 Thank you. How are you doing, guys? Come on. People are out there. I had two responses from the people that paid over here. Everybody has some silence. I'm going to try that again. How are you doing? All right. Fantastic. We've got some people behind us, too. Yes. We'll try to look behind us every now and then. Hashtag Renta Crowd. My name is Laramito. I work at the BBC. I grew up in a little town, a little village actually in western Kenya, but I founded like cities. And I've been excited. I've been privileged to live in three great cities in Nairobi, Johannesburg, and London. One thing they all share is they all need flying cars. So I'm going to be asking you about that. You're familiar with Johannesburg as well. So please help me welcome one more time to the stage. David Wallstein, who's the Chief Exploration Officer at Tencent, and our host, the Mayor of Helsinki, Jan Vapavuri. Jan, thanks for having us. Welcome to Helsinki. It's a great pleasure. I flew around the world to be here. I was in Taipei yesterday. Now I'm here. Thank you for having us. It's a small world. It's a really, really great city. How many are not from Helsinki in the crowd? Look at all these people who come. Is it a great city? Fantastic. Some of you don't think so. Mr. Mayor, your plan is to make Helsinki the most functional city in the world. What does that mean? I think it's all about good life. I think the main mission of a city is to create the best possible circumstances for good life. Of course, good life means different things for different people. But I think that a life which is easy, pleasant, comfortable, easygoing is at least part of it. I know that we are living in an insecure and unstable world. And I believe strongly that in this world a place which could create and provide with a reliable, predictable and functional operating environment is maybe even becoming luxury. And that is something we as a city aim to be. Of course, we do it above all for our inhabitants, our people. I strongly believe that also from my entrepreneur point of view, only from my business point of view, a city where you don't have to spend extra time in traffic jams, where you don't have to struggle and fight with bureaucracy and so on, releases actually your time for the business itself. And that's why I think to become the most functional city in the world is maybe not the most media sexy, but actually a very valuable mission. It's a great aspiration, but really quickly, what are you doing to get there to make sure that the quality of life here is really great? It's everything from safety to a reliable airport. We are now quite up north. You can imagine that the weather circumstances are maybe not optimal from some point of view. I mean, the Helsinki airport has only once been shut down for 15 minutes because of bad weather. And then another example could be that we want to create a safe downtown city where people and actually this is among the very few cities in the whole world in this size where you can let your kids go alone and walk to school. So it's, I mean, it's a city with a lot of strengths and a few weaknesses. All right, so David, picking up on the mayor's point, you believe the cities are a platform for good life, that technologies, entrepreneurs, investors, everybody needs to work together to be aligned to create that good life. But how do you get everybody on the same page? Well, I think that's actually very challenging because we're, as the mayor just said, we're facing a very interesting point in time where we're recognizing that factors like climate change are real and climate change is a way that forces us to address that a lot of the architecture. We have the things that we assume we deserve to have like these lights on and a comfortable temperature in this room. We actually are starting to realize that the way we provide for these things aren't very sustainable and we have to upgrade the architecture of Earth. And this is where cities can play a very special role in catalyzing more activity in those areas or actually, in some cases, even forcing solutions that are just better solutions. And I think cities are really where a lot of these challenges are going to be addressed and solved because right now about 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas. And urban areas are only about 2 to 3% of the usable land for humans on Earth, 70% of the world's oceans. So you have 55% of the world in cities going to 65% in roughly the next 20, 30 years. And so this is where we're going to solve a lot of humans' challenges. And the fact that we have consolidation of populations in these areas means if we can get things right in these city centers, we're going to solve climate change. We're going to have a more resilient world. We're going to take care of water crises, all of these ecological challenges that we're going to be facing. So I find the fact that Helsinki is so proactive to address these kind of areas and have dialogues and stimulate more and more dialogues in these areas, particularly the exciting, and it's so important that Helsinki can be an example not just to the region, the Nordic, Scandinavia, Europe, but also the entire planet because the conditions are so ripe here to further build off this platform and show the world what's possible. It's interesting you talk about climate change being real because some presidents might say, if climate change is real, why is it so cold? Yeah, well... That's a major president. And there's a denial about the basic science of it. And so something like that, you don't need to fix what is... Well, it's very hard for people to understand things that aren't immediately in front of them. We tend to all care about what we're going to eat today, who we're going to play with, am I bored or not, is this event fun? What's more difficult is to step back and today say, wow, Helsinki is probably four to five degrees warmer than average, maybe it's only two or three. This weather is awfully unusual today. Why is that happening? Could it be happening because of planetary scale forces, because of more CO2, the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere? That's not intuitive. That takes scientific knowledge. You have to learn that. You have to validate these claims. That doesn't come as easy as saying, I like the shoes that she's wearing over there, or boy, I want to be in that party. And so it's so easy to get distracted because we all want to feel comfortable and enjoy our lives. But it's hard for us to stop what we're doing and say, there's something bigger going on here. Should I play a role in it or do I leave that to other people? I'm sure someone else in the world is solving it. That's what most people think. Oh, maybe Tencent or David is doing something about it. Maybe the United States is doing something about it. Maybe the president is doing something about it. And then you find out, wait a second, the people I thought were doing something about it, it seems like they're actually denying the existence of it. And then you realize there aren't that many people on earth actually trying to solve the problem today with hard technologies. And so what we need to do is encourage more and more people to go into those areas. That's where I think cities can actually play a significant role by supporting the industry to have dialogues, by supporting solutions, supporting the fact that I don't know what the solution is today. Maybe the city says, I don't know what the solution is, but I know we want to solve this and we want to have a process for engaging the market with as many great solutions as possible. And we'll work together to find the best solutions and we'll share those results with the rest of the world. And that's what I think Helsinki can do so well. All right, Jan. So how do you bridge the gap between entrepreneurs, city leaders and scientists in trying to solve some of those solutions? Actually, if I start by echoing a little bit on what David said, I think that one of the big changes which we see in the world today is that we have used to the idea that it's the nation states and actually big companies who rule the world. Now we are witnessing an era where cities and startups are taking over more and more. And I think that one of the biggest strengths with the cities compared to the states is that we have a much more direct contact and dialogue with the citizens. To bridge the gap, I think it's the same whatever gap you have. You need to create a community which is based on low hierarchy, open data, transparency and trust above all. When I took office a little bit more than a year ago, the very first dinner I offered was for the representatives of the Helsinki-based startup, main players. And I started by asking them what could the city of Helsinki do more in order to help them. And it actually turned to be a discussion where they thought how they could help the city of Helsinki. And I think that this is actually a good proof of a city, a real community, a place where we see the city more as a place in a community than a bureaucracy. Another example which I'd like to mention is that in countries like Finland and places like Helsinki where we have low presoles and low barriers between different kind of players, we can example what we did to put up a foundation, a smart and clean foundation which is to get together of the cities, main businesses and academia and really cooperate in a way which is much more difficult in places with other kind of hierarchies. I actually want to add because I know how important the issues of democracy and trust are to you, Jan. And I think on one side we have to solve problems scientifically. You have to figure out what's the replacement for coal. That's a scientific problem. But on the other side we have to make sure that we're able to have a robust dialogue to have the discussion in the first place. There's going to be difficult decisions that are going to affect everyone with some of these transitions that are coming. And if we don't have that trust in the society, if we don't have those fundamental mechanisms to have the difficult dialogues that need to happen and know where everyone's coming from, from the right place, but having a different perspective on how you get there, then the system can break down. And there's going to be difficult things happening in the world. You can see just over the weekend in Paris, I don't even know all the details of why people are rioting. It's almost like a Civil War, people are saying. But when you don't get these things right, I heard something about high fuel prices. The difficult times are not here yet, really, about for this. If you don't get that right, you can see how society can just devolve and we can end up in the streets. And it's so important that Helsinki continues to build on that trust, on that practice and that reputation you have for doing that, which is another reason why I think Helsinki is in a really great position to foster more and more companies dealing with these difficult problems. I agree what you said earlier on that climate change is certainly the most crucial challenge the mankind is faced. But in order to solve that, we need to have a well-functioning democratic system, which actually helps us to solve that. And in order to have that, we really need to defend the democratic process, which is in, say, not a self-evident case in all, even Western countries in today's world. And there the main element is trust. If the people trust them others, if the people trust the authorities, if the people trust the city and the state, then we have a chance to defend the democratic process and then we really have a chance also to tackle bigger issues like climate change. Really quickly that you mentioned climate change, because somebody asked on Slido, does the general public really care about solving climate change issues? That's a big one. Let me say this. There is a difference between appreciating that climate change exists or believing that it exists. I think that's what people would say now. Do you believe it? You say, yeah, I do. Okay, great. There's a difference in going to that first step saying, I think there's something to it, and then actually doing something about it. And I feel like the problem that we're in now globally is that more and more people will acknowledge it and you have differing understandings of the science behind it. But most people say, I think there's something to it. And then I get a sense that because someone feels like they believe in it, they're on the side of it, that they assume something is happening. And that's very different. Actually taking a proactive action, shutting down a coal-fired plant maybe, or doing something, adding artificial intelligence to make that coal-fired plant more intelligent. That's the difficult step that I don't see happening around the world enough. I mean, and maybe people would argue that there is more happening. It's hard to find. And it's hard to find startups that are trying to tackle it directly. I'm not saying no one's doing. I'm saying there could be a lot more, especially in light of the scale of the importance of the challenge. This is like wartime footing. Climate change is like when the bombs hit the city, in the old days used to say, someone's attacking us, everyone stop what you're doing, put on the war uniform, go fight. Pearl Harbor happened, Americans think about it a lot. When Pearl Harbor happened, everyone said, we're at war now, we know what's happening. Climate change, we see the danger coming and everyone's like, okay, I'm sure someone else is solving it. Hey, did you see what else is happening today? There's like an awesome party tonight. Okay. Talking about the tackling climate change, I think there are some people who believe in awareness, some who believe in regulation, some who believe in technology. And I think all of those are important. These people here, they are more aware than their parents and they care more. But alone, it's not good enough. Then we need some regulation. But above all, doing good is only possible if it's also a way to do good business. And that's why we also need the technology. Related to that, before we jump in, again, another question from Anonymous. Doesn't urbanization face its own problems? Isn't it a leading factor as to why Jakarta or Mexico City are sinking? Please. Well, yes and no. Like if you get it right, if you can solve the problems with Mexico's water crisis, then it becomes a hope, it becomes a solution. The challenge is you have a lot of people in a small space. And so if you get things right in that small space, you've become the solution. If you haven't solved your water crisis, which is why Mexico City is sinking because their water is very expensive coming over mountains. And otherwise, they're using aquafire water from underground. And when you use that up, it becomes hollow and then the land sinks. If you don't solve it, then you actually have an even worse challenge on your hands because you have a lot of people in a small space that are consolidated an area that didn't solve something like even Cape Town in South Africa with Day Zero and all of that. And you can just point to examples around the world. So urbanization is simultaneously a tremendous opportunity because if you get things right in a small area, you've solved it for that population and you've probably solved it for generations for hundreds of years or thousands of years. That's what we're going for on humanity is solving things for the rest of time in scaling to 10 billion or 11 or 12 billion people on the planet. If you don't solve it though, you have a real crisis on your hands. I want to come back to that in a moment about whatever we're doing, solving these solutions, are they sustainable? Can we keep doing them for a thousand years? But as you think through that, Mayor, a question here from Slido again, do you see potential in better collaboration between tech companies and city consults? Absolutely. As I said, and actually as you said, I strongly believe that urbanization is among the biggest megatrends in the world and maybe the biggest challenge we have is how to manage and control the urbanization in a sustainable way. I think we shouldn't discuss whether it's good or bad because it's a reality. The issue is how to manage it in a sustainable way. And there, of course, we need a huge amount of innovations and we need a huge amount of technology. And then we also need a huge amount, at least some cities, who could act like for-runners as testbeds and platforms in order to test like this kind of innovations. I think that is actually one of the biggest strengths for a city like Helsinki that we are at the same time big enough to enable innovations and demonstrations of innovations in a systemic scale, but at the same time small enough to make that happen and functional enough to make that happen. Is it possible to have this aspiration of building a better life for all and also somehow building wild leading businesses in cities? Are they opposing ideas? There may be some people who think that they are contradictory, I don't think so. I think in the long run there is no conflict of interest at all. I think it's a huge opportunity for cities and I'd love to see cities become more entrepreneurial. I'd like to see entrepreneurs out there more interested in the problems faced by cities and nations in solving those challenges, but the cities have this tremendous opportunity. Just think about waste management. Think about a challenge like plastic. Some parts of the world have said we're not going to allow any more plastic. What if the city, I think Helsinki is working on this, says we want to solve the challenge around plastic. We're open to all kinds of solutions from entrepreneurs, from scientists, from academia. How can we solve this? And let's hear from you and have a process that engages industry and say you have a few winners that come out of that process saying we will solve Helsinki's problem, we demonstrate that this works here, we take it to the rest of Europe, we take it to the rest of the planet. The ability of a city to organize around that issue because waste management usually falls under the city government. That's why I'm talking about. So they have a unique ability to accelerate progress in this issue by identifying it, embracing it, providing a degree of budget behind it, showing that the solution works, which is so important for a startup to say, I do this in Helsinki, can I please come to Stockholm? Can I please come to London? Helsinki is in a perfect position to be a driver of that, to say I proved it in Helsinki, now I'm coming to Beijing. Okay, so you and I have both lived in Johannesburg and they're having major power problems right now. And you talk about energy efficiency as a major opportunity for improving life, but also building great businesses. You want to expand on that a little? Right. So, well, if you look at climate change and one of the key drivers of climate change, I think we all know it's related to energy. So, how are we going to solve this energy challenge we have? One way is obviously you switch out what you do in your electricity grid. You used to use coal fire plants, now you switch to wind or solar or so on and so forth. But that's challenging. It needs to happen, but it requires infrastructure investment. It takes time to figure out how do you shut down one thing and bring up another thing. The power of artificial intelligence to solve this challenge is very, very exciting because software, which artificial intelligence is based on, it moves at the speed of light. You can implement it anywhere around the world. You need data, but if the data is available, that artificial intelligence can start working and it can start working in two areas that are really top of my mind. One is, I think it's not really that proven yet, how AI can make the fundamental operation of let's say a coal fire plant more efficient. And this sounds a bit taboo to people. They don't want to hear any more coal being used, but in the immediate term, if we are going to use coal, can we limit the amount of coal we use? Can we limit the amount of water that we use? Water is also a big part of that process. And can we maximize the amount of electrons coming out of it? Now, the Joberg problem is probably more about supply and demand, not matching up. Everyone wants their air conditioners to work at the same time, and there's only a certain amount of supply of electricity. How do you match these up? If you use intelligence, you can do what we call intelligence scheduling of your tasks. So there are certain actors in the country like industry that have tasks they need to do, and they use a lot of electricity. Can they schedule that intelligently to kind of even out the demands on the grid? So you don't just get to ask for the energy all at once. Certain things have to be like that, but maybe charging electric vehicles, for example. That's very obvious to many people how the software could schedule when you actually charge up the car. And you can do that throughout society. That can be powered by artificial intelligence. I think that most of the biggest problems we have out of a kind, we either solve or fail to solve on the city level. It's city level. I think that is the most important level. And that is also creating a huge marketplace for all the startups. Coming back to climbing chains and coal and energy efficiency, Helsinki has a very ambitious strategy of being carbon neutral by 2035. And we are going to do that. We know the big picture, but we don't know in exact terms how to do that. And that's why we need the help of the business community and actually the global business community. These folks here. These folks here. How to really do that. And they are, I think, that cities can and should act and behave more like also as platforms, as enablers, work with different kind of challenges, doing that together with big companies, doing that together with other cities. We have some experience of co-creating the city of New York and some really good ones. And maybe this could be the next one. I'd love to know what it would take for people in the audience to solve this issue. To get more passionate about solving for these challenges. And they'll probably say, Mr. Mayor, we need budgets. We need to know that if I take risks, will there be budget there? Can I get funding from VCs? Will my community think I'm a good person? Will I be loved in the society? And if the answer is yes, yes, and yes, I can imagine there's so many more people out there that would be willing to get into this challenge. And so I think the city's role is so essential for this. Okay, so we're down to the last three minutes. So quick fire answers. Roger, I agree the city leaders and the new pioneers. Finns are so modest. So what opportunities exist for Helsinki to leave the world in open city development? Open city. We have a open data strategy already for, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago. We believe that opening up all data we have gives us more than we live. It has been a big success already so far and I believe that it is, of course, it's part of our mentality. It's part of the Nordic way to see the society. It's part to show that we have nothing to hide, that we are a transparent city, a trustworthy city. But then it's also a business case. I really believe that if we open up the data we have, we get more innovative startups to innovate and do something which is worth not only money for themselves, but also some gains for the city than the other way around. David, how would you solve transportation or mobility in cities, one of the biggest CO2 emitters? Well, there's a lot of solutions for that. I think you have to solve for it by going to EVs, but I think for solving for EVs, you need to also think about your electricity foundation, how you generate your power, and I think the two go together. There's no point in just having a bunch of coal-fired plants going into EVs. You're just emitting more coal in the back end. I'm particularly passionate about the ability to fly. We work with a company in... The ability to fly? I want flying cars, like I said. Well, we're trying to stay away from the term flying cars, but we call them flying planes that happen to take off vertically using all electric power. We work with a great company in Germany called Lilium that we think they have the best model in the world for this. The importance of cities in that also can't be understated because this is an example of a model that is going to happen. It is going to become possible. If you can even imagine that you can have a car... I'm sorry, a plane with five people in it that takes off vertically and flies to its destination, then lands again. In some ways it's like a helicopter, in other ways it's just like a plane, but it's got five people in it. This has not been done anywhere in the history of the world. This has not been possible for humanity. This is a moment when everyone's on horses and someone comes along with a car, with a bunch of gas coming out the back end, saying, will you embrace my car? Get off the horse, guys. And now everyone's in their cars, usually gas powered, saying, yeah, it's not going to fly. How far away from commercial application is this? Well, I think it's... We're within years away. And the lower end of years. This is going to be unveiled a lot sooner than people can imagine. So this is not like you're going to have to wait a super long time for the next Star Wars movie or something like that. This is coming probably faster than the next Avatar movie or something like that. 20 seconds, Mayor. What is the technology you think that's going to completely reshape how we live in cities? What's the future technology you're excited about? The easy answer would be autonomous vehicles or drones or flying cars. The most important issue is to understand that urbanization is changing the world. And if we want to save the planet, we need to do that in a sustainable way. So it's a wide idea instead of a single technology. And you? What technology are you betting on? I'm going to give you the short answer best of your longest. I don't think in terms of technology. I always think in terms of the challenges that must be solved. And what are the technologies that we have available to solve them? So I actually don't try to place a bet on anything. I say we must solve a more intelligent architecture for humanity to go from 7.6 billion people a day to 10 billion by the year 2050. And with that, we have to solve food. Everyone here has to eat on the planet. Energy, and we have to solve water. And any technologies that help us solve that, we must embrace them to make sure we solve that challenge because the consequences are too great if we don't, and there's a non-zero chance that we don't solve it for many parts of the world. We're not solving it today anyways. Fantastic. Mayor Yan and David, thank you so much. This was fantastic. Please give him a big round of applause. Thank you.