 Good afternoon and welcome to the second part of today's program. My name is Philip Rode. I'm the executive director of LSE cities, and I'm going to chair this session on Continuity or disruption the impact of urban technology and very appropriately we have gathered a very diverse panel of experts academics and indeed entrepreneurs that have all been at the forefront of the Re-emerging electric city the technologies and the systems that go with it Before I'll introduce the panel and the structure of the session Let me remind ourselves of the targets of the objectives for the next one and a half hours Besides a general introduction of new technological solutions and systems in cities We want to speculate on the degree to which these might impact and alter cities in the short and medium term We will also explore related benefits and risks and look at how new technologies can be scaled and more universally applied This will not be an easy task as Urbanists in particular have become rather shy about commenting on the impact of technology It seems that the predictions around the death of distance or the end of geography Which so far have proved wrong have become a powerful reminder of our limited ability to look into the future This is particularly difficult when dealing with disruptive technology and with basic innovations where we can't simply use past and Current experiences to extrapolate into the future But I hope this panel and maybe with the audience will try nevertheless Let me now turn to the introduction of the panelists and the session structure We will begin with a keynote by John Arie who's distinguished professor of sociology at Lancaster University And more recently published among others the books after the car and climate change and society John will talk about social technical scenarios for the future of the city We will then have a series of short presentations and discussions taken in three blocks And this is going to be a new format for us at the urban age We'll intertwine the presentations into an ongoing dialogue the first block will look at innovations in urban mobility Which will include presentations by Reiner Becker Who is chief operating officer for car to go introducing electric car sharing services by the automobile manufacturer Daimler? Franke Bairand senior lecturer in media studies at the University of Brighton will then follow up with an overview on smart electric bicycles The second block will introduce innovations of urban space Kent Larson who's director of city science of the city science initiative at MIT's media lab will present on smart dwelling and Greg Lindsay Who's a journalist with fast company and a visiting scholar of New York University will then talk about a new generation of office and innovation spaces With the last block we will then move on to the innovative to innovating communication and collaboration in cities Patrick's overall head of strategic marketing and intelligence at Ericsson is going to present the evolution of smartphones and Then last but not least Tom Hume Who is design director of IDO London and who will introduce his notion of a participation? Economy I Kindly ask all panelists to stick to the times we agreed up front and I'd like to invite John to kickstart with his keynote