The Places with AI podcast introduces Dave Atkinson as the host, focusing on how artificial intelligence and technology can enhance both urban and rural environments.

This discussion delves into Dave's background as a cartographer and his journey through various roles in local government, emphasising his commitment to improving life for vulnerable populations.

A significant theme is the intersection of technology, urban planning, and public service, particularly in addressing issues like transport accessibility and climate change.

The conversation also explores the potential of AI in reimagining public spaces and the collaborative design process that involves local communities.

Listeners can expect insights into the challenges and innovations shaping the future of our cities and the role of technology in creating more liveable environments.

Takeaways:

• The podcast will explore the intersection of AI technology and physical places, aiming to improve urban and rural environments for better living standards.
• Dave Atkinson has a background in cartography and technology, which informs his approach to discussing AI's impact on society.
• The show intends to address the needs of vulnerable populations in urban and rural settings through the use of AI and technology.
• The discussions will include how intelligent transport systems can enhance public safety and efficiency in public transportation networks.
• AI's role in public planning and how it can facilitate community engagement and design will be a focus of the podcast.
• The hosts express a desire to reimagine public spaces and infrastructure with the help of AI and technology to promote sustainability.

I'm from Hull, so my accent is maybe problematic to some, which is why we may provide subtitles.

You're listening to with aifm.

Hello, everybody.

My name is David and I'm the executive producer of with aifm.

And on today's show, I want to introduce Dave Atkinson, who's going to be the host of our Places with AI podcast.

And it's going to be a show.

We're going to talk about what Dave wants to talk about a little bit about his background, so you get to understand that.

But essentially it's about physical places like cities and urban and rural environments and how AI and technology can make those places better for people to live.

So that's the goal for the show.

And just introduce Dave.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

For.

For people who don't know maybe a little bit about your background and just in a general sense, kind of the angle and the knowledge that you're bringing to the conversation and then a little bit about how that's going to then inform the topics that you want to talk about and the people that you want to talk to.

So by education, I'm a cartographer, so I'm a map man and I'm about places and, and sort of geographical things and probably not entirely by design.

My first real job, apart from working at a sports shop and a bookies when I was a student, was with the military at the UK military.

And it gave me a kind of a good foundation in work, but it exposed me to quite a lot of different sort of technologies and things like that.

So at the time, so we're talking sort of late 90s at the time, things like accurate GPS wasn't such a thing.

It was for the military, but it wasn't for everybody else.

But some of the.

But I'm okay, everybody, that's when the wheels come off.

There's going to be no disc disclosures.

I mean, I was too fair.

I was too junior for them to know anything interesting.

Sort of a bit bit because I was from Hull, they weren't too sure, but.

But yeah, started working for the military and started working on some really interesting things, getting into technology a bit more and.

And ironically, my original desire with cartography was manual cartography.

So one of the disciplines of cartography, I call it crassly now, an artist's impression of an engineering design, because that's what.

It's a visual thing.

It's accurate.

Don't get Me wrong.

But it's not dead on accurate like you would have a engineering drawing.

And part of the artistic input into mapping is things like hill shading, which is quite a difficult effect to achieve.

And you need to be artistically talented, which I kind of.

I'm okay.

My brother's a very talented artist, but I'm okay enough that I can do.

You're very creative though.

You're amazingly creative.

I mean I've seen some of the stuff that you've done at Halloween in the past and the stuff that you've done with your kids and you know, you like to play sort of role playing games and very imaginative and that sort of thing.

So there's a massive.

And I guess that feeds into that cartography bit.

I had.

I had to find a way of doing that at work and this was the best I could do, I think, which has been brilliant.

And it's been brilliant to me.

My career has been, has been brilliant to me.

When I was young I taught myself to program.

There was me and a couple of my mates.

I'll shout out for Sam, who might or might not listen to this, but shout out to Sam, very, very technically, he's a Java developer and he's very, very talented, very clever guy.

And even when we were younger we were quite interested in mucking around with BBC Model B Basic, hiding MSX at the time.

And then there was Spectrums, Commodores and things like that.

So I taught myself to program.

And where my desires to be more creative or artistic rubbed up against technology to start with was I realized that your production of maps is much easier on a computer and then behind that you've got geographical information systems.

That's where all the really interesting stuff happens.

That's when you can start, you know.

And then when I did my masters, I got into modeling, got into artificial intelligence then to a degree and that just sprouted interest.

I was, in my early part of my career I was quite technical and I then went into local government, took the sort of technical expertise into local government.

And just as my career progressed in local government I just kind of moved away from being technical mainly because I was starting to project manage.

I was starting to manage people, got into more, more and more senior, senior roles.

And then you realize you've gone two years without looking at a map or two years without really getting involved with technology.

And then I Worked for a regional event agency in Yorkshire and then got back into.

Got back into local government.

So, and.

And the themes that I've tended to work in, I've worked in corporate services, policy, performance, things like that.

But theme things like transport, waste.

Waste absolutely fascinates me, honestly.

Like, I'd.

My previous previously was involved with highways transport and things like that, but I'd been involved in waste.

My.

My current role.

I'm back with waste again and it was exhilarating having that switch back, really.

But the core of it is my whole sort of endeavor around my professional life is helping people, particularly helping vulnerable people, and particularly around the transport type stuff.

I've got climate change in my portfolio now as well, particularly around transport accessibility, opening opportunities for people who are isolated, lonely, et cetera.

That's why when we discussed the Places With AI podcast, I was keen for it not to just be about urban centers, because that's obviously where there's a lot of people, there's a lot of technology and there's kind of geographical efficiency that you can create just with technology and then on top of that, again using artificial intelligence, on top of the technology.

But I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that I work in public service because I want to help the most vulnerable in society.

That's for me, what local authorities are for and that's what I'll always, through my career, try and achieve.

But the really exciting stuff around the blend of the kind of rural, urban thing is in urban, we did some really exciting stuff in a previous role around traffic signals, intelligent modeling around transport networks and things like that, and then putting in predictions.

It sounds unglamorous when I say it, but one of my early guests is royalty in intelligent transport systems.

I won't give it away yet, but they talk incredibly articulately about the value from your health and wellbeing from all sorts of different aspects of using technology well in the public realm and using technology well as a local authority.

And then the rural bit, it's just, you know, I'd love to solve the riddle of rural buses.

I'd love it because it's that thing where you've got low demand, the cost per passenger is high, but increasingly, as people are drawn to cities and urban areas, people get left behind in rural areas.

So I don't want to lose that connection.

Yeah, it's a really important topic.

And I mean, you know.

But I live out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm six miles outside of Tunbridge Wells, I live on a farm on a major road and there's not a single bus.

I mean even if I wanted to take public transport, there's not a bus within almost a.

It's a five minute drive away, which sounds like nothing, but it's quite awkward because I'm on an A road.

It's a, it's one of the busiest roads, the main road from London to Hastings.

It's very, very busy.

You know, the stretch of road that I live on is very dangerous.

The villages around us have, you know, three or four buses a day.

That's it, like two in the morning and two, two in the evening.

And you're right, I mean it's a, it's a huge problem to crack.

And I think I was just at the ITS World Congress.

Its for everybody.

I suspect everybody who listens to this will probably know what ITS is, but it's Intelligent Transport Systems and they just had the World Congress in Dubai and I was with my AI hat on.

I was quite curious to sort of see how many people were talking about how much AI, excuse me, how much AI would be at the show versus maybe more traditional.

And I would say it's about 50, 50.

There were a lot of AI companies there.

There were a lot of its sort of pavilions from different countries.

So Italy, France, whatever.

We were on the UK pavilion, shout out to Starlink Technologies.

But yeah, what was really interesting is how people are trying to use it mainly around transport and traffic and trying to look at traffic and using a lot of the computer vision, which strictly probably isn't AI.

A lot of us would call that machine learning.

But it's getting there because a lot of the new tools are enabling some better and faster analysis and predictive modeling to try and stop things before they happen.

I don't want to take all your.

Thunder away, but that's the safety aspect of.

It's really interesting.

I mean that's one of the critical sort of overlays of technology in terms of how we use artificial intelligence is the safety, the efficiency and safety is really what you want on a public transport network.

And I want to get into, on the podcast about things like autonomous vehicles, but not the kind of simplistic, oh well it's going to these things.

I'll just plow through the intricacies.

Like how does an autonomous vehicle turn right into human traffic when there's a cure traffic?

It can't do it because it can't take the wink or nod from the driver or even the flash because you're obviously not meant to do that anyway, it can't take those, those signals that aren't a standard sort of thing as part of the highway layout.

So really interested in getting into some of that stuff and just responding.

On the point about artificial intelligence, I'm not in my podcast, we will talk, I'll have a couple of people on who will talk about the technology specifically.

And we'll probably unpick what's AI and not what's not AI.

But my AI coverall is, is anything from a Star Trek future all the way back to data and machine learning.

And I'm just going to kind of loosely call that.

And I think it's just to get the most out of the guests as much as anything.

We'll make some assumptions, but in some of the shows we'll talk about technology pathways, where we're going, how that will benefit, you know, little things like the issue autonomous vehicles.

You introduce autonomous vehicles onto road, you see traffic with autonomous vehicles.

Brilliant.

That tempers speed, can do all sorts of things.

But there is obviously a point where the autonomous vehicle is safer than a human driver.

And then what happens to insurance policies at that point?

So if we steer away from who's to blame, it's more.

Right.

Well, I ring up, well, you drive in a city that's 90% autonomous vehicle and you know, 89% of the accidents are caused by human drivers.

Yeah.

So you're the risk.

So you are the risk.

So then what is the human as an actor on the transport network after that?

Exactly.

And how soon do we get there?

I think that's the other thing.

And I want to say I read a few years ago that they were building a test city somewhere in like Arizona or something, and they were literally building an entire city.

And what they were going to do is have everything run autonomously.

And it was an environment where they could test because.

And again, we could do a whole show on this.

But the biggest problem that I see that they have at the minute is they haven't worked out the vehicle to vehicle communications yet to be able to, you know, we all talk about seeing around corners and you know, for the vehicles to be able to say, hey, there's a car over here and there's a vehicle here and there, you know, at intersections and for them among themselves to work out how they're going to proceed.

And I think that's where it's going to be really interesting.

And I think a lot of the generative AI tools might help broker those conversations.

Oddly enough, even though it's super low level Technical stuff.

And it's going to be super technical messages and timestamps and all sorts of boring stuff.

At the end of the day, it's those same algorithms that are driving the generative AI that are probably going to really help with that and help that get moving.

The insurance one's an amazing one.

I think that'd be a fascinating conversation to, you know, to think about.

I think it's just when you play it through, I mean, I know you've spoken on the Creatives podcast about the consequences and the kind of.

I know you've got the question at one point about where do you see.

Where do you see the future of AI?

Do you have the utopian dystopian, et cetera, et cetera?

I've watched way too many sci fi films for you to ask me that question.

Question because we haven't got enough time for that.

But again, that's a whole another episode.

Films.

That'll be amazing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, maybe I'll do.

Maybe I'll do that one and I'll get everybody to come on and we'll review films that.

What's the most recent film where they had the robots?

The AI robots.

Do you remember?

It just came out like a year ago.

Creator.

Was it called?

Creator.

Okay, I apologize, everyone.

I will have to put it in the show notes.

I'll put a link to whatever it is.

But the whole premise of the film was that AI robots just lived like people and they were just part of society and they were farming and.

Like humans.

Like humans series Humans.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, kind of.

And.

But then it was.

They.

But they were being kind of mistreated and they didn't, from what I remember, and they didn't want to.

And there was a whole thing around that.

And then it ended up in this big war between humans and robots.

But it was.

It was really interesting because they were doing.

It was just a vision of them in everyday life, which was quite interesting too.

The interesting thing about this, in terms of peaks and troughs of my.

Because I have a kind of a.

I go in peaks and troughs in terms of.

I wouldn't say enthusiasm as such, but where I am with AI.

So sometimes I read a few things and think, actually it's not moving that quick.

Sometimes I'll read something, it's like, that's like, you know, right on the horizon.

I think that the pitfall in AI is how much we interfere with the development of AI.

So you did the interview with PI, didn't you?

For example, that Sent me into a bit of a trough.

The reason it did was because it was, it was.

And this is no criticism to anyone involved, by the way.

It was, it was just clear that there was a part of that interview, I think it was where the person you'd interviewed had interviewed PI and where they'd come out with a really interesting answer.

And my instinct was like, I just want to see where that goes.

And then I started thinking, well, and then it sets you back to.

Actually, it's not AI.

It's not AI.

It's clever algorithms with clever pointers that.

But I think it, I mean, to be absolutely frank with you, to have a, like a completely spontaneous conversation with something artificial, I think it's a massive step.

It's cool, it's good, it's good.

Things like, I mean, the large language model stuff, it's good.

I mean, it's dropped off a bit recently.

I think you've addressed that in your podcast, but it's really, really fascinating.

It's good.

In some ways I wish I had more time to explore some of the technology because it's not core in my day to day job.

So I'd like to explore some of the technology a bit more.

And I know you've talked about quantum computing and things like that in your previous podcasts, so I'd like to explore some of that.

But I would like, when I'm interviewing the guests to get into the kind of, get into the nub of how it's going to help people, how it's going to improve lives, how people are going to be healthier, what's the kind of impact, but also get into really sort of interesting technology and engineering stuff as well.

So what's this going to look like?

I think one of the things that I think is it kind of gets into sort of robotics and stuff is just things like construction.

Construction is so expensive.

Just like again, this isn't.

I'm not calling out anybody, it's just fact materials all the way through to sort of completed, sort of delivery type stuff.

It's really, really expensive.

I like to see advances in technology that would make added materials or robotic type technology.

It doesn't have to necessarily be autonomous.

That would speed up, make more efficient, better value for money type construction so you can actually change the built environment sort of faster.

Part of my portfolio is climate change in my current role.

So I'll talk about the sort of impacts of, or I'll talk to guests about the impacts of sort of carbon footprint, how we, how we as a Societies hit our carbon targets, and that's.

A massive subject as well.

And also, you know, the consumption of AI and, and how that gets soft and, and you.

I mean, we've talked about this loads and I've mentioned it before, but I think, I think we're probably going to suffer for the next decade before we, we see any, before we get anywhere close to having like a fusion reactor.

But once we hit that point, then essentially we'll have in theory, or basically unlimited energy.

So that will kind of solve the energy issue.

And I think around about the same time we'll probably see practical quantum computing as well.

I know we have very, very early working systems that you can rent time on if you want to mess around, but it's very limited in what it does.

But I think we'll eventually hit those two things around the same time because there are two tracks that are running parallel right now.

And I think those tracks and the AI track are all going to collide at one point and it's probably 20 years away.

I'm sure it'll end up being five.

Yeah, but it's.

In theory, it's 20 years away.

You never know what's coming over the horizon.

And that's going to be really interesting as well that when all of that comes together and then, you know, then we have a whole different thing about how do we deal with the world at that point.

And I think that there's probably an interesting point as well about people who reject technology.

And, you know, there'll be divisions in.

Society and they'll live in Sector eight.

Yeah.

And I mean kind of.

But what would one do then if you could cut the population.

I know this is sort of incredibly crass.

You cut the population in three and a third want to live like basically reject all technology.

Back to a third fairly content with where we are and a third ultra technology reliant.

And I'm not, I don't think it'll play out like that, by the way.

I think we're, I think we'll, we'll hit alien invasion before that feels like.

That'S a good place to segue into something else.

And you mentioned this a little bit, which is place is not just transport.

There's a lot of other things that make up place as well.

And so I just wanted to be really clear that, you know, we're going to, you're going to talk about other things other than trans.

Not.

This isn't the transport show.

This is, you know, this is looking at the whole thing, all of all of places holistically from policy.

Exactly.

So, you know that I think that's going to be a crucial thing as well as is.

You know, I'm really excited for this one actually.

And again, it's, you know, it's kind of where I've lived for the nearly the past decade is in sort of.

We called it smart city.

I don't think anybody wants to use that term anymore.

But it's.

It's everything.

And transport is obviously a key because everybody gets really wound up because there's potholes and they're, you know, they're sitting in traffic not realizing that they are traffic.

And then.

But there's all the housing stuff.

I mean, I know, you know, there was some amazing stuff that some people that we know have been doing around the UK with even with simple sensor networks to like help public housing, not have mold and really simple stuff.

Not AI but it's the.

It's the basis, it's getting the data that you can then start to use more advanced artificial intelligence tools to start doing the predictive analysis and all that sort of stuff to sort of.

To be able to identify areas or situations where there could potentially be harm or a problem and then you can take care of that stuff sooner and it's less expensive for everyone involved.

And there's huge potential advantages to it.

In terms of reimagining public realm, whether that's built on natural environment.

You can kind of peer into the future a bit looking at places like Singapore and I know it's a completely different places are all different but I'm really interested in that sort of.

Sort of environmental built fusion type stuff.

I'm a fan of Gaudi and the architecture in Barcelona and that flowing sort of architecture and when can we do.

A remote show from Barcelona one time?

I think we probably can.

I think that's a.

And Singapore potential.

I think we should for sure.

Definitely.

World tour.

World tour on location.

Could do a world tour.

Yeah.

I'd have to see how much leave I've got left at work.

We need sponsors.

If there are anyone's interested in sponsoring the show, hit us up.

You can come too.

But it's really interesting and getting AI to reimagine just from a design perspective.

Reimagine public realm, reimagine housing places we live balance health and wellbeing with being productive in an economy.

A lot of people are sort of working at home now, you know, not unwillingly, happily, but there's not been a long.

It was Covid driven.

There's not Been a long lead in.

There wasn't, you know, a committee.

I'll go back to my local government.

There wasn't a committee that said, right, how do we reimagine people working at home?

It's kind of happened organically, which is.

Which is really interesting.

So it's the advance.

It's what, it's what that starts to look like.

And I don't just mean in the sense of having shared offices and things like, because that's already happening, it's what the next stage is.

You know, I like working outside, but I don't have an outside job.

But if you got AI to redesign, you know, a suburb of a city and said, actually you can do your job, you have meetings in a sort of a semi, Non.

Sort of built environment or sort of a fused environment, that really interesting stuff.

So I'm going to be exploring all sorts of things, all the way from policy to how we sort of fix things and everything in between.

And then if it starts to feel a bit too complicated, then I'll probably division off and then we'll.

Yeah, we'll deal with that when it gets too complicated.

Awesome.

Good.

Yeah.

No, I mean, you know, Zach.

What was his name?

I think about the third or fourth guest I had on Creatives was Zach Katz, the kid that was using AI New York.

This was.

This was March of last year already, and he was using Mid Journey to reimagine city spaces and take and replace, like Fifth Avenue in New York with a pedestrianized zone.

And I see, I follow a lot of Twitter accounts and stuff like that where people talk about creative streets and redesigning the streets and all that.

And I think we're at a really interesting inflection point as well, because we are really now starting to dig into the battle between people who want to have a nice space and drivers and everything up until this point really has been designed for cars.

And it's.

And now people are starting to go, well, hang on a minute.

It was actually really nice during COVID when we could sit outside in front of our restaurant and there weren't any cars on the street and we don't actually mind walking around.

And, you know, some of the older cities, I mean, you.

You were in New York for what, 15 years?

14 years.

15 years.

That's one of the oldest cities in the UK, very narrow streets, not a lot of, you know, there are a few kind of streets that have cars, but most of them are not.

And so people got around there quite happily.

And Cambridge and Oxford and et CETERA.

In the historic city said there were still huge problems getting vehicles around fairly tight historic streets without an awful lot of available road space to fit various different cyclists, pedestrians, you know, people with disabilities, cars, buses, etc.

That is a kind of a huge, huge challenge.

And I think that's why in that reimagining piece, I don't think it's just.

I think it is about pooling the sentiment of a local population and then using AI as a layer to think of things differently.

But still things that they desire, still things that would be suitable to them that they can basically own and feel that they've played a part in.

And so the co production and things like that, co design have been around and it's all absolutely right, but it's sometimes difficult to achieve, particularly where you've got conflicted opinions within the cohort.

We're co designing in terms of.

And AI might just be an objective mediator in that process and give ideas.

So yeah, so AI can play a pivotal role in that and it's not ready to do that yet.

But I think, you know, bouncing some ideas around with people who are closer to the work around economic development, major projects in cities and things like that.

Get a few ideas together, at least talk about it, see what the challenges are on the podcast.

Yeah, I was at a property networking event last night for one of my clients and what was really interesting is there were some architects there that did a short presentation and they were talking about it and I think again a long time ago on my show I talked about the fact that, you know, there was this contest and some architects went against three kids with Mid Journey and ChatGPT and they did a public design contest, didn't tell anybody that's what it was, that it was AI versus the architects.

And spoiler alert, the AI won.

And the feedback from the architects though in the process was once it was all finished because they didn't know anything until the.

Till the end is they were actually really surprised at how good the designs were.

And they said obviously there were a few little bits and pieces in the design that wouldn't work because of local regulations or you know, materials wouldn't actually do that.

And he said, but.

But they said by and large it was really like it was very good.

And I think so the fundamental issue I have with stuff like that is it shows up people who are experts, which in some ways, if you're looking to disrupt an injury isn't a bad thing.

Isn't a bad thing.

But that's when I Come back to the collaborative piece.

You'd be better off with some architects in that little cohort as well.

And don't get me wrong, I get the point of the exercise, but imagine what they'd have been able to achieve if the architects had been in the cohort.

And I'm not saying.

Or if there was the third group that had architects with AI.

Yeah.

Then everybody can buy in.

Everybody, everybody can then buy into it.

Everybody can feel ownership.

And I think that's one of the things that everybody.

I don't know anybody who doesn't love a good, proper collaboration.

You know, getting together, bouncing ideas round when you're actually achieving something at the end of it.

So it's not just a little bit of a talking shop where, you know, we, I mean, we sit in, chat about all sorts of stuff, don't we?

Which frankly will never.

I'll never happen, you know.

Yeah, but that's.

Yeah, but if we're talking about end products and affecting people's lives really positively, I'm just really in favor of getting everybody who wants to contribute in whatever stage, iterative, whatever stage, and then, you know, then seeing what you get out of the back end of it then.

And I think talking about the existential stuff about jobs and things like that, that is that being connected with it then gets people.

It shows people how they can move on.

Because you're professional, you know, you're a transport planner or an architect.

Some of those disciplines have evolved through technology revolution.

So you get cad.

You've gone from paper drawing to cad, stuff like that.

And then you've got more sophisticated things that will start to do.

Do more for you.

But you get the best people when they're parallel with the development involved.

And that's how people see the opportunities.

That's.

How am I going to develop as a town and country plan.

I know because I've been involved in this piece of work.

I can see what it'll do.

And if there's a big reveal that they're not involved in the first person.

I'm not picking on any particular profession.

The first thing you're going to do is.

Well, that's, that's just pulling my pants down in put like publicly and no, nobody, I don't think anybody enjoys that anymore.

No, I don't and I think so.

I'm not, I'm not having to go at the concept there.

But what I'm saying is there's.

There's an enhancement to that which I think can be, can be achieved and everybody's you know, we strive as local authorities to reach hard to reach groups and if we can get input in that, and there's an AI thing that can facilitate it, you know that, that's when you start to get, you know, you know, young people between certain ages, professional people who've just got a lot on their plate, certain groups that feel a bit disaffected for what, for whatever reason, get an ability to get involved, get everybody in the mix and then start to produce options that way.

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask this question knowing that I'm.

You can always cut my answer.

I'm part of a, of a part of an answer.

But I know in the past there have been some projects in the UK to try and update the planning modeling that goes with planning.

And I don't think that, I think the project that I was involved in was specifically around transport modeling.

And I know that they had ambitions to want to expand that out to, to, to encompass more.

So you could give it to developers, for example, who wanted to plan a new.

If they wanted to put 400 houses in this area.

But I don't think, I don't think we have any tool at this point that still does that.

And I wonder if maybe that's something that's being developed in the backend and maybe you and I can work together if we can find somebody who's doing that.

Because it feels like right now there should be a tool already where you can have an area, you can load up all the grid maps or like whatever, the very detailed maps, you can have all the different information, you can have all the infrastructure maps about the power, the water, the utilities, all that sort of stuff.

And then you can just, and I know it's like digital twin type stuff, but it's more specifically than that.

It's the model that the planners use.

But to say, right, we're going to put, we need to build more houses, we're going to build a garden city, whatever.

And you just literally like, you just drop it like, like a video game.

Yeah.

Here's the basic design of our neighborhoods.

What's the knock on effect?

What needs to happen?

And then it, maybe it takes a day, maybe it takes an hour and it goes away and it goes, right, okay, you're going to need this much extra infrastructure, you're going to need this much extra power.

You're going to need.

This is what we're going to have to do with the roads, you're going to need a school or two, you're going to need, you know, or maybe two primary schools, you're going to need a secondary school, you're going to need this, you're going to need shops, you're going to need.

And it literally can just spit out everything that you're going to need in response to that.

And this is probably something that you're more likely to be aware of as a council employee, rather than what you've described is effectively what a local plan team does at a council.

Yeah.

The reason that it's incredibly difficult to automate is because of the mix of issues that you get when you're trying to.

Trying to do that.

I was, I was having a discussion today about a community heating project.

So this is running a pipe effectively, I think, about three miles, six different landowners over that, three miles, a water course.

So this would have to include.

And this is a really big shout out to the people who work in planning because they don't get defended a lot on things, not necessarily things like this, but broadly it's.

Well, they wouldn't permit that.

The two key things, non people related things, although it has obviously an impact on people for a local authority are the economic strategy and the spatial strategy.

And the local plan team effectively create the spatial strategy.

And without going into the detail of legislation and policy and things like that, it's an incredibly.

It's about surrounded by regulation, but it's also surrounded by incredible levels of complexity.

And when you're taking your local plan through the process of being adopted, ingrained in that is public consultation.

And one of the issues that you've got.

So going back to your idea, it would work.

The problem in reality is people.

It's people just stop there.

People think different things, they have different motivations.

They might be a landowner, they might be a developer, they might be a longtime resident, they might not want a wind turbine near their house, they might not want facilities down the road, they might want to be much more connected with things.

And what makes that role fascinating is the different types.

It's almost worth addressing a much more localized level in terms of what you've described rather than a whole place, because you're more likely to get a consensus in a small area on what the best for that particular area will be.

And then the custodians of that are then the planners in the council and some they're painted as sort of people who are whimsical and it's like the old Julius Caesar thing.

Again, there's a lot that, there's precedent, there's a lot that goes into protecting the public.

You know, even I remember there was the project where we were looking at, we were looking at an EV facility basically, in placing it, and it just happened that where it was proposed was on a historic ridge.

So the question is, do you, do you want to affect that relief and that view?

And what, what do you protect and what you don't?

And that's what they've got to balance off because, you know, if, if everything could get permitted and then that wouldn't.

As such, it might not be too much of a problem because things like, you know, you'll end up with greenbelt because you'll end up with places that will flood or.

And you just won't want to build there or you'd end up with land that's farmed.

So you.

So left to its own devices, whether through technology or not, you know, the things like the end of it, the building regulation stuff.

So the first bit leads you through to the point, is this a safe building?

Is it appropriate?

And I think, you know, without again, getting into too much of the technique of too much of the technicalities around it, the professionals in that area have to deal with all of that when they're coming to a decision.

So, I mean, I've been on the end of planning decisions before, but for me, it's just about what's in that red line.

It's not about how they've taken that decision in the context of three or four red lines around here.

For me, it's just my red line.

So I get it completely.

But the planning officers, you know, the conservation officers at the council, the architects, they've got a duty to maintain and protect the built and natural environment.

And.

But that's not saying that AI can't play a role in making that more efficient or highlighting opportunities that you perhaps wouldn't see, you know, otherwise.

Yeah, there you go.

There's a taster of what the podcast is going to be like.

I think everybody switched off to be.

So speaking of.

So it's every.

Be every other week is the plan to do that.

Some will be here in our studio and some will be remote as well.

So we'll use Riverside like we do with all the other shows, just to be able to grab people when we can.

And.

Yeah, and I know you've got some people lined up.

You're obviously being close to the.

Close to the chest about some of them.

It's Just in case they see this and then they say, I'm not getting involved in that.

No, that's fine.

I think it would be interesting.

I'm just going to throw my 2P in.

I think it'd be really interesting to get someone like, whoever was the project lead.

Do you remember in Vancouver when Google was trying to do the downtown area and then everybody went absolutely mad and they ended up shelving the whole thing?

I think it'd be really interesting to get one of the people on that was involved in that project to talk about that and kind of, you know, because then you've got the Civic, you know, you've got.

The people basically freaked out and were like, no, you can't do that.

And they were just like, but hang on, this is like going to help everybody.

But, you know, we still have to take into consideration a load of people don't like that.

And, you know, you can't put a camera up and everybody gets really weirded out about, yeah, but you can't, you know, my face is going to be on a camera somewhere and it's like.

But, like, no one cares.

And it, you know, but they do.

And that's the thing, you know, and my wife will.

Will probably not mind that I say this, but she's super, super a private.

So she'll be annoyed that I mentioned her anyway.

But she's also very, very cautious.

So all our mail, she always, you know, shreds everything or tears up anything that has our address on it.

Like, she will take the envelope.

She'll, you know, she's very, very careful about that.

She doesn't like, you know, she hates the fact that the phone and she knows that the phone always knows location and kind of tracks you wherever you go.

She doesn't even know that the cars track you everywhere you go.

That would totally freak her out.

There's no chance she'll listen.

She doesn't listen to my podcast.

She will listen to mine.

Then she'll probably listen to yours more than she'd listen to mine.

I doubt it.

I doubt it.

Yeah, she's never listened to any of mine unless I specifically say, listen to this 10 minutes of this show.

You're like, dave's just complained about minute, 13 seconds, 25.

Can you listen to it?

Cause I don't think he's right.

But yeah, anyway, I think that'd be really cool.

So maybe we'll see if we can get some people like that.

But yeah, I know you've got some interesting, interesting folks.

I met some interesting folks.

In Dubai that I've basically said, hey, you know, might be interesting.

So I've been trying to tee up people for you, to give you a little selection.

Best tactic.

Do it before they meet me.

Yeah?

Yeah.

I don't know, man.

I'm.

I'm no better.

Um.

Brilliant, Dave, Good.

Thank you very much.

It's been an excellent chat.

Nice to have you on board.

Good to see you, mate.

And we'll be looking forward, hopefully first episode out towards the end of October.

Good.

Have a good one.

I'll see you soon.

And you take care.

Cheers, Spike.