service delivery and economic development first to achieve it. Learn about Cascais’s transportation system and why accountability and transparency are at the core of how Cascais is becoming a smarter city.

Visit the Future of Infrastructure site for transcripts of all episodes.

Jeremy Goldberg | LinkedIn | Twitter

Miguel Pinto Luz | LinkedIn | Cascais

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Episode summary

Miguel Pinto Luz the Deputy Mayor of Cascais joined us to share the story of how Cascais prioritizes quality of life, and how it’s putting service delivery and economic development first to achieve it. Listen to learn about Cascais’s transportation system and why accountability and transparency are at the core of how Cascais is becoming a smarter city.

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How Cascais Became a Smarter City

Miguel Pinto Luz the Deputy Mayor of Cascais joined us to share the story of how Cascais prioritizes quality of life, and how it’s putting service delivery and economic development first to achieve it. Listen to learn about Cascais’s transportation system and why accountability and transparency are at the core of how Cascais is becoming a smarter city.

Setting Goals on the Path to a Smarter City

Deputy Mayor Miguel Pinto Luz shared that the city has chosen areas of focus to match the priorities of its residents.

“We know, we don’t want to compete with all the municipalities in all the fields. We know in which field we are the best, and in this field  we invest. We have asked for an assessment, when I came here, to see what are the main drivers for a family to choose a place to live? The first one, a top of mind, it would be education, so you – you are open to move from one location to other, even with worst quality of life if you know in that place you have the best education for your kids, the first.

The second is healthcare, of course. So in these two drivers we have invested a lot, and all the other dimensions came as a consequence of the first two, so investing in education, investing in health.”

Creating the “Cascais Cockpit” for Service Delivery

The Deputy Mayor explained how they are using technology to amplify their ability to deliver services: “So in this building that you – that we are now, the Cascais cockpit where you have all the infrastructure here implemented, all the millions of sensors that you have in place in the city,  all the data comes into this, and converges into this center.

The technology is not an end in itself. It’s to create the first system, the first city in the entire world where we can sign an SLA with our citizens. And I think in 2023, we will be starting – the first steps of this SLA will be signed, and we will have, for instance, one month to fix a hole in the – in the streets, two weeks to give you a license for a new restaurant or three months for you to license a new building.

So these kind of commitments from both sides and myself as a politician and all my staff, and we are more than 6,000 now, and – and we may say, “No, we – we must cope with this promise of having the very best services in the world,” and with these very best services, I mean to deliver the quality of life. That is the – our top line.”