Summer Series: Technology as an enabler for social justice, with Nancy Odendaal

Hi #smartcommunity friends! Welcome to the Summer Series here on the Smart Community Podcast. We're taking a little break from new content over The Australian summer holidays, but with more than 200 episodes in the bank, we've got plenty for you to catch up on. During this Summer Series, we'll be sharing the replays of a few of our all time favourite episodes. And this week we're starting right back in the beginning when we were still called The Smart City Podcast with Nancy Odendaal, who was on Episode 3! Nancy is an Urban Planner and an Associate Professor in City planning at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In this episode not only will you hear Nancy and I discuss the cool new idea of a podcast about Smart Cities, we also talk about her background in urban planning and how she's been involved in the concept of Smart since the 1990s when it was called Digital City. We also discuss how informality is often core to understanding a city in the global South, the difference between Smart Urbanism and Smart Cities, and the contrast between big engineering approaches to Smart and the idea of Smart from the bottom up. Nancy and I also discuss the social justice angle of technology being used to challenge the status quo, and how tech is a part of the day-to-day even for people who live quite marginal existences. Plus, Nancy tells us why she believes South Africa is the perfect place to pilot Smart tech, and so much more. Of course, this episode is now almost 3 years old so I have an update from Nancy: she's got lots happening, including her new book Shaping Smart for Better Cities, with another book on the way! We'll be sure to get her back on the show in the future for a full update. But in the meantime, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it! Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Nancy via her Academic webpage at http://uct.academia.edu/NancyOdendaal or on Twitter @NancyO_UCT Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.